Beyond location modeling and GIS: Integration and bridging

Abstract

The importance of good locational decision making cannot be understated. In many cases it is quite literally a question of life and death, whether in the context of safety and security or associated with the viability of business activity. As a result, location modeling has become essential in system understanding, designing or extension in whatever way spatial choice is considered. Location modeling too is central in addressing sustainability, resilience, efficiency and effectiveness across a range of urban and environmental contexts. Over the past three decades geographic information systems, and more generally GIScience, has emerged as a critical complement to location modeling. This paper seeks to articulate and demonstrate how GIScience is now a central component of location modeling, one that fundamentally bridges geographic information systems and optimization in many ways. GIScience primitives are formally structured and specified in order to make linkages explicit in the context of location modeling. This is significant as GIScience helps to further establish locational theory and principles that form the basis of model extension as well as enables better solution approaches to be developed. Because of this, continued integration of location modeling and GIS is anticipated in the coming years and decades.