World GIS Day: Looking back, looking ahead

By on 19 November, 2025
The cover of GIS User magazine, Issue 13, from 1995.

It’s World GIS Day today, and we’re celebrating along with all our GIS-enamoured readers!

GIS in all its flavours is an important tool that plays a vital role in locating, mapping and protecting our environment, our homes, our nations and our ways of life. It’s hard to imagine modern society functioning without it.

That’s why three decades ago, the founders of what is now Spatial Source spotted a need to create a publication that would communicate all the latest news and views regarding GIS, and at the same time connect the Australasian GIS community.

Yes, that’s right. This Spatial Source website began more than a decade ago as an offshoot of Position magazine (now ceased), which itself began life in the early 1990s as GIS User magazine under its founders, Jon Fairall and Wendy Champman (both now long retired). So yes, we’ve been involved in the GIS field for around 30 years.

That makes us older than many of the new generation of GIS practitioners, and older even than GIS Day itself!

We’re proud to carry on the tradition begun by Jon and Wendy, by connecting and informing the Australasian GIS community.

And so to celebrate World GIS Day, we’ve curated a handful of the best GIS-related news items and articles we’ve published over the past 12 months. You might have missed some of them, so here they are for your reading pleasure.

GIS, AI to the rescue for the Great Barrier Reef

Women in GIS awards and scholarships

GIS maps for NSW Aboriginal Land Councils

PreGISP program for emerging GIS professionals

GIS capacity building for PNG professionals

Geospatial training for Solomon Islands officials

NSW upgrades its Spatial Collaboration Portal

Geospatial Excellence Awards recipients announced

Vegetation map to benefit landowners, koalas

Melbourne area council receives 2025 Vicmap award

QGIS WCPS plugin for multidimensional datacubes

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