I received notification of this via another listserv and it was presented 
as an issue about the future of Geographic Information Science. It is 
announced by the NRC as much broader than this. I append below the reply I 
made but with a deadline of 30 April the consultation is suspiciously brief 
- ie who has been pre-informed, briefs at the ready. Just in case there is 
space for Geography as more than refining how we do map-overlays it might 
be worth sending responses

Gerry Kearns, Cambridge University, UK

http://dels.nas.edu/besr/SD_questionnaire.cgi

Committee on Strategic Directions for the Geographical Sciences in the Next 
Decade: Seeking Input on Research Questions At the request of the National 
Science Foundation, the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Geographic 
Society, and the Association of American Geographers, the National Research 
Council has assembled a committee of experts to formulate a short list of 
high priority research questions in the geographical sciences that are 
relevant to societal needs. Rather than attempting to cover the breadth of 
the field, the goal is to identify a limited number of questions that can 
be answered by drawing upon the strengths of the geographical sciences. The 
questions should be tractable (i.e. there must be a strong likelihood of 
achieving significant and demonstrable progress in the next five to ten 
years), and will be written in a clear and compelling way that can be 
understood by policymakers, scientists in other disciplines, agency 
managers, and the general public.

To help it address its charge, the committee is seeking input on the 
following set of questions:

1. What should geographers be studying over the next ten years? Aspects of 
this question to consider include:

What makes geographers particularly suited to answer these questions? What 
are the consequences of not bringing geographical perspectives to bear on 
these questions? What kinds of data or infrastructure are most critical to 
the advancement of geographical research? What new sets of skills and 
training will geographers need to tackle forthcoming research areas?

2. What are the greatest challenges facing the geographical sciences today?

-----

My response:

Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) proposed that Geography is the study of 
the earth as our home. There are many ways that humanity makes itself at 
home on earth: transforming physical and biological first nature into 
humanised second nature, as Hegel put it; creating meaningful places where 
people can establish ontological security ('confidence, continuity and 
trust in the world' as one recent study of home ownership has it); building 
relations between communities in different places for the exchange of ideas 
and goods (what geographers call relations in space). Making ourselves at 
home in the world involves, then, nature, place and space. There is no 
discipline but Geography that explores these connections so explicitly 
although the very best environmental history and social anthropology does 
so on occasion.

The questions geographers must address, then, relate to nature, place and 
space and are at the heart of many ecological, social and economic 
dilemmas. The physical and biological supports of human life are being 
threatened by the toxicity of unregulated industry and agriculture. The 
sense of community that is at the heart of ontological security is being 
undermined by the destruction of place through urban neglect or misguided 
redevelopment producing what Fullilove calls 'rootshock'. Social and 
economic relations in space, what Corbridge calls the ties between distant 
strangers, have never been more dangerous with deepening poverty across 90% 
of Africa, AIDS having produced the most significant interruption to rising 
human longevity in recorded history, and the mutual violence of the War on 
Terror shredding civil liberties in favour of the securitisation of the 
society.

Five questions,then: 1. What is best practice with regard to the regulation 
of the toxicity of agriculture and industry 2. What is best practice with 
regard to community building in cities and villages 3. What is best 
practice in ordering economic relations between rich and poor countries 4. 
What is best practice in preventing the transmission of HIV, and in caring 
for those infected 5. What is best practice in respecting human rights, 
removing the support for terrorism, and detecting genuine threats

It is time to start thinking about best practice rather than trying to 
explain the wide range of less then best practice. We should concern 
ourselves more with knowing how to go forward than with explaining why in 
so many places we refuse even to think of this. This needs a rich exchange 
of ideas between geographers in different countries and working on 
different places. It requires the revival of Area Studies configured around 
key questions, as above, so that it can inform Global and Comparative 
Studies. To do this work, geographers will need training in the comparative 
method, will need to understand how to make comparisons across different 
cultures and societies. This means they will have to know a lot about many 
different parts of the world. Our current obsession with exploring the 
tools for overlaying maps is all too often a distraction through 
abstraction.