Don’t forget about geography

Micah L Brachman

doi:10.5311/josis.2020.21.727

Abstract

Maps are a fundamental form of human communication, and for millennia geographers have created maps that measure and describe features and phenomena on the Earth’s surface. Yet since the ‘quantitative revolution’ of the 1960s, the ancient scientific discipline of geography has become increasingly devalued within the academe and misunderstood by the general public. A review of the academic affiliations and job titles of the esteemed authors from the JOSIS 10th anniversary edition is indicative of how constant rebranding and renaming of geography has resulted in fragmentation of the discipline. While terms such as ‘Spatial Data Science’ have a cross-disciplinary appeal, other terms such as ‘geoinformation’, ‘geoinformatics’, ‘geographic data science’, and ‘geographical information science’ primarily conflate geography and computer science. Geographers have been valued for our ability to addressed complex problems and create maps that cross scientific boundaries since antiquity. To reclaim a position of centrality within the academe and the minds of public we must be unequivocal that the central value proposition for geography is the fundamental form of human communication that geographers can truly claim as their own: the map.

Highlights

JOSIS, as Mike Worboys put it in his editorial introducing the first issue ten years ago, is “an online publication and all articles are free to access for any person” [17]
We asked all members of our editorial board to write vision pieces showing the diversity of ways in which our field can contribute to both basic science and major societal challenges
Some editorial board members chose to write their piece alone; others asked colleagues to contribute. These are diverse, and they span a range of topics

Summary

Introduction

JOSIS, as Mike Worboys put it in his editorial introducing the first issue ten years ago, is “an online publication and all articles are free to access for any person” [17]. Climate change has become a climate emergency, biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people have been recognized as important contributors to Sustainable Development Goals1, easy access to locationenabled devices in many people’s pockets has changed the way that societies operate, and most recently, a global pandemic has impacted on all of our lives. All of these events bring into sharp focus the ways in which the data, technologies, and methods we work on can be used for good.

Results

Conclusion