The question from Jeremy Morley ‘An often quoted figure estimates that 80% of information contains some geographic reference.’ – anyone got the source reference for this?! led me to search for an answer. This assertion is indeed often quoted in governmental documents, academic papers and trade magazines.
So, what is the source? While V1 magazine suggests that it links to a magazine article from 1992, a search on Google Scholar shows that William Huxhold’s 1991 book ‘An Introduction to Urban Geographic Information Systems’ is mentioned when this factoid is used. For example, here, here or here, although the last one includes an independent assessment that uses an 80% value.
Let’s look at what was said in the original book, on pages 22-23:
‘A 1986 brochure (Municipality of Burnaby) published by the Municipality of Burnaby, British Columbia, reported the results of a needs analysis for an urban geographic information system (GIS) in that municipality: eighty to ninety percent of all the information collected and used was related to geography.’
On page 236, the following statement can be found:
‘Chapter 1 reported that 80-90 percent of all the information used by local government is related to geography.’
And the latter is probably the source of the famous statement. So for about 20 years, the GIS community has been using a powerful assertion which is actually based on a brochure and not on a rigorous analysis of evidence. Maybe, as John Fagan suggested, it wasn’t a good idea to look too closely!