Francis Harvey

Leipzig University (Universität Leipzig), Geography, Faculty Member

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Researcher at the intersections of geography and visualization with an academic grounding in sociology, planning and philosophy and practical and pragmatic goals.
Address: Leipzig, Saxony, Germany

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David Seamon

Kansas State University

Noe Cornago

University of the Basque Country, Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea

John Sutton

Macquarie University

Abdurrahman B Ismaila

Modibbo Adama University of Technology, Yola

Steve Brown

Nottingham Trent University

Derek H Alderman

University of Tennessee Knoxville

Ian G Baird

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Noortje Marres

University of Warwick

Gerardo Ienna

Sapienza, Università di Roma

Viacheslav Kuleshov

Stockholm University

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Papers by Francis Harvey

Integrating geodata infrastructures from the ground up

... 40506-0027 ([email protected]) Buttenfield is with the Department of Geography, University o... more

The Significance of Public Safety for GIS Professional Licensing and Certification

His research ranges widely from studies and the development of semantic interoperable Geographic ... more His research ranges widely from studies and the development of semantic interoperable Geographic Information Technologies to historical work in geography. Most of his recent research has revolved around the development of the US National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) among local governments. He has also contributed to research on geographic information ethics.

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A world without GIS? Post-GIS futures for the New Millennium

Geographia Polonica, Jul 1, 2014

We stand on the cusp of an era when anyone with internet access can make a map. With six billion ... more We stand on the cusp of an era when anyone with internet access can make a map. With six billion mobile phone subscribers and 2.3 billion internet users will GIS play much of a role in how make and use maps? This paper begins with this question and explores some of the dimensions of how GIS will change in a new worlda world where GIS is integral to countless online activities and hence disappears from most uses. This is world not without GIS, but a post-GIS world of ubiquitous location technologies. While many of these developments, they have negative potential and the article points to areas to consider carefully.

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National Cultural Influences on GIS Design: a Study of County GIS in King County, Wa, USA and Kreis Osnabrück, Germany

Code/space: software and everyday life, by Rob Kitchen and Martin Dodge

International Journal of Geographical Information Science, Oct 1, 2012

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Conte... more Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

The Power of Mapping: Considering Discrepancies of Polish Cadastral Mapping

Annals of The Association of American Geographers, Jul 1, 2013

In his seminal work on cartography, Brian Harley develops insights and raises questions about the... more In his seminal work on cartography, Brian Harley develops insights and raises questions about the power of maps. This article takes up these insights and questions through an anti-essentialist reading of Foucault's later thinking merged with concepts from grounded theory. The research examines the interrelated economic, strategic, legal, and technical aspects of mapping activities that use and create cadastral (property) maps. Using multiple scales, I analyze cadastral mapping activities through decomposition into interactions, boundary objects, and contextual factors to establish how empowerment and limitation take place. The examples come from fieldwork in Poland that explores cadastral mapping discrepancies. Following the demise of socialist forms of government and property in 1989, studies from the 1990s found differences (by area) between officially mapped ownership and actual property usage of up to 40 percent in rural areas. Although most Polish cadastral maps from rural areas were then, and still are, officially accepted as accurate, many remain functionally unusable. Further, the high level of discrepancies failed, and still fails, to systematically disrupt cadastral mapping, farming, and other economic activities. Considering this background, the article explores the processes of making property rights and the limits of state-centric constructions of territory. Reflecting the increased use of geographic information systems in cadastral mapping and the controls of Common Agricultural Policy disbursements, the article also analyzes different meanings of accuracy and the limits of cadastral mapping's calculative power.

Improving multi-purpose GIS design: Participative design

Springer eBooks, 1997

Crucial to the design of multi-purpose GIS is the identification of semantical differences and co... more Crucial to the design of multi-purpose GIS is the identification of semantical differences and commonalties between the concepts held by participants. Design involves communication between the diverse groups of participants as they mitigate their differences, find common understandings, and find coherency. It is a process of negotiating semantics.

Visualizing data quality through interactive metadata browsing in a VR environment

Review of The Virtual Embodied

Caa.reviews, 2000

Developing geographic information infrastructures for local government: the role of trust

Canadian Geographer, Mar 1, 2003

The United States's National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) model presumes that the local... more The United States's National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) model presumes that the local government agencies of counties and municipalities will share their geographic information freely with government agencies of regions, states and federal agencies. This article takes up the issue of local government involvement in the NSDI by asking the question: why should local governments involve themselves in the NSDI? This question is informed by considering the social and technological imbrication of the NSDI. One of the oldest spatial data infrastructure projects, the NSDI offers insights into the complexity of implementing infrastructure in federal models of shared governance. This article focuses on the political and financial dimensions of developing infrastructure among local governments. Trust is quintessential at this level of government. Local government agency activities experience an inherently closer coupling with political representatives and with different agencies in both intramunicipal and intermunicipal activities. Building the NSDI is fundamentally an interagency act and thus a matter of trust. Trust is a key issue in the development of the NSDI, as the results of a study of Kentucky local government agencies indicate.

