A brief review of the evolution of GIScience since the NCGIA research agenda initiatives

Abstract

Geographical information science (GIScience) is progressively acknowledged as a scientific field based on a wide range of theories and methods that are constantly evolving. This motivates our attempt at a tentative observation of the research progress and challenges that have gone along with its gradual recognition as a domain of its own. The brief critical review presented in this paper develops an observation of such evolution. The peculiarity of our approach is that it is not based on a quantitative evaluation of the research outputs as identified by usual journal production metrics, but rather on a progressive identification of the research questions and their evolution, which the GIS academic community has been addressing over the past 30 years since the landmark NCGIA initiatives' research agendas have largely inspired and contributed to the development of geographical information science as a field.