Geographic Information Science

Recently, the idea of ontology has been an important field of research in GIScience . This paper aims to extend the current perspective of ontologies of geographical kinds, by including additional concepts: (a) the dynamical character of geographical entities; (b) the intentionality dimension of geographical space.

Gestures are an essential element in the realization of paper-like user interfaces. Unfortunately, poor design and recognition of gestures has impeded the adoption of these interfaces. This paper describes a survey intended to illuminate the problems users have and benefits users enjoy with gesture-based user interfaces. From the results of the survey, we conclude that: users value gestures yet problems with gestures remain; users demand more gestures; and Newtons are used largely as notebooks whereas Pilots are used mostly has personal datebooks and addressbooks. The results of the survey provide insight for designers of penbased user interfaces and related tools.

With the increasing number of indoor navigation applications, it is essential to have clear and complete conceptual model (in the form of UML class diagram) for IndoorGML. The current version of IndoorGML standard has an incomplete class diagram (incomplete w.r.t. attributes, of which some are appearing in the XML/GML schema), and that provides confusion for the users of the standard. Furthermore, there are some issues related to unclear association names, unclear class names, classes that related to the Primal space and the Dual space, code lists not specific per type (which should have their own code list values), untyped relationships to external object classes, and semantically overlapping classes. In this paper, we propose an enhancement for IndoorGML conceptual model (UML class diagram) to avoid the misunderstanding. We propose a conceptual model that maps the classes of the standard in a better way. This conceptual model is the basis for 1) a database schema when storing Indo...

The research presented in this paper introduces a graph-based and computational modelling approach that derives a social network and computes its emerging spatial and thematic properties from the semantics embedded in a series of Web pages. We apply several local and global graph-based operators, and complement them with thematic, spatial and similarity operators. This allows us to infer the degree of correlation between the different properties of the network. The approach is applied to the study of the GIS research communities as exemplified by the International COSIT and GIScience conferences.

To shed light on the questio 'of whether college geocwaphy students should be and/or are being -nstructed about the histcry and philosophy of geography, a survey wagundertaken to de*ermine the educational obiectives and practices of--geography , educators. Approximately 215 Americanand Canadian geographic educators and chairpersons of geography departments were asked to respond to questions regardirg the desirability of offering a course on the history and philosophy of geography and regarding the availability and status of a higtory and philosophy course in variouq degree programs. Findings indicated that most respondents regarded le history and philosophy course as unimportant In an undergraduate program, somewhat important in a masters program, and quite important it a doctoral program. However, many departments of geography do not offer history and philosophy of geography courses at any level because of a variety of reasns, including lack of interest among students and faculty, lack of professional expertise among faculty on +he topic, and lack of funds to develop a new course. The author clams that this lack of interest and expertise in the history and philosophy csf geography threatens the capability of the discipline to educate properly. Reasons offered for the importanct of the topic -include-+hat it is _intellectually challenging, promotes self-awareness and identity among geography students, and alleviates s+udentso confusion due to existing and emerging paradigms of thought and explanation within the disctpline of geography. (DB1

To shed light on the questio 'of whether college geocwaphy students should be and/or are being -nstructed about the histcry and philosophy of geography, a survey wagundertaken to de*ermine the educational obiectives and practices of--geography , educators. Approximately 215 Americanand Canadian geographic educators and chairpersons of geography departments were asked to respond to questions regardirg the desirability of offering a course on the history and philosophy of geography and regarding the availability and status of a higtory and philosophy course in variouq degree programs. Findings indicated that most respondents regarded le history and philosophy course as unimportant In an undergraduate program, somewhat important in a masters program, and quite important it a doctoral program. However, many departments of geography do not offer history and philosophy of geography courses at any level because of a variety of reasns, including lack of interest among students and faculty, lack of professional expertise among faculty on +he topic, and lack of funds to develop a new course. The author clams that this lack of interest and expertise in the history and philosophy csf geography threatens the capability of the discipline to educate properly. Reasons offered for the importanct of the topic -include-+hat it is _intellectually challenging, promotes self-awareness and identity among geography students, and alleviates s+udentso confusion due to existing and emerging paradigms of thought and explanation within the disctpline of geography. (DB1

