A Research Agenda for Geographic Information Science

395 Pages·2004·5.001 MB·English

by  Robert B. McMaster, E. Lynn Usery

UNIVERSITY CONSORTIUM FOR
GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SCIENCE
A R A
ESEARCH GENDA FOR
G I S
EOGRAPHIC NFORMATION CIENCE
© 2005 by CRC Press LLC
UNIVERSITY CONSORTIUM FOR
GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SCIENCE
A R A
ESEARCH GENDA FOR
G I S
EOGRAPHIC NFORMATION CIENCE
EDITED BY
ROBERT B. MCMASTER
E. LYNN USERY
CRC PR ESS
Boca Raton London New York Washington, D.C.
© 2005 by CRC Press LLC
2728 disclaimer.fm Page 1 Thursday, July 22, 2004 9:31 AM
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A research agenda for geographic information science / edited by Robert B. McMaster, E.
Lynn Usery.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8493-2728-8 (alk. paper)
1. Geographic information systems. 2. Geographic information systems—Research. I.
McMaster, Robert Brainerd. II. Usery, E. Lynn (Eddy Lynn), 1951-
G70.212.R47 2004
910'.285--dc22 2004051870
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Acknowledgements

A collective book project that spans over many years is inevitably indebted to many
individuals. We would first like to thank the many authors who contributed to this
project, and waited patiently for the long-awaited completion. The quality of this pro-
ject reflects the very talented work of many of our discipline’s leading researchers,
and we appreciate their initial investment in, and support of, this volume. We also
thank the UCGIS board for their continued support of this project throughout its
inception, several twists and turns in scope and publishers, and final publication.
In particular, the presidents of UCGIS during this period, including Greg Elmes,
Harlan Onsrud, Art Getis, and Carolyn Merry, all supported the project in various
ways. The project would not have seen the light of day without the talented work of
Ms. Caryl J. Wipperfurth, cartographer for the U.S. Geological Survey, who copy-
edited and formatted the entire volume. Her careful reading improved the final
version considerably. Additional thanks go to Michael Goodchild, who provided
the Preface to the volume and suggested the final title, and David Mark, who con-
tributed the concluding chapter. We also wish to thank the editors at CRC Press
who helped in myriad ways, including Randi Cohen and Jessica Vakili.
In the end, it is the membership of UCGIS—the participants at the many
assemblies—who enabled the completion of this book through the meticulous,
thoughtful, and time-consuming process of generating and refining a research agenda
for the UCGIS. For many of us, these research agenda events have reshaped our
understanding of GIS. The project has taken countless hours of work at the
assemblies, and after, and years of coordination and writing. We hope this effort,
A Research Agenda for Geographic Information Science, will benefit our entire
organization, and in particular our future students who wish to enter into this
remarkable discipline of geographic information science.
© 2005 by CRC Press LLC
Preface

