CyberGIS

CyberGIS is an emerging interdisciplinary field that combines cyberinfrastructure, geographic information science and systems (GIS), and spatial analysis and modeling to enable scientific discovery. Much like physical infrastructure such as highways and energy grids supported a 20th-century industrial economy, cyberinfrastructure is designed to support a 21st-century knowledge economy. Pioneering geographers and geographic information scientists (GIScientists) started to leverage the computational infrastructure made available through cyberinfrastructure to advance geographic research. CyberGIS emerged from these pioneering efforts. CyberGIS draws on and contributes to multiple science areas from geography and geographic information science to computer science and data-intensive science. Rather than just a more powerful computational platform, cyberGIS represents, in many respects, a new way of thinking about geospatial problems. By removing the computational bounds of a desktop computer, and subsequently desktop-based GIS software, scientists are free to explore new paradigms, use cutting-edge technologies to facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration, and run complex simulations and analyses on big spatial data. Like any emerging field, cyberGIS is rooted in earlier scientific endeavors, but it has branched out by leveraging technological advancements to enable new scientific discoveries.