Real-Time Space-Time Integration in GIScience and Geography - Space-Time Integration in Geography and GIScience - page 395

sensors (such as laser range finders, digital photo and video, radiation detectors, air
quality and other environmental monitoring instruments, etc.) directly into the RTI
GPS/GIS system (Richardson 1993 ).
The real-time fusion, analysis, visualization and interaction with dynamic geo-
graphic information and processes made possible by these early RTI GPS/GIS
systems quickly engendered new research directions in geography and GIScience
research as well as other scientific domains (Richardson et al. 2013 ). As Fig. 21.1
illustrates, transportation, health, environmental change, and modeling are just
some of the examples. RTI GPS/GIS functionality also stimulated and produced
dynamic new real-time operations management possibilities for businesses and
governments, generating what I have termed geographic management systems
(Richardson 2006 ). For example, these systems were developed early on for the
real-time management of vehicle fleets to optimize package delivery operations
or taxicab dispatch; electrical utility energy demand monitoring, distributed asset
inventory and maintenance, and mobile work force work management; public safety
activities by government agencies; United Nations international relief operations;
automated supply chain and logistics operations for retail and manufacturing;
and for tracking and responding to contagious disease outbreaks. For a more
detailed discussion of the transformations generated in geography and GIS by the
introduction of real-time geographic management systems, see Richardson and Solis
( 2004 ) and Abler and Richardson ( 2003 ).
In recent years, further diffusion and widespread adoption of RTI GPS/GIS has
been facilitated by improvements in supporting technology infrastructure such as
smaller and faster computers, better wireless systems, easier access to the internet
and developments in web communications, increased resolution of remote sensing,
and continued development of smaller and more portable environmental sensors.
However, nearly all of the RTI GPS/GIS functionality now in use today was
embodied in these early systems and their related patents.
Miniaturized RTI GPS/GIS functionality is now also embedded in consumer
technologies such as cell phones, automobiles, and personal navigation devices
and is spawning new geographic research and applications involving volunteered
geographic information (VGI), crowd sourcing, and citizen science. The compelling
experiential immediacy of these technologies is also increasingly mediating and
changing how individuals interact with and experience the world, and each other
(Monaghan 2013 ).

21.3 Real-Time Space-Time Fault Lines in Geography

and GIScience

RTI GPS/GIS has created completely new possibilities within the realms of
GIScience and GIS for interacting with, representing, making decisions about,
and negotiating the world around us as it is encountered and experienced in