Talk:Internet GIS

Internet GIS place in the GIS literature

I'm surprised this page did not already exist, as it is a huge part of the GIS literature. My understanding of GIS is that the hierarchy is GIS>Distributed GIS>Internet GIS>WebGIS>WebMapping and other services. Wikipedia was missing Internet GIS, and is still missing WebGIS, both extremely common terms in the literature. There are many pages for smaller GIS Concepts, so these high order concepts are noteworthy. GeogSage (talk) 07:34, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Renaming / merging this article to Web GIS

I think this article could be merged with the existing web mapping article or must be renamed to Web GIS. Content that covers Web GIS on the current Web mapping page could be moved here. Web mapping and Web GIS are indeed two different things, where web mapping focuses on the interactive map functionality and web gis focusing on the analysis and processing functionalities. However, the frontier is rather blurry and that's probably why so far web GIS has been covered in the web mapping article.

What "Internet GIS" is corresponds to what the industry has referred to as "Web GIS" for ages (>10 years). This new Internet GIS article created last September, mostly by a single enthusiast, needs to be renamed and/or merged.

Thank you for your consideration Lordsatri (talk) 12:32, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

Hello Lordsatri,

Upon finding the Web Mapping article, I proposed changing it to WebGIS in the talk section. The talk section decided that Web Mapping was a different enough topic to warrant its own page. I'm currently working on a seperate WebGIS article in my sandbox. It will ultimately take some content from this pages WebGIS.

Another page that needs to be created is Mobile GIS. Mobile GIS is not part of WebGIS, as they often use seperate networks then the World Wide Web but will employ the internet.

I have multiple sources on WebGIS that indicate that they are discrete topics. The hierarchy is GIS>Distributed GIS>Internet GIS>WebGIS>WebMapping. Even from a purely historic point of view, I found internet GIS is a term that was and is used throughout the literature. The internet is older then the Web, as is Internet GIS. When I was working on creating a WebGIS page and reviewing articles, I found the page for distributed GIS, and learned that internet GIS is a distinct category refering to any distributed GIS that employs the internet, including all that use the World Wide Web.

I addressed this in the page where I wrote, with citations:

"Internet GIS is a subset of Distributed GIS, but specifically uses the internet rather than generic computer networks. Internet GIS applications are often, but not exclusively, conducted through the World Wide Web, giving rise to the sub-branch of Web GIS, often used interchangeably with Internet GIS. While Web GIS is has become nearly synonymous with Internet GIS, the two are as distinct as the internet is from the World Wide Web. Likewise, Internet GIS is as distinct from distributed GIS as the Internet is from distributed computer networks in general."

I oppose the complete renaming of this page, but support taking parts of it and adding it to a WebGIS article as that is already my plan. If you want to see a page that is not supported by the literature and could be merged into that as well, please see the CyberGIS wiki. GeogSage (talk) 18:31, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

This topic finally gave me a kick to start moving the stuff into the Web GIS page I had been working on.

Please see Web GIS. It is a work in progress that we can move quite a bit from this page, Web mapping, and CyberGIS GeogSage (talk) 19:09, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi GeogSage and thanks for the followup!

First and most important ; I do not doubt you have good intentions and I'm happy you're spending energy to improve these pages. However, I'd like to contribute my perspective on elements that I believe should be addressed before restructuring these pages.

I do not claim knowing 'the truth' and hope my experience can help provide useful feedback (20+ years of geospatial systems expertise, managing geospatial platforms serving tens of millions of requests daily and having ran one of the most popular geospatial news website during 10 years).

I believe I'm reacting mainly because I disagree with the "GIS>Distributed GIS>Internet GIS>WebGIS>WebMapping" hypothesis. While I don't doubt you can find literature suggesting such a hierarchy, I just don't see this matching the real world (industry, governments, etc).

* I like your proposal of a Mobile GIS article, makes sense to me and it's indeed a domain of its own.

* If I had to simplify the hierarchy you used so far, my initial take would be "GIS > WebGIS > Web Mapping".

