Integrated land evaluation: Story of a track not taken

Many cite CGIS and Tomlinson as the origin of GIS, yet it is instructive to examine the community of practice into which this idea was presented in 1967. A group of practitioners in CSIRO Lands Directorate had evolved a scheme for integrated land evaluation. This paper considers the track not taken, and the delicate connection between technology and conceptual frameworks. This story has particular relevance to spatial data integration. The prior technology dealt with a deeper kind of integration than we manage with current approaches.