Geographic Information Science
The original "science behind the systems," also known as spatial data science
Geographic information science is in our DNA
Geographic information science, also known as GIScience or geospatial data science, has been in Esri's DNA since our founding in 1969. Many of our key staff and leaders trained with legends in the field. "Father of GIScience" Mike Goodchild is a long-standing, trusted consultant to further guide and critique us, as is remote-sensing and education pioneer Dave Cowen. Chief scientist Dawn Wright is on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Geographical Information Science and Transactions in GIS.
Advancing an evolving field
Many of our staff serve on a range of other GIScience journal editorial boards or contribute to outlets such as the Cartography and Geographic Information Science (CaGIS) Journal, the Cartographic Journal, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, and the Annals of the American Association of Geographers.
Featured Collaboration
Esri and the Space and Time for Knowledge Organization (STKO) Lab of Professor Krzysztof Janowicz and his students are pursuing joint research projects of mutual benefit and interest in the areas of Linked Data, semantic search, data-mining-based metadata enrichment, and geo-ontology. This includes experimenting with the ArcGIS ingestion of ontologies and Linked Data for data queries and the associated issues of user experience (UX), semantic search, automatic interpretation, web analytics, and more.
Imagery
Imagery as data and remote sensing as science power today's modern GIS. Rapidly changing developments that combine imagery and spatial analyses are opening up new chapters in the history of GIS, as society awakens to the power of geography and the intuitive understanding that imagery helps us "see" in all its forms. As we like to say, "the map of the future is an intelligent image."
Cartography
Inspiration, resources, training, and fascinating reads on cartographic science
Applied Data Science Initiative
