Abstract
The term megaengineering is usually applied to large, tangible projects that are concentrated in space. Information technology is today largely dispersed, and in many cases highly miniaturized, and thus fails to fit the concept of megaengineering despite the massive investments that have been made in recent years. The geospatial technologies form a subset of information technologies, and include the Global Positioning System, satellite-based remote sensing, and geographic information systems (GIS). Although similarly dispersed and often intangible, the total investment in these technologies certainly ranks with the largest megaprojects. In the future geospatial technologies are likely to evolve into sources of real-time knowledge about three-dimensional environments, and are likely to engage individual citizens both as consumers and as producers of geospatial data. Together they play a global role analogous to that of the nervous system’s relationship to the human body.
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Goodchild, M.F. (2011). Information Technology as Megaengineering: The Impact of GIS. In: Brunn, S. (eds) Engineering Earth. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9920-4_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9920-4_3
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