Michael F. Goodchild, University of California, Santa Barbara

Inventiveness has always been a distinguishing characteristic of the human race,
but over the past few centuries our rate of new inventions has been accelerating
exponentially. Some inventions are so obviously beneficial as to be adopted with-
out question, but others raise significant ethical and moral issues. Some, such as the
telescope, have led to important discoveries and in some cases entirely new disci-
plines dedicated to exploiting their power. This book stems from one such inven-
tion, that of the geographic information system or GIS, which emerged in the
1960s, became commercially available in the late 1970s, and has since revolu-
tionized virtually any activity that relies on information about the Earth’s surface,
from map-making and local government to resource management, wayfinding,
warfare, and social and environmental research (for introductory texts on GIS see,
for example, Burrough and McDonnell, 1998; Longley et al., 2001; Chrisman,
2002; Clarke, 2003; or DeMers, 2003). Abler (1987, p. 322) has written that
“GIS technology is to geographical analysis what the microscope, the telescope and
computers have been to other sciences.”
The invention and improvement of the telescope required significant advances
in the theory of optics, and similarly there exists an intimate relationship between
GIS and theory in relevant areas of numerous sciences: cartography, the science
of map-making; photogrammetry, geodesy, and surveying, the sciences of Earth
measurement; computer and information science; statistics, the science of error and
uncertainty; and many more. In the early 1990s the term geographic information
science (GIScience) was coined to describe this “science behind the systems”, and
this book is the most extensive effort to date to lay out exactly what it contains—
the set of issues and fundamental scientific problems that must be solved if the
use of GIS is to advance.
It is a great honor for me to be asked to write these introductory comments. I
originally suggested the term GIScience in a keynote address to the 1990 Inter-
national Symposium on Spatial Data Handling in Zurich (the “spatial” of the
keynote title was later changed to “geographic” in the 1992 paper in part as a play
on the “S” in “GIS”, and in part to emphasize the focus of GIS on the Earth’s
© 2005 by CRC Press LLC
surface and near-surface, rather than any other space), because it seemed to me
that the research the participants were describing was far more profound and gen-
eral than “data handling” would suggest—I argued that the discipline represented
at that meeting was “more than the United Parcel Service of GIS” (Goodchild,
1992, p. 31). The publication of this book is a significant milestone in the devel-
opment of GIScience, a term that now appears in the titles of numerous journals,
in degree programs, and in the names of conferences.
The founding of the University Consortium for Geographic Information
Science (UCGIS) was one of the more significant events in the development of
GIScience in the United States. UCGIS rightly saw one of its first priorities as the
identification of the field’s research agenda, to provide some collective guidance
on the topics that represented major challenges to the research community. What
issues lay at the heart of GIScience, and how did they relate to the research agen-
das of cognate fields such as statistics or cognitive science? The chapters of this
book present the results of a multi-year effort to answer these questions, using the
process that is described in detail in Chapter 1. As such, the book will be essential
reading for young scholars in GIScience—for the young faculty, graduate stu-
dents, and senior undergraduates who will be pushing the frontiers of research
and the development of GIS technology in the years to come.

REFERENCES
Alber, R.F., 1987, The NSF National Center for Geographic Information and
Analysis. International Journal of Geographical Information Systems, 1(4):
303–326.
Burrough, P.A. and McDonnell, R.A., 1998, Principles of Geographical Information
Systems, New York: Oxford University Press.
Chrisman, N.R., 2002. Exploring Geographic Information Systems, New York: Wiley.
Clarke, K.C., 2003, Getting Started with Geographic Information Systems, Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
DeMers, M.N., 2003, Fundamentals of Geographic Information Systems,
Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Goodchild, M.F., 1992, Geographical information science. International Journal
of Geographical Information Systems, 6(1): 31–45.
Longley, P.A., Goodchild, M.F., Maguire, D.J. and Rhind, D.W., 2001,
Geographic Information Systems and Science. New York: Wiley.
© 2005 by CRC Press LLC
Contents

Page
Chapter 1 — Introduction to the UCGIS Research Agenda....................1
Chapter 2 — Spatial Data Acquisition and Integration.........................17
Chapter 3 — Cognition of Geographic Information..............................61
Chapter 4 — Scale.................................................................................93
Chapter 5 — Extensions to Geographic Representations....................129
Chapter 6 — Spatial Analysis and Modeling in a
GIS Environment..........................................................157
Chapter 7 — Research Issues on Uncertainty in
Geographic Data and GIS-Based Analysis....................197
Chapter 8 — The Future of the Spatial Information Infrastructure.....225
Chapter 9 — Distributed and Mobile Computing...............................257
Chapter 10 — GIS and Society: Interrelation, Integration,
and Transformation........................................................287
Chapter 11 — Geographic Visualization...............................................313
Chapter 12 — Ontological Foundations for
Geographic Information Science...................................335
Chapter 13 — Remotely Acquired Data and Information
in GIScience...................................................................351
Chapter 14 — Geospatial Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery......365
Chapter 15 — Postscript on the UCGIS and Research..........................389
© 2005 by CRC Press LLC
CHAPTER ONE

