Geoinformatics
Geoinformatics is an interdisciplinary field that encompasses the technologies and systems used to create, collect, organize, analyze, and display geographic information. This innovative approach integrates traditional disciplines like cartography, surveying, and remote sensing into a cohesive data management framework, enhancing the understanding of spatial relationships on Earth. The field has evolved significantly with advancements in computation, enabling high-quality geographic communication that is now accessible through smartphones and other devices.
The foundational principles of geoinformatics rely on the accurate measurement and representation of spatial data, employing techniques such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS), photogrammetry, and remote sensing. These methods allow for comprehensive analysis of environments, aiding in various applications from urban planning to environmental monitoring. The history of geoinformatics traces back to ancient civilizations that utilized early mapping techniques, with further refinements made during the scientific revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries.
As technology continues to advance, geoinformatics is expected to play a crucial role in addressing global challenges, such as climate change and resource management, by providing critical spatial data for decision-making processes. The field offers diverse career opportunities, including roles as GIS analysts, land surveyors, and urban planners, appealing to individuals interested in the intersection of technology and geography. Overall, geoinformatics represents a vital tool in enhancing our understanding of the world and improving the management of our natural and built environments.
Geoinformatics
Summary
Geoinformatics refers to a collection of information systems and technologies used to create, collect, organize, analyze, display, and store geographic information for specific end-user applications. The field represents a paradigm shift from traditional discipline-based systems such as cartography, geodesy, surveying, photogrammetry, and remote sensing to a data systems management protocol that includes all earlier technologies and combines them to create new models of spatial information. Computation is an essential foundation of all geoinformatics systems.
Definition and Basic Principles
Geoinformatics is a complex, multidisciplinary field of knowledge specializing in the creation, collection, storage, classification, manipulation, comparison, and evaluation of spatially referenced information for use in a variety of public and private practices. Its technologies are rooted in mapping, land surveying, and communication technologies that are thousands of years old.
The exponential growth of science-based knowledge and mathematical expertise during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries greatly assisted the accumulation of verifiable geographic information describing the Earth and its position among the myriad celestial entities occupying the known universe. Detailed geometric descriptions and photographic materials make it possible to translate, measure, and order the surface of the Earth into multidimensional coordinate systems that provide a rich and detailed visual language for understanding the relationships and features of locations too vast to be easily comprehended by the human senses. Geographic communication systems are greatly enhanced by the proliferation of computation technologies, including database management systems, laser-based surveys, digital satellite photo technologies, and computer-aided design (CAD). Geoinformatics has allowed almost every smartphone user to have instant access to high-quality navigation tools.
Background and History
The components and design structures of maps form the fundamental language of geographic information systems (GIS). Maps illustrate a variety of environments, both real and imagined, and the structures and life forms that fill them. The geographies of the Earth's land masses and the relationships of land and water to the moon and stars are the foundations of advanced mathematics and the physical sciences, subjects that are continually modified by new measurements of spatial-temporal coordinates. Aerial and nautical photography introduced a new and vital reality to cartographic representation in the twentieth century. Advances in sonar and radar technologies, the telephone and telegraph, radio broadcast, mass transportation, crewed space flight, spectrometry, the telescope, nuclear physics, biomedical engineering, and cosmology all rely on the power of the map to convey important information about the position, structure, and movement of key variables.
Cartography. Mapping is an innate cognitive ability. It is common in a variety of animate species. In human practice, mapping represents an evolutionary process of symbolic human communication. Its grammar, syntax, and elements of style are composed of highly refined systems of notation, projections, grids, symbols, aesthetics, and scales. These time-honored features and practices of cartographic representation demand careful study and practice. Maps are the most ancient documents of human culture and civilization and, as such, many are carefully preserved by private and public institutions worldwide. The advent of the World Wide Web revolutionized the field by making it possible to share, via the Internet, facsimiles of these precious cultural artifacts. The originals are protected for posterity. Scholars study the intellectual and technical processes used to create and document maps. These provide valuable clues about the beliefs and assumptions of the cultures, groups, and individuals that contract and prepare them.
