Geographic information is facts about specific places and their associations with other places on the Earth's surface. Although this information has traditionally been characterized as maps, often embedded in collections, books or atlases, it is common to find spatial characteristics encoded in text, tables, or images. A compiled table of names and addresses constitutes one form of geographic data while aerial photographs or satellite remote sensing from space forms another.

Geographic information science has recently emerged as the field where problems of data capture, encoding, storage, analysis, retrieval, synthesis, and dissemination of geographic information are studied. These problems have increased in significance as new computer based technologies such as geographic information systems (GIS), digital remote sensing (RS) and Global Positioning Systems (GPS) evolve. GI Science is the foundation upon which these GI technologies are built.

The rapid deployment and acceptance of these technologies in this decade, coupled with a continuing raising of awareness and interest in the value of the spatial perspective, ensure ubiquity of geographic information in the next century. GIScience examines the fundamental questions raised by the use of GI technology and is the science needed to keep the technology at the cutting edge.