Next generation of GIS: must be easy
Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: Existing GIS software mainly target at expert users and do not sufficiently integrate resources for efficient computing. They are difficult for non-experts to use and are often slow in completing the complicated geographic analysis. To address these problems, future generation of GIS software must be ‘easy’. By ‘easy’ we mean ‘easy to use’ and ‘easy to compute’. ‘Easy to use’ means that software system should be goal-oriented, rather than the currently procedure-oriented doctrine. The goal-oriented will relieve users, particularly novice users, the burden of knowing the exact commands and their sequences to perform for achieving the goal they want to achieve. ‘Easy to compute’ means that implementation of GIS analytical functionality should be able to utilize the high-performance computing infrastructures for complicated geographic analysis. Two case studies, one in digital soil mapping and the other in digital terrain analysis, are presented to illustrate the meaning of ‘easy’. We believe that the future generations of GIS platforms should be goal-driven, intelligent, high-performance computing enabled, easily accessible, and participatory. It allows anyone to participate in geo-computation at anywhere and anytime.
Source: Annals of GIS
Authors: A-Xing Zhu, Fang-He Zhao, Peng Liang, Cheng-Zhi Qin
Institutions: University of Wisconsin–Madison, Nanjing Normal University, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Southern University of Science and Technology, Jiangsu Center for Collaborative Innovation in Geographical Information Resource Development and Application, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
Language: English
Subfield: Geography, Planning and Development
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,500
OpenAlex ID: W3027692129