Geodesy. The cartographer artfully translates the spatial features of conceptual landscapes into two- and three-dimensional documents using data and symbols selected to illustrate specific relationships or physical features of a particular place for the benefit or education of a group or individual enterprise. Geodesy (or geodetics) is an earth science the practitioners of which provide timely geographical measurements used by cartographers to create accurate maps. Since earliest recorded times, geodesists have utilized the most current astronomical and geographical knowledge to measure the surface of the Earth and its geometric relationship to the sun and moon. The roots of geodetic measurement systems are buried in the ancient cultures and civilizations of Egypt, China, Mesopotamia, India, and the Mediterranean. Enlightened scholars and astute merchants of land and sea traveled the known world and shared manuscripts, instruments, personal observation, and practical know-how for comprehending the natural world. Hellenic scholars brilliantly advanced the study of astronomy and the Earth's geography. Their works formed the canon of cartographical and astronomical theory in the Western world from the time of the great voyages of discovery in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Alexandria was the intellectual center of the lives of the Greek polymath Eratosthenes of Cyrene and the Roman astronomer Ptolemy. Both wrote geographical and astronomical treatises that were honored and studied for centuries. Around 250 BCE, Eratosthenes wrote Peri tes avametreoeos tes ges (On the Measurement of the Earth) and the three-volume Geographika (Geography), establishing mathematics and precise linear measurements as necessary prerequisites for the accurate geographical modeling of the known world. His works are considered singular among the achievements of Greek civilization. He is particularly noted for his calculations of the Earth's circumference, measurements that were not disputed until the seventeenth century.
Ptolemy, following Eratosthenes, served as the librarian of Alexandria, Egypt. He made astronomical observations from Alexandria between 127 and 141 CE, and he was firm in his belief that accurate geographical maps were derived from the teachings of astronomy and mathematics. The Almagest is a treatise devoted to a scientific, methodical description of the movement of the stars and planets. The beauty and integrity of his geocentric model set a standard for inquiry that dominated astronomy for centuries. He also wrote the eight-volume Geographia (Geography), in which he established latitude and longitude coordinates for the major landmasses and mapped the world using a conic projection of prime and linear meridians and curved parallels. His instructions for creating a coordinate system of mapping, including sectional and regional maps to highlight individual countries, are still in practice.
At the end of the nineteenth century, geophysics became a distinct science. Its intellectual foundations provided entities such as petroleum corporations with new technologies for identifying and classifying important land features and resources. In the United States, extensive surveys were conducted for administrative and military purposes. The US Coast Survey was established by President Thomas Jefferson in 1807. The Army Corps of Engineers, the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, and the United States Naval Observatory supported intensive geophysical research, including studies of harbors and rivers, oceans and land topographies. In 1878, the US Coast Survey became the US Coast and Geodetic Survey. In 1965, the US Coast and Geodetic Survey was reincorporated under the Environmental Sciences Services Administration, and in 1970, it was reorganized as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Underwater acoustics and geomagnetic topographies were critical to the success of naval engagements during World War I and World War II. The International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG) was founded in 1919, and became one of the scientific unions participating in the International Council for Science (ICSU). That same year, the American National Committee of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics combined with the Committee on Geophysics of the National Research Council. In 1972, the committee was independently organized as the American Geophysical Union (AGU). Graduate geophysics programs became prominent in major universities after World War II.