In recent years, an increased interest in the use of the spacetime cube to visualize movement data can be witnessed. However, little is known about whether the cube is truly efficient and effective to satisfactorily display complex movement datasets. The limited usability research that has been done did not lead to details on how the STC content should be designed and whether the cartographic design influences the exploration process. The conceptual framework that is proposed in this paper offers an approach to the evaluation of the STC content with special attention for design aspects and the environment in which the STC has to function. Systematic usability studies have to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the STC under different conditions. Therefore, the framework contains phased studies in which real-world data of four use cases of different complexity are used.

This research demonstrates the development of temporal GIS and its applicability to support spatio-temporal hazard mitigation modeling. Many GIS data models have been proposed to incorporate temporal information into spatial databases. Thematic characteristics are represented as attributes of spatial objects. Temporal information is either associated with time-s tamped individual layers, such as the Snapshot Model, or individual spatial objects, such as the Space-Time Composite Model. On our earth lots of events occurs everyday continually. If the effect of these events is negative on human life called natural hazards. If these hazards severely destroy human lives and properties called natural disasters. Earthquake, landslides, floods and tornadoes are the example of mostly occurring natural disasters all over the world. We can not eliminate these hazards but we can minimize the risk of these hazards, the minimization of risk is called hazard mitigation. For prevention and mitigatio...

Being in natural places is known to influence well-being. Therefore, increasing attention is being paid to the diverse ways in which our emotions can be influenced by places, and this paper investigates this notion in a protected area -the Cairngorms National Park in Scotland. We assume that positive sentiment correlates with pleasant (hedonic) experiences, and extract positive emotions and objects associated with them, from textual descriptions written about places in the park. To do so, we first apply sentiment analysis and select descriptions with positive sentiment. Second, we filter the initial dataset to reduce the impact of prolific users and ambiguously positive words. From an initial set of 33790 descriptions we are left with 3031 positive descriptions. Third, we apply transducers to find semantic sequences for patterns detection. Finally, these sequences are annotated and assigned to one of five classes -activities, aesthetics, features, places and times. Features are by far the most common class, making up more than 50% of all unique nouns associated with positive emotions.

Cultural heritage includes all tangible and intangible values related to a society's history, culture, and identity. Monumental buildings, which constitute an important part of the cultural heritage that has survived from the past to the present, are under many natural (disaster) risks such as earthquakes, fires, floods, tsunamis, and landslides, as well as many human-induced risks such as theft, wars, and vandalism. Disasters have various effects on the environment and society in which they occur, such as loss of life and property, sociological, economic, and psychological problems. Turkey has been home to many civilizations due to its location in the world; so today it hosts many cultural heritages belonging to these civilizations. On 6 February 2023, the 7.7 and 7.6 magnitude earthquakes centered in Kahramanmaraş caused heavy losses in eleven cities. In addition to over 50 thousand casualties, many cultural assets were severely damaged and some of them were destroyed. The subject of this study is Tuz Khan located in the center of Adıyaman Province. The study includes the documentation process of the building, which was heavily damaged after the earthquake, by the 3D laser scanning method. The research carried out in the study region indicates that utilizing orthophotos generated from terrestrial laser scanning data as a base can yield architectural documentation with the requisite level of detail. The orthophotos serve as a precise output that can be imported into a CAD platform and utilized as a reference for redrawing the primary break lines. This approach proves economically advantageous for conducting analytical surveys, presenting a quick solution, particularly crucial in the aftermath of natural disasters where time efficiency is paramount.

