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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 This book contains information obtained from authentic and highly regarded sources. Reprinted material is quoted with permission, and sources are indicated. A wide variety of references are listed. Reasonable efforts have been made to publish reliable data and information, but the author and the publisher cannot assume responsibility for the validity of all materials or for the consequences of their use. Neither this book nor any part may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. All rights reserved. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use, or the personal or internal use of specific clients, may be granted by CRC Press LLC, provided that $1.50 per page photocopied is paid directly to Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923 USA. The fee code for users of the Transactional Reporting Service is ISBN 0-8493-2728- 8/05/$0.00+$1.50. The fee is subject to change without notice. For organizations that have been granted a photocopy license by the CCC, a separate system of payment has been arranged. The consent of CRC Press LLC does not extend to copying for general distribution, for promotion, for creating new works, or for resale. Specific permission must be obtained in writing from CRC Press LLC for such copying. Direct all inquiries to CRC Press LLC, 2000 N.W. Corporate Blvd., Boca Raton, Florida 33431. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation, without intent to infringe. Visit the CRC Press Web site at www.crcpress.com © 2005 by CRC Press LLC No claim to original U.S. Government works International Standard Book Number 0-8493-2728-8 Library of Congress Card Number 2004051870 Printed in the United States of America 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 Printed on acid-free paper © 2005 by CRC Press LLC 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

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