Five forces catapulting geography onto the world stage

Five converging global trends

Five converging global trends may present geography with unprecedented world attention: geo-awareness, geo-enablement, geotechnologies, citizen science and storytelling. Each of these is transforming the audience for geography and the way geography is taught and perceived.

1. Geo-awareness

The world faces complex challenges that are global in nature but also increasingly affect individuals’ everyday lives. Not a few hours pass without the impact of seismic or weather-related hazards on human populations. Changing birth rates, immigration, energy and political instability are issues that impact the politics and economics of nations and the social fabric of local communities. Epidemics impact the entire planet in significant ways. Sustaining agriculture and fisheries are critical to food supplies. The transportation of people and products consume massive amounts of time and energy. Water quality and quantity are fundamental to the existence of humanity.

These challenges, long fundamental to what geographers studied, have now become a part of the public consciousness and everyday conversation. A heightened awareness exists that these issues are serious, affect individuals’ everyday lives and need to be solved. There is also growing realization that they occur somewhere, at multiple scales, with specific spatial distributions, patterns, temporal components and linkages.

2. Geo-enablement

Societies are rapidly moving to an era where everything in everyday life will be geo-enabled. From smartphones to tablets, from webcams recording traffic, bird counts or parking spaces, from Earth-imaging satellites to sensors recording water quality, seismicity and weather, these devices transmit location. As geo-enabling extends to thermostats and appliances in homes, the Internet of Things and smart cities are built. As these measurements become mapped within GIS and remote sensing environments, they become, as Jack Dangermond has said, a “nervous system” for the planet.

3. Geotechnologies

Until recently, geospatial data and related tools, methods and data were used largely by those in GIS and scientific fields. Today, millions of maps and satellite images are viewed hourly. Like music, graphics, Microsoft Office and other tools, GIS is migrating to a cloud-based Software as a Service model. Geographic tools, maps and spatial data have become instantly available in the field, in vehicles, in research labs and just about everywhere. These digital maps have become among the most common type of 21st century media. As data from geo-enabled devices and objects is mapped, the public is becoming conscious of the value of maps in their everyday lives.

4. Citizen Science

The largest part of the Internet of Things' sensor network is not the electronic sensors but the general public. The public has long been engaged in contributing observations about phenology and birds. Web-based GIS encourages them to contribute data. Information fed to cloud-based services offers to make life more efficient and interesting. Examples include connecting with others through fitness apps, recommending products matching purchasing history and feeding individuals’ current speed to real-time traffic maps so that motorists can avoid snarls. The movements and observations of people, who make up a seven billion strong sensor network, are providing information about the planet as has never been gathered before.

5. Storytelling

For centuries, maps have been valued because they provide a large amount of detail in a small amount of space, and because of their capacity for telling a story. Telling stories through maps began with describing explored lands in great detail against terra incognita. Today, geographic tools, data and multimedia on the web expand the ability and audience for storytelling through maps. Any person with a smartphone or computer can use maps to tell his or her own multimedia-enriched story. These maps span scale, theme and purpose, from Napoleon’s march to this year’s hurricanes, from China’s new highways to where food originates.

During World War II and during the Space Race, a heightened awareness of global affairs translated into calls for increased frequency and rigor in geography and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics education. However, these periods were short-lived and accompanied by setbacks, such as the closure of geography departments. Will the five trends occurring today be enough to generate and sustain the interest of the general public, policymakers and educational administrators? Will this enable geography to become a fundamental, funded, respected subject throughout education and in decision-making throughout society?

Geoliteracy

Each of today’s issues of concern to the public is fundamentally a geographic one, tied to space and place. To grapple with these issues requires a geoliterate populace that can use geographic information to make wise decisions. To William Pattison, in 1964, geoliteracy included four traditions: spatial, area studies, man-land and earth science. In 1984, researchers Natoli, Boehm, Kracht, Lanegran, Monk and Morrill identified five themes: movement, region, human-environment interaction, location and place. In 2012, Daniel Edelson stated that geoliteracy should include how our world works, how our world is connected, and how to make well-reasoned decisions. I believe that geoliteracy requires cultivation on each of three legs of the stool of geographic literacy: core content, skills in using geographic tools and the geographic perspective.