The central role of species competition in shaping community structure in ecosystems is well appreciated amongst ecologists. However species competition is a consistently missing variable in Species Distribution Modelling (SDM). This study presents results of our attempt to incorporate species competition in SDMs. We used a suit of predictor variables including Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI), as well as distance from roads, settlements and water, fire frequency and distance from the nearest herbivore sighting (of selected herbivores) to model individual habitat preferences of five grazer species (buffalo, warthog, waterbuck, wildebeest and zebra) with the Ensemble SDM algorithm for Gonarezhou National Park, Zimbabwe. Our results showed that distance from the nearest animal sighting (a proxy for competition among grazers) was the best predictor of the potential distribution of buffalo, wildebeest and zebra but the second best predictor for warthog and waterbuck. Our findings p...

Pastoralism is a livestock-based land use that is connected to the movement of animals and closely tied to the availability of natural resources such as water, forage, and suitable terrain. Over time, pastoralists have adapted to shifting ecological conditions, demonstrating resilience in environments often marked by climatic variability. However, the dynamic relationship between pastoralism and rangeland management has become increasingly complex due to climate change, land degradation, and urban expansion.
Remote sensing (RS) technology offers a spatial approach to understanding and managing pastoral landscapes by providing historical as well as real time data on climate, vegetation, water resources, and soil conditions. This essay explores how remote sensing technologies, particularly satellite data can potentially contribute to the assessment of pastoralism's role in rangeland management, offering insights into grazing patterns, decision-making at the household l; level, land cover changes, and sustainability strategies.

Respondent-driven sampling (RDS) is a type of sampling method used to survey rare and hard-to-reach populations. RDS was developed to address the issue of bias associated with snowball sampling in qualitative research. Although, RDS has evolved by addressing major issues involved with the snowball sampling method, the issue of how the presence of spatial autocorrelation (SA) affects RDS had not been studied. SA refers to the clustering of similar attribute values in geographic space. Quantitative studies show that the presence of positive SA leads to an underestimation of the appropriate sample size. If RDS is not affected by SA, then the samples are expected to be dispersed in geographic space and not clustered around a sampling seed that initiates a sequence of respondents. This chapter presents impacts of SA on RDS when a social network displays a geographic pattern. The geographic distribution of the samples and associated socioeconomic and demographic variables are analyzed wit...

This chapter discusses relationships between the Moran coefficient (MC) and the Geary ratio (GR) under different distributional assumptions (normal, uniform, beta, and exponential) and selected geographic neighborhood definitions (linear, square rook, hexagon, square queen, maximum planar, maximum hexagon, and a constant number of neighbors). It focuses on comparisons of efficiency and power for the MC and the GR. Its results should inform features of spatial data analysis.

Social media has considerable potential as a source of passive citizen science observations of the natural environment, including wildlife monitoring. Here we compare and combine two main strategies for using social media postings to predict species distributions: (i) identifying postings that explicitly mention the target species name and (ii) using a text classifier that exploits all tags to construct a model of the locations where the species occurs. We find that the first strategy has high precision but suffers from low recall, with the second strategy achieving a better overall performance. We furthermore show that even better performance is achieved with a meta classifier that combines data on the presence or absence of species name tags with the predictions from the text classifier.

Many types of information are geographically referenced and interactive maps provide a natural user interface to such data. However, map presentation in geographical information systems (GIS) and on the internet is closely related to traditional cartography and provides a very limited interactive experience. We present the MAPBOT, a web-based map information retrieval system to search geographical information using software agent techniques. Each kind of map feature such as a building or a road is treated as an agent called a Maplet. Each Maplet has a user interface level to assist the user to find information of interest and a graphic display level that controls the presence and the appearance of the feature on the map. Semantic relationships of Maplets are defined in an Ontology Repository (OR) and used to control their retrieval. To allow system developers to manipulate the OR, an Ontology Editor is implemented with a graphical user interface. Visualisation on the client is based on Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). The paper describes the current state of development of the prototype and presents, and evaluates experimentally, an agent-oriented graphical conflict resolution procedure, which demonstrates the potential for conflict resolution via low level agent communication, as opposed to global control.