To Volunteer or to Contribute Locational Information? Towards Truth in Labeling for Crowdsourced Geographic Information

Springer eBooks, Jun 29, 2012

Geographers, planners, and others increasingly refer to crowdsourced data in geography as volunte... more Geographers, planners, and others increasingly refer to crowdsourced data in geography as volunteered geographic information (VGI). But is volunteered the right adjective to use for all types of crowdsourced geographic information? This chapter examines this question by making the following distinction along an ethical line for crowdsourced data collection: data collected following an “opt-in” agreement is volunteered; data collected under an “opt-out” provision is contributed (CGI). Opt-in agreements provide some clarity and control in the collection and intended reuse of collected data. Opt-out agreements are, in comparison, very open-ended and begin with few, if any, possibilities to control data collection. The chapter suggests that distinguishing contributed crowdsourced data from volunteered crowdsourced data is important to start to understand the nature of sources of crowdsourced data of any provenance and to help begin to identify possible biases. In the concluding discussion, this chapter argues that the simple distinction between CGI and VGI is valuable for assessments of data’s fitness for use. Following the truth-in-labeling principle known for food products, differentiating between CGI and VGI is also helpful to identify cases where lax approaches or even malfeasance leads to inaccurate or biased crowdsourced data.

Semantic interoperability: A central issue for sharing geographic information

Annals of Regional Science, May 17, 1999

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We Know Where You Are. And We’re More and More Sure What That Means

Law, governance and technology series, May 9, 2013

Knowing where something occurs is most meaningful if placed in relation to other events, people, ... more Knowing where something occurs is most meaningful if placed in relation to other events, people, and things. Recent innovations in pervasive information and computing technology (PICT) and related information technology infrastructures open up capabilities to record and analyze locations and relations among events in unparalleled fashion, leading to increases in data about where people are and what they do. Spatial analysis can identify many of these relations and help create penetrating insights. First, this chapter considers how the field of geography has developed analytical capabilities that support understanding online and virtual activities involving pervasive information technology. Because of a growing infrastructure with a capability to thoroughly record locations and events, coupled with computational approaches that mine data and cross-reference data from different sources, geographic analysis has become a commonplace means of analyzing data and establishing patterns of activities or information about individuals. With vast amounts of location data and the use of analysis techniques, it has become possible to not only know where people are, but what the aggregation of data from different sources means. Also this chapter reviews recent developments and their underlying geographic concepts, and points to important questions in considering the role of location and relations in information-age surveillance.

More than Names - Digital Earth and/or Virtual Globes?

International Journal of Spatial Data Infrastructures Research, ,, Feb 18, 2009

This contribution suggests that the variety of terms used to refer to Digital Earth, the most wid... more This contribution suggests that the variety of terms used to refer to Digital Earth, the most widely used formulation, expresses a range of associations and meanings that appeal to different overarching concepts of the relationship between this phenomena and societys’ ongoing engagement with our place in the world. Gelernter’s Mirror Worlds concept, is an apt starting point for considering Digital Earth, one, however, we should be careful to consider and critique. Reflection on the usages of various terms should play a role in our considerations of what we wish to accomplish through our work and what we aspiret to in next generation Digital Earth environments. Different terms, for example, Digital Earths are perhaps more suitable for some communities.

Semantic Interoperability and Citizen/ Government Interaction

This paper presents an approach extending semantic similarity measures and Amit Sheth's work on I... more This paper presents an approach extending semantic similarity measures and Amit Sheth's work on Information Spaces to include non-declarative and nonformalized knowledge. This approach is an extension of concepts developed by Tim Berners-Lee and others for a next generation Internet known as the semantic web. Formalized information used by government agency staff will be stored in web accessible databases and shared when permitted over public access. Citizens will share non-formalized local knowledge in the same semantic web, called the Kentucky Water Information Network (KY-WIN). Diverse representations of formal and non-formalized knowledge will be made accessible through a gateway that builds and maintains semantic links to various sources. The gateway will be accessed through an interface that supports knowledge discovery and communication in a variety of ways to support multiple activities and grow with use. KY-WIN will help promote improved citizen/government interactions by creating a digital and civic infrastructure to integrate various knowledges and contribute to better democratic decision-making.

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Participation in Software Development

International Journal of E-Planning Research

Participatory planning holds important lessons for improving local government capabilities and re... more Participatory planning holds important lessons for improving local government capabilities and responsiveness, but overall procedural regulations and statutory frameworks make its relevance for participatory IT development often just a matter of compliance. Developing analytical visualisations to support local government faces significant challenges because of the complexity and uncertainty about long-term benefits. We designed the process and local government staff understood their participation in an organised process. After each segment and the programming implementation, a new version of the software integrates improvements for participants.The participation process involved staff from ultimately 18 local governments. Participation became a verb describing the process that informed the directions to which we took up local government input.

