PREFACE GI Zeitgeist 2012 is a conference for young researchers in the field of Geographic Information Science (GIScience). Its goal was to gather junior researchers from all over the world and give them the opportunity to exchange ideas with colleagues and get feedback on their work. Submissions from a broad disciplinary spectrum were invited as the topics announced in the Call for Papers reflect. The Call for Papers invited young re- searchers to submit short papers (presenting visionary ideas and work in progress) and/or full papers (presenting substantial results) on well established topics of GIScience such as : ⋆ Analysis of spatial and spatio-temporal data ⋆ Development of open standards and services ⋆ Location-based services and ubiquitous computing ⋆ Spatial cognition and spatial reasoning ⋆ Wayfinding and navigation A total of 20 short papers were submitted out of which 14 were accepted. 9 full papers were submitted out of which 5 were accepted. The submission and review processes were managed using the free conference management system Ea- sychair. These proceedings are a collection of 18 papers reporting research results related to the various topics aforementioned. GI Zeitgeist 2012 was organized by students of the International Research Training Group on Semantic Integration of Geospatial Information (IRTG-SIGI). IRTG-SIGI is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG GRK 1498). Financial support from the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster for the organisation of the conference is gratefully acknowledged. We would also like to thank PROGIS Software GmbH and Wichmann Verlag for sponsoring the event. We are grateful to the members of the scientific committee for their critical com- ments on the submissions. Finally, we thank Werner Kuhn, Christoph Brox and our colleagues in Muenster and Bremen for their advice at one stage or another of the organization. The editors