The aim of this paper is to critically examine, discuss, draw conclusions, and come up with ideas how to harmonize GIS education in order to realize the envisaged clientele benefits globally. The paper draws experiences and lessons learnt, with examples from ongoing joint GIS MSc programs/courses being implemented in Mozambique, Rwanda, and Uganda. All the five courses (3 in Uganda, 1 in Mozambique, and 1 in Rwanda) are currently financially supported by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) capacity development and institutional development grants. The GIS programmes and course units in the southern institutions have a high demand from clients, especially at graduate level. However, their implementation and uptake is impeded by challenges like credit systems, pedagogic approach, field work, student interaction, and software, which are discussed. It is concluded that there is still a long way to go before harmonization, allowing GIS students to freely move ...

Space and time are both crucial characteristic dimensions of geographic events and phenomena. Although exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) can be used to visualize and summarize complex spatial patterns, it has limitations in capturing the temporal dynamics of geographic features. Efforts have been made to incorporate the time dimension into ESDA techniques to detect space-time clustering or trends. Localized space-time statistics that could help in exploratory space-time data analysis (ESTDA), however, are still lacking. Focusing on spatial panel data, our work extended Getis-Ord G i and G Ã i statistics using a space-time contemporaneous weight matrix and a space-time lagged weight matrix to account for local space-time autocorrelation. Two applications in this article show that the newly developed method can be used to summarize space-time patterns from spatial panel data, identify changes of landscape more consistently, and lend the results readily to visualization. Key Words: exploratory space-time data analysis (ESTDA), local space-time autocorrelation, space-time G i and G i * , space-time contemporaneous weight matrix, space-time lagged weight matrix.

Mesh-based terrain representations provide accurate descriptions of a terrain, but fail in capturing its morphological structure. The morphology of a terrain is defined by its critical points and by the critical lines joining them, which form a so-called surface network. Because of the large size of current terrain data sets, a multi-resolution representation of the terrain morphology is crucial. Here, we address the problem of representing the morphology of a terrain at different resolutions. The basis of the multi-resolution terrain model, that we call a Multi-resolution Surface Network (MSN), is a generalization operator on a surface network, which produces a simplified representation incrementally. An MSN is combined with a multi-resolution mesh-based terrain model, which encompasses the terrain morphology at different resolutions. We show how variable-resolution representations can be extracted from an MSN, and we present also an implementation of an MSN in a compact encoding data structure.

Author(s): Goulias, Kostas; Janelle, Donald G. | Abstract: The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) funded a Peer Exchange meeting in Santa Barbara, CA (10-11 October 2005) for travel demand forecasters, experts in travel behavior and GPS data collection, and geographers to discuss potential approaches on using GPS vehicle traces for defining space-time paths and prisms to be used in activity modeling and microsimulation for transportation analysis. This document features the position papers prepared by participants prior to the meeting.

Semantic Web resources such as DBpedia provide a rich source of structured knowledge about geographical features such as towns, rivers and historical buildings. Retrieval from these resources of all content that is relevant to a particular spatial query of, for example, containment or proximity is not always straightforward because there is considerable inconsistency in the way in which geographical features are referenced to location. In DBpedia some geographical feature instances have point coordinates, some have qualitative properties that provide explicit or implicit locational information via place names, and some have neither of these. Here we show how structured geo-spatial query, a form of question answering, on DBpedia can be performed with a hybrid strategy that exploits both quantitative and qualitative spatial properties in combination with a high quality reference geo-dataset that can help to support a full range of geo-spatial query operators.