* Many GIS systems have some/many characteristics of "Distributed GIS" already? Distributed GIS is just not a term used in practice anywhere (other than in literature, where you can find anything you want I guess)? Looking at the Distributed GIS article demonstrates it's currently of poor quality and indeed need significant rework given it barely touches what would be a 'distributed GIS' and how today it differs from most GIS systems anyway.

* "Internet GIS" is what triggered me, I have never heard this term before (again, I do not know everything, but I've been monitoring geospatial tech and news for over 20 years and this surprised me big time when you created it a few months ago) ; most GIS systems are Internet-connected anyway, I don't think it's worthy of its own Wikipedia article.

* I agree that 'Web mapping' is a subset of 'Web GIS' (I mentioned this in a previous comment already).

Thanks again GeogSage for improving these articles. I do hope that the end result will actually match what is seen and deployed in industry, governments and beyond. Regards Lordsatri (talk) 21:31, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Hello,

Thank you for the further feedback.

There is a significant amount of literature on this topic actually. My decision to start with an internet GIS page actually started while trying to write a Web GIS page and deep diving the literature. The Distributed GIS page does need a bit of work, and I have only minimally worked with that one. As the term is not used as often, I did not think it was necessary to prioritize it, but found it both shocking and appalling that Web GIS was not represented, while pages like CyberGIS did.

I can actually point to the exact one that lead to the hypothesis "GIS>Distributed GIS>Internet GIS>WebGIS>WebMapping," and unfortunately it is not something I can take credit for. I found it doing reading to make the Web GIS page. The ESRI press text book "Web GIS: Principles and Applications" by Pindu Fu and Jiulin Sun illustrates that hierarchy in Figure 1.10 of the book.

The book states:

“ Web GIS and Internet GIS are often used synonymously. Strictly speaking, however, the two are slightly different. The Internet supports many services, and the Web is only one of them. GIS that uses any of the Internet services, and not just the Web, can be considered Internet GIS - making Internet GIS theoretically broader then Web GIS. ”

The next major book on the topic from my library I referenced was "Internet GIS: Distributed Geographic Information Services for the internet and wireless networks" by Zhong-Ren Peng and Ming-Hsiang Tsuo, with a forward by Michael Frank Goodchild. While the book goes into quite a bit of detail on this exact topic of discussion, what caught my attention in terms of hierarchal structure here was this line from the preference:

“ During the writing of this book, we have been pondering its title. Several names have been considered, including "Distributed GIS," "Internet GIS and Mobile GIS," "Web GIS," "Network-Based GIServices," and so on. The numerous choices of an appropriate book title essentially reflect the wide range of technologies and applications Internet GIS covers. The name "Dis- tributed GIS" reflects the software architecture, that is, Internet GIS software and data are distributed via different computers located in different physical locations across the Internet. The name "Internet GIS and Mobile GIS” re- flects the two physical elements of the Internet networks, the wired Internet and the wireless mobile networks. It indicates that the user can access Internet GIS functions and data through the wired Internet and wireless devices such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and mobile phones. The name “Web GIS" focuses on the use of the most common application on the Internet, the World Wide Web, as the common user interface to the Internet GIS programs. The name "Network-Based GIServices" focuses on the concept of geographic information services. That is, the main function of Internet GIS is to provide a certain service to consumers, such as travel information services, land use information services, and environmental information services. The indecisiveness of the book title also reflects the current development state of Internet GIS. This is similar to the early development of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), which were represented in various names, such as spatial databases, land information systems, and automatic mapping facil- ities. Maybe the best title of this book should be determined in 10 years, when the GIS community will conclude a new vocabulary for Internet GIS. ”

This paragraph showed me that this debate is not new at all. However, in conjuncture with the ESRI press book, and others such as the book "Geospatial Semantic Web" which also differentiates between the two terms, I believe that at the theoretical level there is a clear separation.

The issue you bring up is not surprising, most users experience the internet through the web, and the two are used synonymously when they are really different concepts (it reminds me of the words "nation", "state", and worst of all "nation-state" being used as synonyms, or when I've had to explain that not all Digital mapping is GIS). Most GIS applications employing the internet do use the Web, so your personal experience with this is not at all surprising and certainly means that this page needs to work harder to explain the difference between everything.

