TY - CHAP
T1 - Patterns of Consumption and Connectedness in GIS Web Sources
AU - Ballatore, Andrea
AU - Scheider, Simon
AU - Lemmens, Rob
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018.
PY - 2018/3/24
Y1 - 2018/3/24
N2 - Every day, practitioners, researchers, and students consult the Web to meet their information needs about GIS concepts and tools. How do we improve GIS in terms of conceptual organisation, findability, interoperability and relevance for user needs? So far, efforts have been mainly top-down, overlooking the actual usage of software and tools. In this article, we critically explore the potential of Web science to gain knowledge about tool usage and public interest in GIScience concepts. First, we analyse behavioural data from Google Trends, showing clear patterns in searches for GIS software. Second, we analyse the visits to GIScience-related websites, highlighting the continued dominance of ESRI, but also the rapid emergence of Web-based new tools and services. We then study the views of Wikipedia articles to enable the quantification of methods and tools’ popularity. Fourth, we deploy web crawling and network analysis on the ArcGIS documentation to observe the relevance and conceptual associations among tools. Finally, in order to facilitate the study of GIS usage across the Web, we propose a linked-data inventory to identify Web resources related to GI concepts, methods, and tools. This inventory will also enable researchers, practitioners, and students to find what methods are available across software packages, and where to get information about them.
AB - Every day, practitioners, researchers, and students consult the Web to meet their information needs about GIS concepts and tools. How do we improve GIS in terms of conceptual organisation, findability, interoperability and relevance for user needs? So far, efforts have been mainly top-down, overlooking the actual usage of software and tools. In this article, we critically explore the potential of Web science to gain knowledge about tool usage and public interest in GIScience concepts. First, we analyse behavioural data from Google Trends, showing clear patterns in searches for GIS software. Second, we analyse the visits to GIScience-related websites, highlighting the continued dominance of ESRI, but also the rapid emergence of Web-based new tools and services. We then study the views of Wikipedia articles to enable the quantification of methods and tools’ popularity. Fourth, we deploy web crawling and network analysis on the ArcGIS documentation to observe the relevance and conceptual associations among tools. Finally, in order to facilitate the study of GIS usage across the Web, we propose a linked-data inventory to identify Web resources related to GI concepts, methods, and tools. This inventory will also enable researchers, practitioners, and students to find what methods are available across software packages, and where to get information about them.
UR - https://ezproxy2.utwente.nl/login?url=https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78208-9
UR - https://ezproxy2.utwente.nl/login?url=https://webapps.itc.utwente.nl/library/2018/chap/lemmens_pat.pdf
U2 - 10.1007/978-3-319-78208-9_7
DO - 10.1007/978-3-319-78208-9_7
M3 - Chapter
SN - 978-3-319-78207-2
T3 - Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography
SP - 129
EP - 148
BT - Geospatial Technologies for All
A2 - Mansourian, Ali
A2 - Pilesjo, Petter
A2 - Harrie, Lars
A2 - van Lammeren, Ron
PB - Springer
ER -