Zero Hours of System Training

Transcription

1 Zero Hours of System Training A challenge for the next 25 years Werner Kuhn Center for Spatial Studies Department of Geography University of California at Santa Barbara

2 Snow, J. (1855). On the mode of communication of cholera (2nd ed., 162pp).

3 2014

4 The Problem Asking and answering spatial questions is too hard GIScience / Geomatics have organized answers Data models: Peuquet 1998, Yuan 1999, Kjenstad 2006, Goodchild et al. 2007, Voudouris 2010 Algebras and Ontologies: Tomlin 1980, Albrecht 1998, Frank 2001, Couclelis 2010 GIS and Spatial Analysis text books GIS user interfaces User questions cut across these taxonomies unlike software engineering layers physical and social processes interact fields and objects occur together

5 Which farms are at risk from a bird flu outbreak? Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale delle Venezie

6 The Challenge Making GIS usable for e.g. epidemiologists How many months of training do they need today? How many hours of training can they afford? Why is there such a gap? How much training does Google Directions take? Will they use GIS adequately? Can we achieve zero hour training to ask spatial questions?

7 The Solution Idea Organize the questions Through Core Concepts of Spatial Information 5 spatial concepts: location, field, object, network, event 2 information concepts: resolution, accuracy

8 Which farms are at risk from a bird flu outbreak? Question: what are an object s properties and relations? What is common to objects across all applications? identity location bounded, not necessarily with boundary spatially extensive attributes What is specific to turkey farm objects in Veneto? identity: CODICE317 location: multipoint no boundary # of turkeys: STAVICPOT!!

9 Which farms are at risk from a bird flu outbreak? Question: what is the value of attribute z at location x? What is common to fields across all applications? coverage function x z left complete has inverse z [x] spatially intensive attributes projections: time series and spatial profiles What is specific to turkey density in Veneto? coverage: administrative units?, cost-distance raster, coverage function computed from farm objects: KDE,...!

10 Which farms are at risk from a bird flu outbreak? Question: what did or could happen? What is common to events across all applications? bounded processes with participants: fields, objects, networks computing event outcomes conjecture: all events are movements at some granularity What is specific to bird flu outbreaks in Veneto? data from past outbreaks calibrate the model density predicts well (reflecting TFL: increased interactions) but: outliers

11 Which farms are at risk from a bird flu outbreak due to transportation? Question: what connections exist? What is common to networks across all applications? connections can be paths or links networks are well understood and computationally supported What is specific to networks in Veneto? outliers suggest to consider the roads that connect farms families and garbage trucks move between farms!

12 Information Concepts resolution: what is the minimal unit of information? what cell size should the cost-distance raster have? observation ontology! accuracy: what is the accuracy? how accurate is the farm visitor information? probabilistic, possibilistic, and other models of reality fit

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14 The Science Behind It 1. A computational theory of asking (and answering) spatial questions starting from executable specifications of core concepts map to any GIS, R, Oracle, SciDB! 2. Design cloud computing architectures for domains declarative (rather than procedural) API s: what, not how developed and tested with domain specialists! 3. Teach spatial computing from core concepts beginning of introductory GIScience courses at UCSB micro-insertions in epidemiology, history, biology, political science

15 Conclusions years from now (or earlier), decision makers, scientists, and citizens should be able to perform spatial analyses with zero hours of software training 2. What does it take to reach this vision? A. admit that we are addicted to complexity B. study spatio-temporal questions C. implement generic and domain-specific API s to answer them D. K-12, undergraduate, graduate, life-long education on spatial thinking and computing 3. The success (or failure) of this effort will be measured by the degree to which the how of a computational solution complicates the what of the questions.

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18 Thank You!