The World Wide Wed, and the Internet, are not the same concept, however the World Wide Web is one of the most common applications of the internet. One example of an application that you can use without the World Wide Web on Internet Infrastructure is Email. The same is true with GIS.

For example, at one location I have worked, there is a local central server they store some of their geospatial data, virtual machines that we could use to process data, and of course local terminals. This is without the internet at all, but is a distributed GIS.

Now, during the pandemic, we used a VPN that would allow personal computers to access the servers to work from home via the internet. There is no use of the World Wide Web, but internet infrastructure is employed. This is Internet GIS, and it is extremely common.

When we used a dashboard to display information, that was obviously employing the Web.

Likewise, mobile GIS systems can employ the internet without using the World Wide Web. They can also employ the web, or they can exist on separate distributed networks. They are their own beast.

Sorry to get pedantic, however I have a few PhD advisors that have done research on exactly this topic, and I'm motivating myself to do these pages as a way to actually do reading for my dissertation literature review, so I'm all about the small things. The differences between the two concepts are established within literature, and while most people will work with Web GIS, Internet GIS is still something that is actively used in industry. As the internet is a higher category then the web, so is internet GIS over Web GIS.

As there are unique pages for ArcGIS, ArcMap, ArcGIS Pro, ArcInfo, ArcGIS Server, ArcView, ArcView 3.x, ect. in the category ESRI software, and pages for a variety of unique GIS software, I strongly believe internet GIS, as a high order concept that is demonstrably used in both theory and practice (all much less often then Web GIS), warrants it's own page. I do agree that the pages Distributed GIS, Internet GIS, Web GIS, and Web mapping, need a lot of work to move content between them, and generally bring up their overall quality. I believe pages like CyberGIS and Geospatial semantic web should be the first to look into merging with Web GIS. I have already moved Geospatial semantic web to Web GIS and started the discussion to move or delete that stub. GeogSage (talk) 06:13, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the additional feedback GeogSage!

In a nutshell, you're quoting references from 2003 and 2011, which are clearly not suitable and invalid when trying to describe today's state of geospatial domain. Terms such as 'Internet GIS' and 'Distributed GIS' are simply not used in any significant way in today's geospatial world. They may make sense for a Wikipedia article trying to describe the history of geospatial, but not for describing current state. Thus why they must be merged and use this an opportunity to improve the history and current state of geospatial on Wikipedia.

Hope this helps and take care GeogSage -- Lordsatri (talk) 15:00, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm quoting 2003, 2011, 2014, 2014 again, 2015.

I will add more recent literature, such as this 2019 article that states:

“ Web GIS should not be confused with Internet GIS; in as much as they may be used interchangeably in some instances, there is a slight difference between the two. The internet supports many services and Web is one of the services the internet supports. A system can be termed as internet GIS if it uses more internet services as opposed to being singularly web based. Web GIS is also in some instances replaceable with geospatial Web or the GeoWeb. ”

I also added this 2020 article, which states:

“ While it is common that terms such as Web GIS and GeoWeb as well as Internet GIS and geospatial Web are very closely related to each other, these terms are not synonymous. Web GIS and GeoWeb can be used interchangeably with the only consideration being that the GeoWeb involves the interaction between heterogeneous data forms (geospatial information as well as webpages, photographs and news articles) rather than strictly geospatial information. However, Internet GIS extends its support of services beyond those which work strictly on the web, and as such, is not technically synonymous with Web GIS ”

The terms are used today, just not amongst a large amount of end users that have taken to calling everything "Web." This is similar to how people refer to all computer cartography as "GIS". If they are to be merged, Web GIS and Internet GIS would need to be merged into categories of distributed GIS. Web GIS, while used extensively as a term, it is not an umbrella for all the other GIS technologies. ESRI is the dominant force in GIS, but ESRI is not GIS. Likewise, Web GIS is the most common way people use Internet GIS, but it is not the only way. As people are not generally being taught to distinguish between concepts, they will often incorrectly default to calling all distributed GIS over the Internet "Web GIS." I am not working to establish a new term, this is a decades old description of GIS infrastructure supported in textbooks and peer reviewed journals. The fact so many people confuse the two concepts, this gives us an opportunity to improve the history and current state of geospatial on Wikipedia by removing the ambiguity between these two terms.