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Bertin’s matrix concepts reconsidered: transformations of semantics and semiotics to support geovisualization use

Cartography and Geographic Information Science, 2018

Transformations, for many the core of analytical cartography, involve manipulations of semiotics ... more Transformations, for many the core of analytical cartography, involve manipulations of semiotics and semantics. To develop a framework for contemporary geovisualization, we draw on concepts behind Jacques Bertin's lesser known work among Anglo-American cartographers, La graphique et le traitement graphique de l'information (1977), translated 1981 as Graphics and graphic information-processing. This book describes the transformations of semiotics and semantics in a matrix-based process to create graphics, especially geovisualizations. It offers a logical development from concepts presented in the semiology of graphics and took up semantics and communication aspects. The framework we develop starts with the insights from this book but moves beyond Bertin's questionable assumption about the necessity of a prior accord between map producer and map reader regarding semiotics and semantics for successful communication. We reconsider the involved semiotic and semantic manipulations for the discursive analysis of geovisualizations beginning with Barbara Petchenik's insight that cartographic communication accounts for biases and physiological limits. We broaden these considerations to include distributed cognition concepts from Edward Hutchins, which account for preferences and physiological limitations regarding their broader institutional and cultural settings. The revised linkage of semantics and semiotics, which understands map design as a process of developing boundary objects, focuses on the transformations for making geovisualizations. This analysis holds relevance for improvements to geovisualization and the development of enhancements for cartographic design.

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Herbert Bayer’s World Geo-Graphic Atlas of 1953: A Modern Atlas, Then and Now

Cartographic Journal, Jul 2, 2020

ABSTRACT Herbert Bayer (1900–1985) created the World Geo-Graphic Atlas (published in 1953) – an i... more ABSTRACT Herbert Bayer (1900–1985) created the World Geo-Graphic Atlas (published in 1953) – an influential atlas that followed modernist design principles associated with the Bauhaus. This paper focuses on the modernist exhibition design concepts he refined in his work on this seminal atlas of the twentieth century. The Atlas stands out in its successful expansion of the predominant map-centric atlas framework that is augmented by modernist approaches to visualization. The central concept used in the Atlas, the extended field of vision from exhibit design and architecture, was central to its organization and presentation. The Atlas integrates topographic maps, concise textual narration, tables, pictograms, thematic maps, geovisualization, artwork that uses modernist graphic techniques, and approaches to support flexible reader engagement. This exemplary atlas – both then and now – communicates a broad diversity of geographic knowledge of regions and countries from around the world through graphical means.

Local‐government data sharing: Evaluating the foundations of spatial data infrastructures

International Journal of Geographical Information Science, Aug 1, 2006

This paper presents a typology of local‐government data sharing arrangements in the US at a time ... more This paper presents a typology of local‐government data sharing arrangements in the US at a time when spatial data infrastructures (SDI) are moving into a second generation. In the first generation, the US National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) theoretically involved a pyramid of data integration resting on local‐government data sharing. Availability of local‐government data is the foundation for all SDI‐related data sharing in this model. However, first‐generation SDI data‐sharing activities and principles have gained only a tenuous ...

The Imbrication of Geography and Technology: The Social Construction of Geographic Information Systems

Springer eBooks, 2004

This chapter examines the disciplinary interface between geography and technology from an ecologi... more This chapter examines the disciplinary interface between geography and technology from an ecological perspective. Our analysis of a few cases shows that the relationships between geography and technology are never clear-cut, but always intertwined like tree roots in a forest. The roots (or rhizomes) of each tree support an individual above ground, while the tangled roots just visible or invisible below the surface are a messy tangle that also are part of biochemical processes that sustain each tree, and the forest in which other trees grow. Rhizomes from different trees and plants interweave in symbiotic or parasitic relationship that are integral to the ecosystem. The relationships between geography and technology also can be understood in this ecological metaphor. What has made the growth of GIS possible? We argue that a highly fertile interface between geography and technology supports the profuse growth of GIS. Drawing on science and technology studies, we argue that the geography-technology relationship is no “chicken and egg” problem, but is evidenced in myriad, theoretically infinite relationships and interactions occurring worldwide. Each GIS implementation follows many roots, and we need to excavate them in order to understand the historical development of the interface between geography and technology. This approach calls for attention to specific sites and configurations of technology. The development of geography is intricately interwoven with the development of technology, but under no circumstances does technology determine a path for geography. In the fillamous rhizomatic network, many geographies and technologies connect and lead to subsequent developments.

Integrating geodata infrastructures from the ground up

... 40506-0027 ([email protected]) Buttenfield is with the Department of Geography, University o... more