Introduction to the UCGIS
Research Agenda

E. Lynn Usery, University of Georgia and U.S. Geological Survey
Robert B. McMaster, University of Minnesota

1.1 INTRODUCTION

During 1987 the National Science Foundation, recognizing the rapid growth in geo-
graphic information systems (GIS), sent out a request for proposals for the creation
of a national GIS center. This single action would result in major relocations of GIS
personnel, as specialists were heavily recruited at key institutions, the creation of
a national research agenda, and numerous inter- and intra-campus professional
relationships established across the country. The core activity of the newly estab-
lished National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA), awarded
to a consortium of the University of California at Santa Barbara, the State Uni-
versity of New York at Buffalo, and The University of Maine, was the creation of
approximately 20 research initiatives and the NCGIA-sponsored “specialist meetings”,
which for a period of over a decade brought together researchers from around the
world. As summarized in a 1995 Geo Info Systems paper:
In the late fall of 1994, the University Consortium for Geographic Information
Science was created at the founding meeting in Boulder, Colorado. Forty-two
individuals representing 33 universities, research institutions, and the
Association of American Geographers (AAG) met December 4–6, 1994, in
Boulder, Colorado, to establish the University Consortium for Geographic
Information Science (UCGIS). Representatives were invited by the presidents
or chancellors of seven U.S. research universities with prominent programs in
geographic information systems. The UCGIS is to be a non-profit organization
of universities and other research institutions dedicated to advancing our
understanding of geographic processes and spatial relationships through im-
proved theory, methods, technology, and data.
© 2005 by CRC Press LLC
2 A Research Agenda for Geographic Information Science
At the founding meeting in Boulder, three major goals for UCGIS were
identified, including:
• To serve as an effective, unified voice for the geographic
information science research community;
• To foster multidisciplinary research and education; and
• To promote the informed and responsible use of geographic information
science and geographic analysis for the benefit of society.
One major goal included the creation of a national research agenda, which
was initiated in the summer of 1996 in Columbus, Ohio. In preparation for this signi-
ficant event, UCGIS’s Research Committee (with members John Bossler, William
Craig, Jerome Dobson, Max, Egenhofer, George Hepner, and David Mark), and led
by David Mark at SUNY Buffalo, organized a call for what would be labeled the
“provisional research topics”. This call led to 18 of the then UCGIS member insti-
tutions that contributed 81 research topics during April and May of 1996, which
were then organized into 17 general themes and 3 “miscellaneous” categories by
the Research Committee. The 18 institutions submitting research topics included:
• Boston University
• University of California, Berkeley
• University of California, Santa Barbara
• Clark University
• University of Colorado
• University of Maine
• Michigan State University
• University of Minnesota
• University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
• State University of New York at Buffalo
• Oak Ridge National Laboratory
• Ohio State University
• Oregon State University
• San Diego State University
• University of South Carolina
• West Virginia University
• University of Wisconsin, Madison
• University of Wyoming

© 2005 by CRC Press LLC
Introduction to the UCGIS Research Agenda 3
The above 18 institutions each sent representatives (along with other institu-
tions as well) to the Columbus meeting. The 20 themes formed the basis for three
rounds of breakout groups for in-depth discussion of the topics, as well as plenary
sessions for the presentation of results and consensus building. The 20 categories
and provisional themes included were: ([Note: Topics marked with an asterisk (*)
appear under more than one theme.)

(1) Change Detection
BU-3* Methods of Change Detection at Various Scales (inc. global)
ORNL-3 Develop a Method for Measuring Global Change
(2) Conflation and Data Integration
OH-2 Integration of Spatial Data
SDSU-1 Integration of GIS Databases Across the United States–
Mexico and United States–Canada Border
SC-1 Conflation of TIGER and Other Street Centerlines
UCSB-2 Conflation—Combining Geographic Information
(3) Dynamic Processes
BU-5 Development of Programming Environments Within GIS to
Allow Modeling of Dynamic Spatial Processes
MSU-1 Improved Support for Multi-Temporal Data Management,
Analysis, and Visualization
(4) Environmental Hazards
CLRK-2 Modeling Socioeconomic-Environmental Interactions
SC-5 Hazards Assessment and Mitigation
UB-4 Local Adjustment to Climate Change and Natural Hazards
UCB-3 Modeling Environmental Hazard and Risk: Emergency Response
(5) GIS and Society
COLO-4 Study Ethics of Access, Copyright, Personal Liability, and
Protection of Intellectual Property for Spatial Data and Related
Products Published, Delivered or Distributed Electronically
MN-1* Institutional Barriers to Use of GIS in Decision Making
OH-5 The Social Impacts of Spatial Information Technologies
WISC-5 The Social Impacts of Spatial Information Technologies
SDSU-4 Developing a Critical Social Theory of GIS
WVU-1 GIS and Society–Representing Multiple Realities, New
Models of Space
(6) GIS Foundations
ME-5 Mobile Geographic Information Systems
UB-2 Ontological Foundations of Geographic Information Science
Land, Law, & Property Rights
UCSB-3 Towards a Theoretical Foundation for GIS
© 2005 by CRC Press LLC