Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, the fields of data science and geo-analytics have undergone significant changes, primarily due to the advancements of machine learning, artificial intelligence, natural language processing and the availability of massive pre-trained AI models, such as multimodal foundation models for joint reasoning from vision (audio, images, and videos) and language. Such models, tools, and techniques can help to solve tasks in different domains, and can be leveraged to advance GeoAI in the near future.

Additionally, the rapid development of new hardware, software, and cloud computing technologies have revolutionized the collection and analysis of geographic data to provide state-of-the-art solutions to current issues of grave importance. Examples of such technologies include the integration of global satellite navigation systems (GNSS) into mobile devices, mobile apps for the collection and sharing of volunteered geographic information, geospatial augmented reality, the Internet of Things (IoT), digital twins, immersive technologies, connected vehicles, real-time traffic monitoring, ridesharing systems, and artificial intelligence and deep learning for applications such as disaster monitoring or event prediction.

This Special Issue calls for research contributions presenting novel analysis techniques, applications, sensors, devices, and technologies for the collection of spatial or spatio-temporal data, and effective processing of such data (including big data) through the development or use of new algorithms, software packages, high-performance computing infrastructures or large-scale training models. This Special Issue also welcomes discussion and reviews of previously underexplored open spatial data sets that are of relevance to the geo-science community. We invite contributions from a wide array of academic disciplines including geodesy, geo-information science, computer science, cartography, geography, transportation, environmental science, and health.

Prof. Dr. Hartwig H. Hochmair
Dr. Gerhard Navratil
Prof. Dr. Haosheng Huang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Geographies is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• geospatial open source software packages
• open data
• innovative data collection methods and devices
• big data analysis
• analysis of sensor and network data
• AI-generated content (AIGC) and foundation models, such as LLMs, for geographic problems
• geospatial artificial intelligence (GeoAI)
• geovisual analytics and visual data mining
• geo-spatial technologies and today’s society

• Advanced Technologies in Spatial Data Collection and Analysis in Geographies (8 articles)