While you have not used Internet GIS, or Distributed GIS, in your job, I have. Any remote work that forces us to use a VPN to access a company server without using the web is "Internet GIS". I work amongst people that use the correct terminology as well, so I have seen the words thrown around. I firmly oppose merging them into one article, and must point out that all literature points to these not only being different concepts, but for Web GIS being the topic to merge into Internet GIS, and Internet GIS into Distributed GIS. As you had already pointed out, you see the value in a "Mobile GIS" page, (the next major project I was hoping to work on). Mobile GIS is a subset of Internet and Distributed GIS, not necessarily Web GIS. GeogSage (talk) 18:12, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi GeogSage,

As I mentioned, I'm confident that "terms such as 'Internet GIS' and 'Distributed GIS' are simply not used in any significant way in today's geospatial world" and don't deserve Wikipedia articles at this point. While you can find them in published articles, that doesn't make them terms regularly used in the domain. You seem to disagree and, in all respect, I personally don't find your arguments convincing.

Also, I invite you to be careful when making claims such as "While you have not used Internet GIS, or Distributed GIS, in your job, I have.", not only this is not true, but you're claiming something you have no way to know and this overall reduces the confidence we can have in your other statements.

Thanks for contributing to Wikipedia GeogSage, my main hope is the geospatial articles will end up better than they currently are. Regards -- Lordsatri (talk) 18:59, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

Hello,

Internet GIS, and Distributed GIS, are terms that are used throughout the literature and in industry. They are well documented, and distinct from "Web GIS". If you have used distributed and internet based GIS that are different then the Web, and used the term "Web GIS" to describe this, then you misused the term. This is a common issue identified in the literature.

You're entire case against my point is built on anecdotal personal experience in the industry. Pardon the assumption that you had not worked with distinct Distributed or Internet GIS, but after I explained the distinction between them and demonstrated that they are words used in literature, you continued to push that you "don't see this matching the real world (industry, governments, etc)." I also have anecdotal experience with the geospatial industry, and I have used Distributed GIS, and Internet GIS, separately from Web GIS. If you have used distributed GIS systems that did not make use of the World Wide Web, you have as well, which demonstrates that there are applications outside Web GIS in industry. If you are calling these systems "Web GIS", when not using the Web, you like many others are misusing the term. All digital mapping is not GIS, and not all Internet GIS is Web GIS.

You seem to disagree and, in all respect, I personally don't find your arguments convincing. The only argument you have given me is that you have 20 years of experience, and in your 20 years of experience, you have not seen these terms used. You said the terms aren't used "other than in literature, where you can find anything you want I guess." You dismissed some of the most reputable current books on the topic as "clearly not suitable and invalid when trying to describe today's state of geospatial domain," and when I gave more current sources from peer reviewed journals, you stated "that doesn't make them terms regularly used in the domain." This is completely based on your personal, anecdotal experience. You have not provided any reason for dismissing my argument besides your 20 years of experience, while dismissing any sources that I provide and expecting me to accept your 20 years of experience as a source of authority, and dismissing my own experience as somehow less valid. I strongly disagree with merging this into Web GIS, as Web GIS is demonstrably a subcategory of Internet GIS. Just because the term is not the most common application does not mean it is the only application. Web GIS is huge, but that does not change the reality that it is a subset.

Wikipedia is not paper. " There is no reason why there shouldn't be a page for every single Simpsons character, and even a table listing every single episode, all neatly cross-linked and introduced by a shorter central page." I believe I have demonstrated Internet GIS is a unique term, that is categorically above Web GIS, if only in the peer reviewed literature and mainstream textbooks. As explaining all the unique facets of distributed GIS would make a very large page and get outside of the scope of explaining distributed GIS, breaking off separate pages to explore Internet GIS and Web GIS makes sense. Lumping these higher concepts into a single Web GIS page makes much less sense then lumping Web GIS into one of the pages that detail higher order topics. I'm not advocating for no Web GIS page, just stating that it has less reason to exist then Internet GIS, or Distributed GIS.

Thank you for your feedback. I hope we can continue to move content between, and refine, the geospatial articles, making the space better then it currently is. GeogSage (talk) 20:10, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

References