ABSTRACT
Geographic Information Science (GIScience) constitutes a new scientic discipline concerned with the systematic study of information and knowledge about geographic reality. Probably the most fundamental question that can arise about GIScience is how we conceptualize geographic reality and, consequently, how the formed concepts accurately represent the world or our knowledge about the world. Conceptualizations form geographic concepts and eventually knowledge. Their associated representations are commonly organized into collections, nomenclatures, taxonomies, or ontologies. For various reasons explained later, these conceptualizations differ. Thus, they create partial, imprecise, or conflicting portrayals (representations) of geographic reality. In short, partial refers to a nonexhaustive coverage of reality. Imprecise refers to how truly or closely the portrayal represents the part of reality. Lastly, conflicting refers to inconsistent portrayals of the same part of reality. Thus, commonly encountered geographic concepts, such as “forest,” “river,” “administrative unit,” “cadastral parcel,” “transportation network,” “road,” “bank,” “utility,” “mixed-urban fabric,” or “semi-natural area,” may differ considerably from one taxonomy to another. This creates serious problems when geographic knowledge is to be communicated, reused, or combined. Sometimes this becomes immediately apparent, other times it is discovered later or when it is already too late. Four exemplary cases/scenarios are introduced below to illustrate the above points:
Case 1: Three organizations-a planning agency, an environmental agency, and a cadastral organization-are to exchange geographic information about land use for a particular area. During the process they discover that they have to deal with a multitude of interrelated problems, such as:
1. Different understanding of homonymous concepts (polysemy). For instance, what “forest” means to forestry engineering, biodiversity analysis, landscape protection, or agro-pastoralism; or what “parcel” means to cadastre, land use, land cover, agriculture, etc.
