From PGIS to Participatory Deep Mapping and Spatial Storytelling: An Evolving Trajectory in Community Knowledge Representation in GIS

Abstract

Participatory GIS (PGIS) was borne out of the cauldron of the GIS and Society debates and the social theoretic critique of GIS. The form and practice of PGIS continues to reflect its origins. At its core PGIS remains focused on integrating local knowledge that is multivalent, equivocal, and often conflictual within a reductionist GIS technology and extensive Spatial Data Infrastructure. Recent conceptual developments in deep mapping and spatial storytelling have the potential to advance the representation of community knowledge through participatory deep mapping. Deep mapping explicitly recognizes that social life is contingent, implicated, and unpredictable. In representing a critical engagement between Geographic Information Science (GISc) and community knowledge and representation, deep mapping potentially challenges the misalignment in representing community knowledge in GIS and in bending geospatial technologies to the needs of communities.

Keywords:

• PGIS
• participatory deep mapping
• knowledge representation
• deep mapping
• boundary objects
• umwelt
• non-representational theory
• spatial stories

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Trevor M. Harris

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Dr Harris is Eberly Distinguished Professor of Geography at West Virginia University. He obtained his doctorate from the University of Hull, England, and specializes in Geographic Information Science. Dr Harris has published over 60 peer-reviewed articles in leading journals and books and made over 180 research presentations at national and international conferences. Dr Harris’s research interests include GISc; Geovisualization; Virtual Reality and Immersive GIS; Deep Mapping; the Geospatial Semantic Web; spatial humanities; critical GIS and Participatory GIS. Dr Harris has undertaken numerous externally funded research that exceeds $18 million in awards over the past two decades with funding from the National Science Foundation (three awards); National Imagery and Mapping Agency; US Environmental Protection Agency; American Electric Power; Federal Geographic Data Committee, US Department of Agriculture, US Geological Survey and several others. These projects have involved the extensive development of regional GIS databases. Dr Harris co-directs the State GIS Technical Center, the GeoVirtual Laboratory, and the Virtual Center for Spatial Humanities.