The SPIRIT search engine provides a test bed for the development of web search technology that is specialised for access to geographical information. Major components include the user interface, geographical ontology, maintenance and retrieval functions for a test collection of web documents, textual and spatial indexes, relevance ranking and metadata extraction. Here we summarise the functionality and interaction between these components before focusing on the design of the geo-ontology and the development of spatio-textual indexing methods. The geo-ontology supports functionality for disambiguation, query expansion, relevance ranking and metadata extraction. Geographical place names are accompanied by multiple geometric footprints and qualitative spatial relationships. Spatial indexing of documents has been integrated with text indexing through the use of spatio-textual keys in which terms are concatenated with spatial cells to which they relate. Preliminary experiments demonstrate considerable performance benefits when compared with pure text indexing and with text indexing followed by a spatial filtering stage.

This chapter presents an exploratory simulation experiment to investigate the distribution of coefficients that are used to construct eigenvector spatial filters. The experiment involves five hexagonal tessellations and three levels of autocorrelation. The results of this experiment show that coefficients for eigenvectors selected to construct a spatial filer approximately follow a gamma distribution. The shape and scale parameters of the gamma distribution fitted to coefficient frequency distributions are further investigated.

Geospatial Information systems are experiencing the shift from monolithic to distributed environments (Bernard, 2003). Current research trends for discover and access of geospatial resources, in these distributed environments, are being addressed by deployment of interconnected ...

Size of the geospatial enterprise: There is little question that the geospatial information enterprise is large and growing. Absent a standard industry definition, however, estimates of the size of the enterprise have varied. Technology market research firm estimated that worldwide sales of GIS software, services, data, and hardware totaled $1.84 billion in 2003. Daratech predicts that total revenues will increase nearly ten percent in 2004. The American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing's (ASPRS) survey of the "remote sensing and geospatial information industry" led it to estimate 2001 industry revenues at $2.4 billion, and to predict growth to more than $6 billion by 2012 . The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), in consultation with the Geospatial Workforce Development Center at the University of Southern Mississippi, estimated that the U.S. "geospatial technology" market would generate $30 billion a year by 2005 ($20 billion for remote sensing, $10 billion for geographic information services) (Gaudet and others, 2003). This most optimistic prediction, based on an expansive conception of the geospatial information industry that includes remote sensing, GIS, and global positioning system technologies, has since been adopted by the U.S. Department of Labor (U.S. Department of Labor, no date). Because of the varied definitions, broad scope, and rapid evolution of the geospatial enterprise, reliable information about the size and composition of the geospatial workforce is difficult to obtain (Ohio State University, 2002). A few telling estimates do exist, however. ASPRS estimates that about 175,000 people are employed in the "U.S. remote sensing and geospatial information industry" . Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI), which along with Intergraph accounts for nearly half of the worldwide GIS software market, estimated in 2000 that 500,000 individuals in the U.S. use its software products as part of their jobs, and that some 50,000 individuals work as full-time GIS specialists . Longley and colleagues estimate that there are some four million GIS users worldwide, working at some two million sites (Longley, Goodchild, Maguire, and Rhind, 2005). Whatever the actual size of the geospatial information workforce, everyone seems to agree that there are too few qualified workers available to support the industry's growth. Initiative in 1997 to address the "serious shortfall of professionals and trained specialists who can utilize geospatial technologies in their jobs" (Gaudet and others, 2003, p. 21). ESRI Higher Education Marketing Manager Michael Phoenix estimates that "the shortfall in producing individuals with an advanced level of GIS education is around 3,000 to 4,000 [annually] in the U.S. alone" (Phoenix, 2000, p. 13). The Assistant Secretary for Labor and Training of the U.S. Department of Labor has pointed to survey data indicating that "87 percent of geospatial product and service providers … had difficulty filling positions requiring geospatial technology skills" (DeRocco, 2004, p. 2). So bullish is the U.S. Department of Labor (DoL) about prospects for growth in "geospatial-related occupations" (Table ) that it identified geospatial technologies as one of twelve "high-growth" industries. Citing "an immediate and anticipated need to fill tens of thousands of positions," DoL launched the "President's High Growth Job Training Initiative" in 2003 (Department of Labor, no date). Seeking "alternatives to the traditional pipeline" of four-year degree programs, DoL's Education and Training Administration is investing up to $250 million to develop training programs at community colleges (Department of Labor, no date). While industry insiders may consider the Department of Labor's conception of the geospatial industry far too inclusive (e.g., , no one is likely to contest DoL's analysis that workforce issues have become urgent. Occupation 2000-2010 Growth (projected) BoK2006_DD_25Feb2006.doc

