Societal Impacts and Ethics of GIS

This article provides an introduction and overview of the societal impacts and ethics of GIS. The article is divided into three main parts. First, we provide a brief history of how ethics have been implemented and understood following World War II, and more specifically in GIS and digital mapping. We then examine ethics in two case studies: predictive policing and GeoDesign. These two sections are structured around a common set of questions: How does ethics manifest in questions of data acquisition , data management, and data dissemination ? In the conclusion, we consider more recent ethical considerations which have taken a turn toward issues of justice and power, or what might be thought of as a more explicitly political/politicized approach.