Locational Data and the Public Interest

This article presents a paper developed by the AAG Organizing Committee on Locational Information and the Public Interest through a summit held in Santa Barbara, California in June 2022. The summit resulted in goals and ideas for addressing the issues that arise from the present environment for geodata, whereby public, private, and third-sector entities can tap into publicly available locational information with relatively little regulation on its access or use. The Committee articulates four goals: (1) develop a research agenda extending across disciplines, (2) outline educational resources and strategies to guide ethical practice, (3) devise a pathway to increase public understanding, and (4) create a path to increased dialogue with non-traditional and indirect stakeholders in GIS, as well as increased collaboration between academic, public, and private sectors on the use of locational information. These goals were developed to highlight the host of ethical issues that may arise in the use of locational data, whether for research, commercial application, public administration, communities or any other purpose. Some of the ethical issues are specific to this type of data and will not arise over the use of data that are not locational. Others are common to data sampling, in general, regardless of whether location is collected or not. For this project, the focus is on those issues that arise only when the data are locational. GeoEthics is the term used by this Committee that incorporates geoprivacy among other concepts.