Web Map Services A web map service (WMS), e.g. provided by the GeoServer software (Open Source Geospatial Foundation, 2014), is a widely utilized technique to publish satellite images. The basic idea is to extract specific regions of an image at a particular zoom level and transfer this region to the requesting client. WMS provides two extraction strategies. First, the WMS extracts a particular region from an image on demand. The challenge with this strategy is the high computational cost to extract arbitrary regions from images. In contrast to the first approach, WMS might publish image data that is split up into multiple image tiles. Here, the service is called a web map tile service (WMTS). These image tiles are generated in advance for all zoom-levels and stored in a hierarchical manner called an image pyramid (Adelson et. al, 1984). Various tools and frameworks like gdal (GDAL/OGR contributors, 2018), GeoTools (Open Source Geospatial Foundation, 2017) provide implementations of the image pyramid algorithm, and this algorithm is often also built-in into the WMS software. Publishing the image data through a preprocessed image pyramid utilizes the available disk space to reduce the computational costs and therefore enables fast panning and zooming for the requesting client. Many services like Google Maps and OpenstreetMap employ this approach.

The very fast developments of web and data collection technologies have enabled non-experts to collect and disseminate geospatial datasets through web applications. This new type of spatial data is usually known as collaborative mapping or volunteered geographic information VGI. There are various countries around the world could benefit from collaborative mapping data because it is cost free data, easy to access and it provides more customised data. However, there is a concern about its quality because the data collectors may lack the sufficient experience and training about geospatial data production. Most previous studies which have outlined and analysed VGI quality focused on positional and linear features. The current research has been conducted to investigate the quality of another feature type such as polygons (buildings) of collaborative mapping data. Two different VGI data sources have been tested: Google Maps and WikiMapia services. The VGI data was compared with reference ...

This paper describes national cooperation in Sweden launched by its universities and authorities, aimed at improving geodata education. These initiatives have been focused upon providing common access to geodata, the production of teaching materials in Swedish and organizing annual meetings for teachers. We argue that this type of cooperation is vital to providing high quality education for a poorly recognized subject in a country with a relatively small population.

Routes with a high share of greenery are attractive for cyclist and pedestrians. We analyze how strongly such green routes differ from the respective fast routes using the openrouteservice. Greenness of streets was estimated based on OpenStreetMap data in combination with Sentinel-II imagery, 3d laser scan data and administrative information on trees on public ground. We assess the effect both at the level of the individual route and at the urban level for two German cities: Dresden and Heidelberg. For individual routes, we study how strongly green routes differ from the respective fast routes. In addition, we identify parts of the road network which represent important green corridors as well as unattractive parts which can or cannot be avoided at the cost of reasonable detours. In both cities, our results show the importance of urban green spaces for the provision of attractive green routes and provide new insights for urban planning by identifying unvegetated bottlenecks in the s...

Climate change projections corresponding to the IPCC SRES A1FI scenario obtained from the integrated CCSM3 earth systems model were analyzed at regional and decadal scales to develop projections of extreme hydro-meteorological stresses. The extreme stresses considered in this study include major decadal or regional changes in temperatures or precipitation patterns, regional co-occurrence of increased temperature and reduced precipitation, reduction in soil moisture and stream flows, as well as increase in the ...

