By Arup R
Some years ago the Indian Society of Geomatics mooted the idea of changing its name to the Indian Society of Geoinformatics. The matter was referred to me and I did a bit of research in the terminology. What I found was very interesting.
Wikipedia defined Geoinformatics as a science which develops and uses information science infrastructure to address the problems of geosciences and related branches of engineering. The three main tasks of geoinformatics are identified as development and management of databases of geodata, analysis and modelling of geodata, and development and integration of computer tools and software for the first two tasks. It further restricts the term to activities related to geocomputation and to the development and use of geographic information systems. Interesting!
The definition of Geomatics in Wikipedia is more comprehensive: "Geomatics is considered a branch of geography. It is the discipline of gathering, storing, processing, and delivering of geographic information, or spatially refereed information." It further clarifies that the broad term applies both to science and technology, and integrates many specific disciplines and technologies such as geodesy, surveying, mapping, positioning, navigation, cartography, remote sensing, photogrammetry, geographical information systems, global positioning system, etc; a much more satisfying definition, in my opinion.
Further, search for ‘geomatics' on Google saw over 2 million hits compared to a paltry 350 thousand for ‘geoinformatics'. Google scholar returned 9530 and 2880 respectively. ISO expectedly returned zero for ‘geoinformatics'. Interestingly both Encyclopedia Britannica and Encarta have no entries for both terms. As Alice said, curiouser and curiouser! However, the Society dilemma was resolved and the ‘G' remains as ‘Geomatics'.
The term was apparently coined in 1969 in Canada and subsequently adopted by the International Standards Organisation, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and many others but in the United States there is a marked preference for the term ‘geospatial technology'.
Recourse to Wikipedia revealed that "Geospatial is a term widely used to describe the combination of spatial software and analytical methods with terrestrial or geographic datasets. The term is often used in conjunction with geographic information systems and geomatics, never separately (emphasis added)." Google returned more than 3 million hits; impressive. Google Scholar returned a more sedate 58,700 but still, quite impressive. However, both Mike Goodchild and Jack Dangermond defer to ‘G' for ‘geographic'. In fact Goodchild calls the term ‘geospatial' as a semantic oddity and I remember Jack rolling the word ‘geomatics' around his tongue during his inaugural speech at the first symposium of the Indian Society of Geomatics in 1993 at Delhi and urging us to use ‘geography' instead.
To me ‘geography' just does not convey the breadth and depth of ‘geomatics'. The word ‘geography', derived from the Greek ‘geographia', literally means ‘to describe and write about the earth'. I find this too restrictive and hardly does justice to the new technologies and applications enabled through electronic communications and computation. If everything is ‘geography' then why have ‘geodesy' and ‘geology'? ‘Geospatial' is an adjective and cannot stand alone. It has to be geospatial ‘something' - technology, science, applications or what have you. On the other hand, ‘geomatics' encompasses everything from technology to applications in one short word. It is also flexible as it anticipates future growth. Just as ‘Informatics' denotes the automation of information, ‘Geomatics' denotes the automation of geography. Thus ‘geoinformatics' is as much a semantic oddity as ‘geospatial' and both need to defer to ‘geomatics'. So do we now see a National Geomatics Magazine instead of the familiar National Geographic? I guess not! Old habits die hard.
Source: GIS Development
