Places in Information Science

questions and the data available to answer such questions is unclear and hinders progress in place-based information systems. This is particularly true in novel application areas such as the Digital Humanities or speech-based human-computer interaction, but also for location-based services. Although this shortcoming has been observed before, we approach the challenges of relating places to information system representations with a fresh view, based on a set of core concepts of spatial information. These concepts have been proposed in information science with the intent of serving human-machine spatial question asking and answering. Clarifying the relationship of the notion of place to these concepts is a significant step toward geographically intelligent systems. The main result of the article is a demonstration that the notion of place fits existing concepts of spatial information, when these are adequately exploited and combined.