An Introduction to the Special Issue on LBS and GIS

Abstract

Currently geospatial information (GI) technology can be characterized by two important developments: ( I ) it goes beyond the application stages towards more conceptual and theoretical developments, dealing with more profound issues around geographic information science. and (2) it continues to be application or service oriented i n serving our modern society, hence location-based services (LBS) arisen out of convergence of GI technology, the Internet, mobile wireless telecommunication and positioning technologies. The convergence of GIS and various technologies has been existing since the widespread availability of the Inteinct, and it is reflected in a series of GIS tErmS such as Internet GIs, web GIS, wireless GIS, and mobile GIs. Nowadays it appears that all the “GIS” come to a pot with a more fashionable term LBS.