This technical report reviews the literature that provides guidance on GIS implementation. It defines Guiding Literature and five Classes of publications included therein. It reviews a representative number of publications of each Class and organizes the proposals by subject. In addition, it analyses the Guiding Literature in terms of issues addressed, theoretical consistency, and theoretical diversity. The contributions of this report are two fold. First, it documents a comprehensive review of the literature on GIS implementation. It can be used as an easy-reference to the Guiding Literature as well as to proposals on one specific subject. The second basic contribution of this report is concerned not with the adequacy of the theories themselves but with their organization for practical use. The results suggest that the current theories need to be organized in a single, comprehensive guide.

Public transport planning requires consideration of equity in access of the population to the transport service. This paper presents a methodology for the analysis of public transport in the city of Palma and its evaluation in terms of spatial and social equity. First, the analysis of supply based on the activity of the bus stops has been performed . Then an AHP multicriteria weighted model over a set of socioeconomic variables has been developed to obtain a public transport demand index. Finally the analysis of equity has been made using the Gini Index and a sensitivity analysis of bus lines. The results show the distribution of equity for all the 88 districts of city. This paper presents a simple and powerful methodology exportable to transportation planning studies in other geographic areas.

In many applications, the management of geographic knowledge is very important especially not only for urban and environmental planning, but also for any application in territorial intelligence. However there are several practical problems hindering the efficiency, some of them being technical and other being more conceptual. The goal of this paper is to present a tentative conceptual framework for managing practical geographic knowledge taking account of accuracy, rotundity of earth, the mobility of objects, multiplerepresentation, multi-scale, existence of sliver polygons, differences in classifying real features (ontologies), the many-to-many relationship of place names (gazetteers) and the necessity of interoperability. In other words, this framework must be robust against scaling, generalization and small measurement errors. Therefore, geographic objects must be distinguished into several classes of objects with different properties, namely geodetic objects, administrative objects, manmade objects and natural objects. Regarding spatial relations, in addition to conventional topological and projective relations, other relations including tessellations and ribbon topology relations are presented in order to help model geographic objects by integrating more practical semantics. Any conceptual framework is based on principles which are overall guidelines and rules; moreover, principles allow at making predictions and drawing implications and are finally the basic building blocks of theoretical models. But before identifying the principles, one needs some preliminary considerations named prolegomena. In our case, principles will be essentially rules for transforming geographic knowledge whereas prolegomena will be assertions regarding more the foundations of geographic science. Based on those considerations, 12 principles are given, preceded by 12 prolegomena. For instance, some principles deal with the transformation of spatial relationships based on visual acuity and granularity of interest, with the influence of neighboring information and cross-boundary interoperability. New categories of geographic knowledge types are presented, spatial facts, cluster of areas, flows of persons, goods, etc., topological constraints and co-location rules. To represent knowledge chunks, three styles are presented, based respectively on descriptive logics, XML and visual languages. To conclude this paper, after having defined contexts of interpretation, an example of visual language to manage geographic knowledge is proposed.

Recent research projects in North America that have advanced the integration of formal mathematical georeferencing and informal placename georeferencing in knowledge organization systems are described and related to visualization applications. FeatureID 966966 Name Syracuse Class Populated place Variant Names Sy-kuse (citation) Kah-ya-hoo-neh (citation) Tuna ten -tonk (citation) Na-ta-dunk (citation) Bogradus Corners (citation) Milan (citation) South Salina (citation) Cossitts Corners (citation)

This paper summarizes the discussions related to the panel “Contributions of GIScientists (or GIScience) over the past Twenty Years” at the 2015 Vespucci Institute. Reflections about the past not only provide an account of what occurred, but also may serve as a basis for comparison when in the future somehow related scenarios arise. Such histories may be detailed enumerations of chronological events or, more analytically, analyses of interactions that enabled or caused specific developments. The purpose of this paper is to account for some key developments in the academic field of geographic information science over the past twenty years (i.e., since 1995) and to assess some of the impact of these developments. The panel in Bar Harbor, moderated by David Coleman, included two invited presentations (by Max Egenhofer and Keith Clarke), and responses by two early career panelists (Song Gao and Teriitutea Quesnot), and by two senior panelists (Randolph Franklin and May Yuan).

