A scoping review on the use, processing and fusion of geographic data in virtual assistants

Virtual assistants are a growing area of research in academia and industry, with an impact on people’s daily lives. Many disciplines in science are moving towards the incorporation of intelligent virtual assistants in multiple scenarios and application domains, and GIScience is not external to this trend since they may be connected to intelligent spatial decision support systems. This article presents a scoping review to indicate relevant literature pertinent to intelligent virtual assistants and their usage of geospatial information and technologies. In particular, the study was designed to find critical aspects of GIScience and how to contribute to the development of virtual assistants. Moreover, this work explores the most prominent research lines as well as relevant technologies/platforms to determine the main challenges and current limitations regarding the use and implementation of virtual assistants in geospatial-related fields. As a result, this review shows the current state of geospatial applications regarding the use of intelligent virtual assistants, as well as revealing gaps and limitations in the use of spatial methods, standards, and resources available in spatial data infrastructures to develop intelligent decision systems based on virtual assistants for a wide array of application domains.