Geodesy is a multidisciplinary effort to calculate and document precisely the measurements of the Earth's shape and gravitational field to define accurate spatial-temporal locations for points on its surface. Land surveys and geomensuration, or the measure of the Earth as a whole, are essential practices. Geodetic data are used in GIS—these include materials from field surveys, satellites, and digital maps. The Earth's shape is represented as an ellipsoid in current mathematical models. Three-dimensional descriptors are applied to one quadrant of the whole in a series of calculations. All cartographic grid systems and subsequent measurements of the Earth begin with a starting point called a datum. The first datum was established in North America in 1866, and its calculations were used for the 1927 North American Datum (NAD 27). In 1983, a new datum was established (NAD 83), and it is the basis of the standard geodetic reference system (GRS 80). It was again modified and became the World Geodetic System in 1984 (WGS 84). WGS 84 utilizes constant parameters for the definition of the Earth's major and minor axes, semimajor and semiminor axes, and various ratios for calculating the flattening at the poles. The geoid is another geodetic representation of the Earth, as is the sphere.
Photogrammetry. The word "photogrammetry" refers to the use of photographic techniques to produce accurate three-dimensional information about the topology of a given area. Accurate measurements of spaces and structures are obtained through various applications, including aerial photography, aerotriangulation, digital mapping, topographic surveys, and database and GIS management. Precise, detailed photographs make it possible to compare and analyze particular features of a given environment. Aerial photographs are particularly useful to engineers, designers, and planners who need visual information about the site of a project or habitat not easily accessible by other means. The International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS) advances the knowledge of these technologies in more than one hundred countries worldwide.
Remote Sensing. Like photogrammetry, remote sensing is an art, science, and technology specializing in the noncontact representation of the Earth and the environment by measuring the wavelengths of different types of radiation. It includes passive and active technologies, both of which collect data from natural or emitted sources of electromagnetic energy. These include cosmic rays, X-rays, ultraviolet light, visible light, infrared and thermal radiation, microwaves, and radio waves. Aerial photography and digital imaging are traditional passive remote sensing technologies based on photographic techniques and applications. Later applications include manned space and space shuttle photography and Landsat satellite imagery. Radar interferometry and laser scanning are common examples of active remote sensing technologies. These products are used for the documentation of inaccessible or dangerous spaces. Examples include studies of particular environments at risk or in danger.
Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). Satellites and rapidly advancing computer technologies have transformed GIS products. Satellite systems of known distance from the Earth receive radio transmissions, which are translated and sent back to Earth as a signal giving coordinates for the position and elevation of a location. The Global Positioning System (GPS; originally called Navstar), a US government system originating from a World War II radio transmission system known as loran (long-range navigation), is the oldest and best-known GNSS system. Others include Russia's Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS), the European Union's Galileo, and India's NAVIC. GNSSs provide data for many systems, including consumer navigation systems and tracking.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) maintains the Earth Observing System (EOS) program, made up of elements such as the Landsat and Terra satellites. These satellite systems are used to collect data including measurements of the Earth's ozone shield, cloud mappings, rainfall distributions, wind patterns, studies of ocean phenomena, vegetation, and land-use patterns.
How It Works
Geographic information systems are built on geometric coordinate systems representing particular locations and terrestrial characteristics of the Earth or other celestial bodies. The place and position of particular land features form the elementary and most regular forms of geographic data. Maps provide visual information about key places of interest and structural features that assist or impede their access. Land survey technologies and instrumentation are ancient and are found in human artifacts and public records that are thousands of years old. They are essential documents of trade, land development, and warfare. Spatial coordinates describing the moon and stars and essential information about particular human communities are chinked into rocks, painted on the walls of caves, and hand-printed on graphic media all over the world. Digital photographs, satellite data, old maps, field data, and measurements provide new contexts for sharing geographic information and knowledge about the natural world and human networks of exchange.
GIS devices include high-resolution Landsat satellite imagery, light detecting and ranging (lidar) profiles, computer-aided design (CAD) data, and database management systems. Cross-referenced materials and intricately detailed maps and overlays create opportunities for custom-designed geographic materials with specific applications. Data that is created and stored in a GIS device provide a usable base for building complex multi-relational visualizations of landscapes, regions, and environments.
How a GIS component is used depends on the particular applications required. Service providers will first conduct a needs assessment to understand what information will be collected, by whom, and how it will be used by an individual or organization. The careful design of relationships connecting data sets to one another is an essential process of building an effective GIS system. Many data sets use different coordinates to describe a geographical location and so algorithms need to be developed to adjust values that can have significant effects on the results of a study.
