Developments in Geographical Information and Planning

John Stillwell, Stan Geertman and Stan Openshaw
Additional contact information
John Stillwell: University of Leeds
Stan Geertman: Utrecht University
Stan Openshaw: University of Leeds

Chapter 1 in Geographical Information and Planning, 1999, pp 3-22 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract We are living in the ‘information age’; we are part of the ‘information society’. Information has value because it can be used to extend our knowledge, enhance our wisdom and reduce our uncertainty. It helps us to understand how the world around us works and assists us in making better decisions about developments that will affect our circumstances. The value of information is evident when there is an improvement in the outcome resulting from the decision that is made. Take the example of an educational planner seeking to establish the best site for a new school in a suburban neighbourhood. Such a location decision will be improved with the availability of information about the residential addresses of households with children in the area who are likely to attend the new school once it has been built. In this example, as in many others, the problem is a spatial one and the information has a geographical reference. Probably 85 per cent or more of all information is capable of being regarded as geographic information because it can be spatially referenced. Thus it can be called ‘geoinformation’. The adoption of the term geoinformation has been accompanied by the emergence or popularisation of a suite of ‘geo’ terms including geodata, geodemography, geomarketing, geoinformatics, geomatics and, most recently, geocomputation.

Keywords: Geographical Information System; Universal Resource Locator; Great Britain; Metadata Service; Ordnance Survey (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:adspcp:978-3-662-03954-0_1

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783662039540

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-662-03954-0_1

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Advances in Spatial Science from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().