Geography Reference
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real time . 4 At the individual level, this allows GIS to better approximate how indi-
viduals actually interact with their environment in daily life (Kwan 2009 ; McQuoid
and Dijst 2012 ). Within larger GPS/GIS systems it also enables researchers to
better understand and monitor complex real-time population dynamics at a larger
scale, for example natural disaster evacuations during Hurricane Katrina or refugee
migrations occurring from conflict zones in Africa or the Middle East.
The changes wrought by RTI GPS/GIS and its creation of new “real-time
space-time” capabilities in GIScience and geography are extensive. One can
discern its “fault lines,” or discontinuities in multiple methods and practices in
the disciplines of geography, cartography, and GIScience. Such fault lines signal
discontinuities between what was possible prior to the introduction of transforma-
tive technologies, in this case RTI GPS/GIS functionality, and what then became
possible following its development and introduction.
RTI GPS/GIS functionality has transformed mapping and cartographic methods
worldwide, by enabling the collection and use of geographic information that
is far more detailed, timely, accurate, immediate, and specific to a particular
application than was possible before. It is largely responsible for the explosion
in the amount of highly detailed, specific, and updated feature and attribute
spatiotemporal data now available for GIS applications and for GIScience research.
It has also enabled the integration into GIS of mobile electronic sensors, such as
environmental pollutant monitors, digital cameras, bathymetric instruments, noise
monitors, biometric health sensors, and so forth, resulting in vast amounts of new
continuously georeferenced and time coded sensor data.
RTI GPS/GIS has spawned whole new industries, such as Location Based
Services (LBS), and is a primary technology employed to create the navigational
databases and street maps now used so widely by Google, Apple, MapQuest and
other internet mapping providers. It is a core component of the management of
4 As David Lowenthal ( 1961 ) pointed out, the focus of geographic enquiry is fundamentally
congruous with the objects and structures and immediacy of common experience. More than
any other field, he argues, “the subject matter of geography approximates the world of general
discourse; the palpable present, the everyday life of man on earth, is seldom far from our
professional concerns :::geography observes and analyzes aspects of the milieu on the scale and
in the categories that they are usually apprehended in everyday life” (241). Along similar lines,
when referring to the experience of RTI GPS/GIS mapping, Ron Abler ( 1993 ) noted that,
Few geographers will be able to resist the seduction of creating new maps interactively, in
real time, amid the real phenomena the maps represent, while at the same time referring to
and revising the background maps for the area contained in portable geographic information
systems carried into the field. The capability for displaying to a person in the field
background maps, the map being created, and the individuals changing position on both
background and new maps will arouse the dormant field work virus lurking in even the
most ardent armchair geographer. (135)
The immediacy and somewhat exhilarating experience of direct encounter and interaction with
the real world in real time while using RTI GPS/GIS has been remarked on by many users of these
technologies.
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