ABSTRACT
In Chapter 2 we looked at the nature of GIS from their beginnings and took a broad view of what they do and how they do it. It will not have been lost on the reader that GIS have their roots in technology and are commonly viewed as tools for handling and analysing spatial data. We also saw how GIS have become bound up in geocomputation and how this opens up exciting new vistas for research and application. So are GIS just toolboxes for ‘turning the handle’ on spatial data – shove some data in at one end and churn out some maps at the other? Or is there something more to it that merits the title of ‘Science’ that will propel it towards being a discipline in its own right? This is not just idle academic musing but has implications for those numerous disciplines where GIS are applied. If its not just a case of ‘turning the handle’ and there are indeed substantive issues which are important in the way we use GIS and spatial data, then users should be aware of them. A number of these issues provide the basis for Section C of this book. This chapter therefore aims to set up a framework within which these issues can be placed and their importance understood. This is not intended to be a lengthy chapter and readers wanting to follow up the debates around GIS as science, technology and engineering should refer to: Goodchild (1992b), Wright et al. (1997a,b), Pickles (1997), Burrough (2000), Frank (2000), Frank and Raubal (2001).
