engleski

The Impact of the Global Transformations on the Geospatial Industry: Socio-Political Challenges

This scientific monograph provides a reader with theoretical and methodological foundations that represent prerquisities for doing social research of the geospatial industry sector. The book analyses the transformative impacts of the digital revolution that have caused all pervasive global environmental changes, the military- technological revolution (MTR) of the late 20th century and the multinational corporations' (MNCs) restructuring. All these processes have triggered the geospatial revolution of the beginning of the 3rd millenium with enormous social and political consequences all around the world. Hence, in the 21st century the spatial data industry is to be a rapidly developing sector which enables their professionals to enter the prosperous career paths. A fact that the geospatial industry keeps spreading constantly through its convergence with other industrial sectors represents a big opportunity for the profession but also brings numerous challenges concerning the civil society. As Andrew Barry (2007) from ULC Department of Geography puts it: „But perhaps more than ever before technology is expected to carry the promise, or the threat, of radical social and political change in the future“ (A. Berry, 2007: 297). Despite its huge social, economic and political implications, the geospatial industry is an under researched sector because high confidentiality hinders data collection about its stakeholders. United Nations Committee of Experts on Global geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM) in the document titled „Future trends in geospatial information management: the five to ten year vision“ that was produced by James Norris (Ordnance Survey, 2015) identifies the space as a key resource of the third millennium, and emphasizes an importance of understanding the sociala architecture and social behaviors connected to its design in order to implement technical projects successfully: „As well as being constructed using technical architecture, spatial data infrastructures need to be underpinned by a 'social infrastructure', that is conscious design of an environment that encourages a desired range of social behaviours leading towards a desired aim or set of aims. There is a recognition that analysis of both within and across organizational boundaries provides a new way of understanding and developing collaborations beyond typical formal, hierarchical, organizational structures in which work is usually organized. Social architecture provides a menas of understanding and implementation of information infrastructures“ (Norris et al, 2005: 39). The IDC's Report on Main ICT trends 2020 produced for the European Commission highlights that the technology development in the next ten years will be characterized by „the confluence of social, mobile and cloud technologies, the rise of Big data and new kinds of analytics needed to create value in this environment“ (IDC, 2014: 6). The report foresees that „Social technologies are becoming a core part of the next growth platform for IT“ (IDC, 2014: 45). Since a number of intelligent devices situated at the network keeps increasing rapidly, and out numbers a number of human users, a way in which people perceive their interactions with the non-humans changes, too. The purpose of the book is to make engineers, spatial and non-spatial professionals and students of technical courses or technical universities more sensitive about social and political implications of technical projects, especially the ones that belong to the field of the spatial data industry. Specifically, the book aims to introduce a social analysis into a highly technical field of the geospatial industry sector to get readers acquinted with the most influential theoretical concepts and the latest empirical evidences from various parts of the world that will enable them to understand rapid and constant change of business environment, and the clients' demands on the highly competitive markets. The target audience of this book are both spatial and non-spatial professionals as well as students of the technical universities from the emerging markets and the transition countries. Contents: Acknowledgements ; Preface ; Introduction ; Part One: Building an Intelligent Environment: Geospatial Community and Sustainable Development ; Part Two: Space, Change and Transformations: the Humans' and the Non-Humans' Interactions ; Part Three: Corporate Governance and the Geospatial Industry ; Part Four: The Geospatial Revolution ; Subject Index ; Author Index.

Global Transformations ; Global Environment ; Geospatial Industry ; Theories of Corporate Governance ; Stakeholders ; Sustainable Development

Knjiga će imati strane recenzente. Ova knjiga je rezultat aktivnosti u okviru znanstveno-nastavnog projekta „Profil dionika u geodeziji“ autorice i voditeljice projekta prof. dr. sc. Branka Mraović, a vezano za Programske ugovore Sveučilišta u Zagrebu sa Ministarstvom znanosti, obrazovanja i športa RH za ak. god. 2012./2013. i 2013./2014.