A five-year milestone: reflections on advances and limitations in GeoAI research

Figures & data

Figure 1. A word cloud visualization based on the titles of papers published or accepted by IJGIS between January 2022 and March 2023.

Figure 2. Advances and limitations in GeoAI research in the view of Orhun Aydin: (a) advances; (b) limitations.

Figure 3. An example of the difficulty in interpreting the results of human settlement mapping: (a) pink and blue colors representing two different types of neighborhoods where boundaries seem to follow building morphology; (b) a confusing separation boundary output by the trained model with no apparent change in settlement structures, which makes the result challenging to explain.

Table 1. The four questions and their answers summarized as itemized points.

Question	Answers
Which areas do you think GeoAI research has excelled in over the past five years?	Development of spatially explicit GeoAI models Production of large-scale geographic datasets Use of GeoAI models to address a wide range of societal challenges
Which areas do you think GeoAI research has fallen short or could benefit from further improvement?	A lack of engagement with theories in geography Limited explainability of current GeoAI models Limited generalizability to new geographic areas and data sources
What advancements in GeoAI research would you like to see in the next five years?	Improving over the limitations identified above Better quantifying, visualizing, and communicating uncertainties Exploring and leveraging emerging AI methods
Any other thoughts you would like to share?	The ‘GeoAI phenomenon’ and why it happened The intricate relations among data, predictions, causes, effects, and the real world Transparence and open science in GeoAI research