While geocomputation is not daily used in GIS environments and traditional GIS projects, it is the focus of a vibrant collaborative and research community in developing new geocomputational methods, tools and applications that are integrated into multiple application domains such as economics, sociology, geodemography, health, criminology, transportation, biology, remote sensing and cities. Open science, reproducible research practices, and strong collaboration make geocomputing an excellent vehicle for creatively exploring together the theory and practice of using geospatial data in a computational way to solve real-world problems.
The origin of geocomputation dates back to the first international conference on the topic in 1996 and was coined to describe the use of computer-intensive methods for knowledge discovery in physical and human geography. Geocomputation is closely related to other widely known areas of knowledge within the geospatial community, such as GIScience, Spatial Information Science, GeoInformatics, and Geographic Data Science. While these terms clearly overlap and boundaries are fuzzy, the term geocomputation puts the focus on creative and experimental applications and in developing relevant computationally geospatial tools for analysis and modelling within the overall context of a ‘scientific’ approach. Therefore, a common interpretation of geocomputation is to describe the application of computational models to geographic problems.