Variety and trends on geographic information systems research: A literature study

Students' enthusiasm towards Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is high. It is proven by the emergence of GIS-based thesis in the last five years. However the research topic on this field seems to be stagnant. Students tend to apply similar topic with different objects and location only. Therefore we need a study allowing us to provide information about various GIS research and the existing trend in the last ten years. Data is collected by using search engine on scientific papers namely IEEE, ProQuest, and Science Direct by using Boolean operators such as OR and AND. Data obtained is mapped in the chart to see the existing trend. The results showed that the dominant GIS-related research is about network, 34.63% and 20.98% based on IEEE explore and ProQuest respectively. Research tends to increase by IEEE search is associated with the function of measurement, buffer, and network. While the upward trend of the research from ProQuest search are associated with query, digital image processing, geocoding, and Network function. Science Direct search showed that the dominant research is related to measurements (21.70%) while analysis functions that tend to increase are measurement, digital terrain models, editing of spatial elements, layer analysis, geocoding, and network.