Earth observation big data analytics in operating mode for GIScience applications – The (GE) OBIA acronym (s) reconsidered

Pre-dated by spatial context-sensitive image classification algorithms, developed by the remote sensing (RS) and computer vision (CV) communities as viable alternatives to traditional pixel-based image analysis since the late ‘70s, in year 2006 the geographic information science (GIScience) community introduced terms “object-based image analysis” (OBIA) and geographic OBIA (GEOBIA) to “bridge the gap between geographic information systems (GIS) and RS”. Following year 2000, two driving forces working in closed-loop fostered the emergence of a GEOBIA subfield within the GIScience community. On the one hand, a portion of the GIScience community adopted de-facto the eCognition commercial image processing software toolbox, brought to market in year 2000, as a CV system reference standard. On the other hand, the GIScience community lacked communication with the multidisciplinary realm of cognitive science, encompassing philosophy, psychophysics, neouroscience, machine learning-from-data, artificial general intelligence (AGI), which includes CV as superset of Earth observation (EO) image understanding, and GIScience. One fundamental proof of the self-referential syndrome affecting the GEOBIA community is that, to date, the mainstream RS and CV solutions ignore standard GEOBIA algorithms and vice versa. Unequivocal true-facts about biological vision and primate visual perception recommend reconsidering the relevance of acronyms OBIA/GEOBIA. Acknowledged that “science progresses one funeral at a time”, to successfully cope with EO big data analytics characterized by the five Vs of volume, velocity, variety, veracity and value, the GEOBIA community is wished to gather sufficient intellectual fortitude to change its own name into a more exact one, such as EO for GIScience (EO4GEO), meaning EO big data analytics in operating mode for GIScience applications, constrained by 2D (retinotopic, spatial topology-preserving) image analysis in cognitive science (2D-EO4GEO).