GIS-Geospatial-Location-Spatial-Geomatics, how about GEOSCIENTIST... you say tomato
Nathan Heazlewood
Principal Consultant- GIS Business Consulting at Eagle Technology
There is a perennial debate about what people in my profession should call ourselves. It is often suggested that 'GIS' or 'Geographic Information Systems' is not well known and so various alternatives have been suggested. For fun I decided to investigate which option is more prevalent. I am increasingly wondering whether an uncommon alternative 'geoscientist' might be the best?
I have an extensive network of connections on LinkedIn (over 13,000 connections) and the majority of those connections work in the same industry as I do. Although this is not a particularly scientific method I thought it would be interesting to analyse the 'job-titles' of these connections searching for these potential job names. What follows are the results of that study, both using my world-wide connections and also in Aotearoa (New Zealand) as shown in the following charts...
Some thoughts about this...
Keyword Search: GIS
Out of my worldwide connections:
2,100 have 'GIS' as part of their job title
359 in Aotearoa (New Zealand)
Keyword Search: Geographic*
365 Worldwide
40 Aotearoa
*i.e. results include "Geographic Information System Analyst" but also "Geographic Analyst". May also be double counted in overall results if people have "Geographic Information System (GIS) Analyst" in their job title.
Keyword Search: Geospatial
444 Worldwide
162 Aotearoa
Not including 'spatial'
领英推荐
Keyword Search: Spatial
164 Worldwide
74 Aotearoa
Keyword Search: Location
28 Worldwide
9 Aoteaora
Note: this keyword is prone to positions that are not all necessarily related to the use of GIS/Geospatial software such as "Location Planner"
Keyword Search: Geomatic
10 Worldwide
1 Aoteaora
Keyword Search: Geoscientist
4 Worldwide
1 Aotearoa
0 'geo-scientist'
Keyword Search: Cartographer
66 Worldwide
11 Aotearoa
Thoughts are my own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of my employer or any other party.
Founder & CEO @Mapidea
3 年Excellent analysis Nathan Heazlewood, thanks for sharing. It's a little strange to quote myself, but it's just to show that we share a similar perspective on this: "We, as an industry, dedicate a significant amount of time talking about what we could name our core activity: Geographic Information Systems, Location Intelligence, Location Analytics, Geospatial, (…), the list goes on and on. I believe that all these are better represented with a stronger name: Geography." https://www.geobusinessshow.com/a-new-era-for-geography/
Director, historical research & GIS
3 年How about square-peg, nerdy, money-burning geo-geek.
#AllDataIsSpatial #KiwiInColorado | Sharing (Mainly) GIS, Spatial and Geology 'Stuff' | Personal Account, Not Specifically Related To My Employer
3 年I consider myself a professional who uses GIS / spatial analysis / etc So although GIS & associated is the vast majority of my role, it is not the role - it is hydrology currently (and has been geology, engineering geology, environment science, O&G, etc, etc) That is, I think title should primarily reflect what I am working on, not how - e.g. spatial data scientist P.S. a geoscientist is someone who works in some aspect of earth sciences, professionals have been called that for decades before GIS, etc was even a thing
Consultant | Data Science | Applied Physics
3 年I've long been struggling with this one, since I'm trying to scratch a living between lots of different things. Lately I gave up trying to identify myself by my current employment, and just went with "consultant". I tried "geospatial data scientist". But that tended to get people over-excited about AI & ML, since those are in fashion. But as any data scientist will point out 90% of a ML project is in data preparation/cleaning/visualisation. And since we're talking about spatial data, that activity seems nicely described by "geospatial analysis". I reckon "geoscientist" sounds a bit too much like geology, it might offend with more of a geography/human infrastructure angle. Also anything *.scientist feels like a good recipe for under-employment in New Zealand.
Thought Provoker & Passionate About Location, Place & Geography
3 年You are right Nathan Heazlewood. This is a perennial debate. However in my experience the only people who seem to be concerned about this issue is us. For me, it matters more that we can clearly articulate what it is we can do for someone, rather than being concerned about what we should call ourselves. That said, you have gathered some good data from the study you carried out. Personally, I need more time to reflect on GeoScientist as there is something that isn’t sitting right with me.