Balancing soft and hard

摘要

In the discussions about the possibilities that technology provides us with in the geospatial field, one aspect is often forgotten: ethics. A 'soft' subject like ethics is not a common topic of conversation in an industry that is centred on hardware, speed and accuracy. But that could well change in the future. This issue of GIM International includes an interview with Yola Georgiadou, a professor of geoinformation for governance at the University of Twente's Faculty of Geo-lnformation Science and Earth Observation (ITC), The Netherlands (see page 16). Professor Georgiadou held a compelling keynote speech during the FIG Working Week in May of this year in Helsinki, during which she called upon the community to put the topic of 'geo-ethics' high on the agenda. Her biggest concern is that the citizens in the global south, often lacking secure land tenure, are victims of a datafying world in which their privacy is sacrificed in the process of 'fast-forwarding' the survey of large areas. This accelerated process might indeed give those citizens land tenure security, but the data acquired using unmanned aerial vehicles and also through crowdsourcing could be used wrongfully by companies or governments that do not necessarily have the best intentions. Professor Georgiadou calls for prudence in implementing technology of which the long-term consequences are unclear. She also believes it is important to go a step further than the principle of 'Do no harm' from the Code of Ethics; she wants to empower people to make autonomous decisions without undue interference. It can be difficult to strike the right balance between the upbeat mood that often goes hand in hand with the development of technologies and the new possibilities that they offer, and tempering that mood by pointing out that all those possibilities may also pose a risk.