Another term that is worth mentioning is Public Participation
GIS (PPGIS), coined in the ‘90s to point out the new role of GIS as
tools to broaden public involvement in decision-making processes
by promoting the goals of non-governmental organizations and
grassroots groups (Sieber, 2006). In other words, GIS became a ‘‘social
process’’ (Sheppard, 1995) in the belief that its powerful technology
could form an essential part of an informally-enabled
democracy (Obermeyer, 1998).