The Geographic Information Science and Technology Body of Knowledge (GISTBoK) is a reference document produced by the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) as the first product of its Model Curricula project, started in 1997 by Duane Marble and a select task force, and completed in 2006 by David DiBiase and a team of editors.
However, it is missing some topics, such as geocoding, and has significant granularity issues: large, mature subfields such as surveying, GPS, and remote sensing are covered in small sections, while the relatively immature field of geocomputation is granted an entire knowledge area.
There is also opposition to the document as a whole, especially from the critical GIS community, on the grounds that the discipline is too diverse and too subjective to be so easily encapsulated.
One counterargument to this opposition is that the body of knowledge approach enables a flexible form of regulation that accommodates a diversity of skills and viewpoints.
The first edition was co-sponsored by UCGIS and several major vendors (ESRI, Intergraph, and GE Smallworld), and was published in August 2006 by the Association of American Geographers.