GIS applications within the International Affairs domain are vast, and they include: the analysis and representation of flows and stops of people, resources, and capital across borders, humanitarian assistance, war, conflict, and surveillance, and analysis of border-crossing spatial phenomena such as natural disasters and climate change.
Due to the wide range of potential thematic data, GIS for International Affairs should be a balance of hands-on practical application skills and critical thinking about spatial concepts of scale, boundaries, borders, and flows. GIS scholars and practitioners in this domain should learn to think critically about how and where spatial data is created, the people and cultures impacted by spatial data-driven decisions, and the equity of who is involved in such decisions. Students should learn how spatial data is created, how major datasets in the field are built, and how to design datasets during fieldwork for robust spatial analysis. Through all of this, critical thinking around which people and places are counted and represented should be maintained.
GIS in International Affairs must always contend with the colonial history of cartography, seeking now to understand how modern-day spatial technologies are always constituted by and embedded in constructions of power.
Humanitarian mapping has become a growing field since its initial success during the Haiti Earthquake in 2010. The emergence of Web 2.0 and the geospatial Web allowed nonprofessionals to contribute to platforms like OpenStreetMap to assist in disaster relief and present first responders, humanitarian aid, and governments with the data needed to make informed decisions. Preemptive efforts have also been made to map the missing places of the world to increase the visibility of communities that have little to no base map available and are overlooked by governments and humanitarian aid. This has stemmed from ethical questions regarding the underrepresentation of the global South due to most humanitarian aid contributors residing in the global North on platforms such as OpenStreetMap. The recent integration of big data and artificial intelligence has shown great potential in the ability to process larger amounts of data at a faster rate. However, there are still ethical concerns and implications regarding the algorithms and modeling. This chapter covers the origins of humanitarian mapping, its progression over the last decade, the organizations at the forefront of innovation in the field, and the ethical implications that must be considered when shaping the directives of humanitarian mapping.