IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - September 2017 - 10

TABLE 1. TERMINOLOGY APPEARANCE IN SCHOLARLY RESEARCH
AS OF 12 DECEMBER 2016 (DATA SOURCE: SCOPUS).
TERM

PRIOR
TO 2013

2013

2014

2015

2016

UAV

13,400

2,302

2,373

3,255

2,977

UAS

3,143

487

516

543

RPAS

166

Drone

3,920

281

433

641

736

the OED also includes an example from 1972, where the
term was defined simply as "the mathematics of Earth."
This short definition already depicted something society
seemingly continues to ignore: the direct connection between spatial thinking, geosciences, and geotechnologies
with mathematics.
THE SPATIAL UNIVERSITY
The concept of the spatial university proposed by Esri [8]
aims to exploit the opportunities the use of geospatial technologies can bring to HE institutions (HEIs), especially if
the adoption of these technologies is pushed to its maximum by experts involved in HE. Specifically, the spatial
university has the following four aims:
1) It promotes the inclusion of spatial thinking across the curriculum, including social sciences, arts, and humanities as
well as engineering and sciences. This has been found to
improve student's abilities and employability [9].
2) As a consequence of applying spatial thinking across the
curriculum and in connection with market demands, a
spatial university promotes the development of a workforce that is geospatially enabled [2]-[4]. That is, this
workforce has received proper education in a vast array
of fundaments, methods and techniques, and tools to
apply spatial thinking in a variety of contexts, especially
considering the territory as the common element where
events take place.
3) Today, research is central to HE's performance. Interdisciplinary research that employs the geospatial perspective produces better informed results and communicates
them in a more effective manner [10], [11]. Hence, a spatial university must also try to develop interdisciplinary
research that is geospatially driven.
4) HEIs are complex and often have a wide array of resources and facilities to be managed. Using GIS to develop
smart campuses and support their management is the
final cornerstone of an efficient and green university.
Implementing geospatial thinking across the entire university system has been proven to provide rewarding outcomes in terms of budgets, efficient space usage, and more
environmentally sound campuses [12]. Although geospatial technology companies would be one of the main beneficiaries, several studies considering various aspects of the
spatial university have provided positive insight concerning such a university's potential [9], [13]-[15].
10

UAVs, UASs, RPASs,
AND DRONES
A variety of technologies fall under
SUBTOTAL
the rubric of UAVs (UASs, RPASs,
(2013-2016)
TOTAL
or just drones, to name a few),
10,907
24,307
and [16] provides a comprehensive
2,062
5,205
review of the history of these. Be233
399
cause there is little agreement on
2,091
6,011
their use, different social agents favor different terms.
The media as well as the broader public use the term drone. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the U.S. Department of Defense, and
the Civil Aviation Authority in the United Kingdom use the
term UAS. The International Civil Aviation Organization
together with the European Commission (EC) prefers the
term RPAS [16].
A generalized description of these systems that disregarded their specificities was used by the EC, which described civil drones as follows: "Unmanned or remotely
piloted aviation systems (UAS, RPAS or simply 'drones') are
technological systems designed for aerial operations without an on-board pilot" [17, p. 4].
To discern their popularity among researchers, a bibliometric study was performed employing the scientific
database Scopus. (The Institute for Scientific Information's
Web of Knowledge was considered less appropriate for this
task because it indexes a significantly smaller number of
scientific journals, while Scopus is more inclusive, offering a wider perspective on this trend.) Four terms were
searched in article titles, abstracts, and keywords: UAV,
UAS, RPAS, and drone. The results (Table 1) show a clear
preference for the term UAV in scholarly research, with
a large number of appearances in total as well as year by
year for the last five years (as of 12 December 2016). (One
could speculate that the lower number of appearances of
the term RPAS could be linked to the fact that it is relatively new; while its adoption by the EC should serve as a
significant push, this has seemingly had little to no effect
on its use in scholarly research.) Consequently, the term
UAV is used here.
UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLES AND SOCIETY
As suggested earlier, the use of UAVs represents a rising
trend that is expected to continue [16], [18]. In geomatics, UAVs have become a low-cost platform for RS data
acquisition [19], often integrated and analyzed with
GIS. Their low cost, accessibility in terms of aerial imaging, and abilities in creating and interacting with a
virtual three-dimensional world [20] have attracted a
variety of users toward UAVs-users who may not be
familiar with RS. In addition to the geomatics applications, many others are being implemented. Perhaps the
most visible is that of delivery. It is not only technology
giants like Amazon or Google that are developing delivery UAVs but also global carriers like DHL and national
IEEE GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING MAGAZINE

SEPTEMBER 2017

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