What Do Geoinformation Technology Users Really Need?
Guest post by Sadra Matmir1 | TU Dortmund University / Bochum University of Applied Sciences (Hochschule Bochum)
The Challenge: Making FAIR Research Infrastructure Useful in Practice
Open Science and FAIR principles have made significant progress in improving access to scientific data and computational research. However, an important challenge remains:
Making research outputs FAIR and providing them through research infrastructures does not necessarily mean that potential users will adopt the technologies that make them available.
Geoinformation Technologies (GITs) can provide powerful analytical capabilities, but their adoption in planning and environmental practice depends on much more than technical performance. Usability, perceived benefits, organizational requirements, and users’ technical skills all play important roles. This raises a central question:
How can we better understand the gap between GIT developers’ perspectives and the needs of planning practitioners?