Depending on the needs of an organization, the rights to use some already-established data sets can be acquired. Other data can be collected by the user and stored in appropriate data files. This includes records already accumulated by an individual or organization. Converting and storing records in GIS format is particularly useful for creating the documents needed for a time-series analysis of particular land features and regional infrastructures. Digital records protect against the loss of valuable information and create flexible mapping models for communicating with internal and external parties.
Applications and Products
Satellite and computer technologies have transformed the way spatial information is collected and communicated worldwide. With exponential increases in speed and detail, satellites provide continuous streams of information about Earth's life systems. Many satellites provide free access to GPS coordinates. These are used on a daily basis by people from all walks of life, providing exceptional mapping applications for determining the location and elevation of roadways and waterways.
The Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) was a pioneer in the development of GIS landscape-analysis systems. This included the development of proprietary automated software products with web applications. Users can choose from a menu of services including community web-mapping tools; ArcGIS Desktop with ArcView, ArcEditor, and ArcInfo applications; and applications for use in educational settings. ESRI software became an industry standard used worldwide by governments and industries, and the ESRI International User Conference became one of the largest events of its kind. While ESRI has dominated the field, other GIS software has also been developed and become influential, including open-source systems that are free and customizable by users. Another product that had a significant influence on geoinformatics was Google Maps, which became a highly recognizable and widely used web-mapping service after its launch in 2005, and the related Google Earth.
The Global Geodetic Observing System (GGOS) is a program developed by the International Association of Geodesy. It provides continuing observations of the Earth's shape, gravity field, and rotational motion. These measurements are integrated into the Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS), an application that provides high-quality reference materials for use by groups such as the Group on Earth Observations and the United Nations.
Careers and Course Work
Coursework and certification in geoinformatics at the undergraduate and graduate levels can be specialized or completed in tandem with coursework in other earth science and engineering fields. Courses include selections of introductory materials, computer programming, database management and design, statistics, bioinformatics, geostatistics, remote sensing, various foundational courses in mapping techniques and spatial analysis, and computer laboratory exercises to gain familiarity with a number of GIS software programs. Some coursework will emphasize applications in land development, transportation analysis, environmental science, public health, and various engineering and architectural design schematics.
Careers specializing in geoinformatics technologies are directly involved in data-driven hardware and software applications. Practitioners must master the organizational and design skills necessary to produce highly detailed, error-free maps and related documents for use in private industry and governmental agencies. Familiarity with field research and land survey technologies is also desirable. Career paths include GIS technician, Environmental technician, computer-aided design drafter, GIS analyst, land surveyor, geologist, urban planner, cartographer, geographer, and GIS developer. While all geoinformatics jobs involve science, technology, geology, and geography, it is possible to choose a career path that focuses more heavily on one area of interest. While GIS developers focus on writing code and designing applications, GIA analysts use surveys and images from geographic information systems to create and update maps.
Social Context and Future Prospects
Computer and telecommunications technologies provide novel platforms for connecting individuals, groups, and communities worldwide. Location is an essential feature of such networks, and geographic information systems are needed to provide timely spatial information for individual and cooperative ventures. However, questions about the safety and integrity of global communications and data systems can challenge political values across societies. Nevertheless, geographic information systems are continually integrated into various applications, contributing to the safety of individuals, the integrity of the world's natural resources, and the profitability of global enterprises.
The impact of GIS technology is evident across industries. The US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) uses GIS to map potential domestic sites of rare earth elements, which presents implications for various governmental agencies in national security, environmental considerations, and public health. Monitoring issues related to climate change, sustainability, and the impact of interventions is improved with GIS technology, particularly sustainable palm oil and managing water resources. Vehicles with in-car navigation, businesses choosing a location, improvements in communications, market analysis, and more are all impacted by and use GIS technology in the twenty-first century.
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