This article introduces a strategic initiative, COST Action TD1202, focused on the role of citizen sensors in mapping. It outlines the Action's scope, aims and current status. In particular, the article outlines the potential of citizen science in mapping activities and indicates the scope of current work undertaken by the Action's four working groups. It is stressed that the Action is at an early stage and that it is open to new members.

The workshop on" Cognitive Models of Dynamic Geographic Phenomena and Their Representations" was designed to bring together cognitive psychologists, geographers computer scientists, and others to discuss theories and methods for understanding dynamic geographic phenomena or for implementing dynamic representations of geographic events. The workshop was held on the University of Pittsburgh campus on October 28-31, 1998. This report summarizes the activities of the workshop, including the discussion of open ...

Mereotopologies have traditionally been defined in terms of the intersection of point sets representing the regions in question. Whilst these semantic schemes work well for purely topological aspects, they do not give any semantic insight into the degree to which the different mereotopological relations hold. This paper explores this idea of a distance based interpretation for mereotopology. By introducing a distance measure between x and y, and for various Boolean combinations of x and y, we show that all the RCC8 relations can be distinguished. We then introduce a distance measure which combines these individual measures which we show reflect different paths through the RCC8 conceptual neighbourhood-i.e. the measure decreases/increases monotonically given certain monotonic transitions (such as one region expanding). There are several possible applications of this revised semantics; in the second half of the paper we explore one of these in some depth-the problem of abstracting mereotopological relations from noisy video data, such that the sequences of qualitative relations between pairs of objects do not suffer from "jitter". We show how a Hidden Markov Model can exploit this distance based semantics to yield improved interpretation of video data at a qualitative level.

Large scale developmental projects firstly require the selection of one or more cities to be developed. In Libya, the selection process is done by selected organizations, which is highly influenced by human judgement that can be inconsiderate of socioeconomic and environmental factors. In this study, we propose an automated selection process, which takes into consideration only the important factors for city (cities) selection. Specifically, a geospatial decision-making tool, free of human bias, is proposed based on the fuzzy overlay (FO) and technique for order performance by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) techniques for development projects in Libya. In this work, a dataset of 17 evaluation criteria (GIS factors) across five urban conditioning factors were prepared. The dataset served as input to the FO model to calculate weights (importance) for each criterion. A support vector machine (SVM) classifier was then trained to refine weights from the FO model. TOPSIS was then applied on the refined results to rank the cities for development. Experimental results indicate promising overall accuracy and kappa statistics. Our findings also show that highest and lowest success rates are 0.94 and 0.79, respectively, while highest and lowest prediction rates are 0.884 and 0.673, respectively.

Digital Earth (DE) education provides students with geospatial knowledge and skills to locate, measure, and solve geographic problems on Earth's surface. The rapid development of geospatial technology has promoted a new vision of DE to embrace data infrastructure, social networks, citizen science, and human processes on Earth. The high demand for a geospatial workforce also calls for an ever-changing, diverse form of learning experiences. Limited efforts, however, have been made regarding DE education to adapt to this changing landscape, with most interventions falling short of expectations. This chapter gives an overview of current teaching and learning structures with DE technologies. Successes and obstacles for K-12 education are explored first, followed by classroom technologies and experiential learning and outreach exercises such as academic certificates and internships in higher education. Taking the geospatial intelligence model from the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF) as an example, recent advancements in DE education for professional careers are described via its geospatial competencies, hierarchical frameworks, and credentials. In alignment with the principles of DE development, future DE education calls for an integrated learning framework of open data, real-world context, and virtual reality for better preparedness of our students in the geospatial world.