Challenges in GIS Research Michael F. Goodchild University of California Santa Barbara
Thanks to Ordnance Survey of GB SPLINT Leicester, Nottingham, UCL Organizers
GIS research Since 1960s Changing agenda problems solved technology advancing social context evolving What can we not yet do? what remains to be discovered? what new developments need attention?
Three topics Spatio-temporal GIS CyberGIS Fundamental spatial concepts
Time is of the essence Policy and public interest are driven by change (Frank) Everything that t happens happens somewhere in space and time (Wegener) Every major issue has a time scale climate change (decades) climate tipping points (years) economic meltdown (months) infectious diseases (weeks) disasters (days)
How to design useful tools? The Waterfall process? define the application domain sample it with use cases define the necessary functionality design optimal data models Is the domain all of spatiotemporal analysis and modeling? from social to environmental Or are there multiple domains? and what is driving them?
1. Tracking Movement of features in space and time GPS RFID other technologies
Light-level geolocation (Stutchbury et al., Science 2/13/09) Purple Martin Wood Thrush
Tracks inferred from Flickr postings (http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~crandall/papers/mapping09www.pdf) cornell edu/~crandall/papers/mapping09www pdf)
Functionality Hägerstrand s conceptual framework new advances in theory Track interpolation ti between infrequent samples Inferences about activity it Track convergence Shih-Lung Shaw s ArcScene extension
2. Snapshots Barry Smith s SNAP ontology Time-series of remotely sensed images Video Change detection
Rondonia, Brazil, 1975, 1986, 1992
3. Polygon coverages Reporting zones, cadaster Gail Langran, Time in Geographic Information Systems, 1992 National Historic GIS reconciling change in reporting zones z(i,t) = f[z(i,t-1),z(j,t), ] Serge Rey s STARS Space-Time Analysis of Regional Systems
Comparative spatial analysis of the development of the Chinese and US economies through time, 1978-1998 Xinyue Ye, Bowling Green State University
4. Cellular automata A fixed raster of cells A set of states for each cell A set of rules that determine state transitions through time PCRaster
Keith Clarke, UC Santa Barbara CA model of development based on transition probabilities as functions of slope, access to transportation, zoning, and states of neighboring cells
5. Agent-based models Discrete agents as geographic features Moving, changing state Rules governing states, behavior
6. Events and transactions The domain of the historian events in space and time linked spatially campaigns of armies hierarchically eac cayrelated eaed the battle and the war the meeting and the election can GIS support historical i scholarship? hi and update the historical atlas
7. Multidimensional data Environmental data intensively sampled in time with fixed spatial support NetCDF
One domain or seven? All seven need the multidisciplinary tools of GIS to interpret, assess, and visualize results to package results for public consumption Are there more (or fewer)?
Tasks for the research community What are the research questions? what are the use cases? some domains are driven by data availability rather than science questions What are the functions? at what level of granularity? standardized for discovery elusive even for traditional GIS What are the data models? the focus of much of the research to date
CyberGIS GIS as a distributed enterprise server-based GIS Service-oriented i architecture t Fully interoperable
Progress to date Interoperable location referencing coordinate transformations geocoding addresses point-of-interest databases 34 deg 24 min 42.7 seconds north, 119 deg 52 min 14.4 sec west 236150m east, 3811560m north, UTM Zone 11 Northern Hemisphere US National Grid reference 11SKU36151156 909 West Campus Lane, Goleta, CA 93117, USA Mike Goodchild s house
Standards Live access: WMS, WFS, WCS Metadata OGC, ISO Semantic interoperability INSPIRE
Engagement Citizens as both producers and consumers enabled by standards, GPS, cartographic software neogeography OpenStreetMap and Haiti
http://www.directrelief.org/flash/haitishipments/index.html
So why the fuss? Why cyber geographic information system? why not cyber geriatric information system? Two points represent impediments call for fundamental research
Location as common key The stack of layers
But in reality Spatial databases are organized as layers horizontal integration not vertical property z about all places rather than all properties about location x tell me everything about location x overlay must be invoked explicitly graphical overlay or topological overlay many mashups are merely graphical overlay a visual spatial join
The spatial join Using location as a common key to link tables All location references are subject to uncertainty measurement error vagueness in feature identification indeterminate limits The probabilistic join
Multiple attribution Shapes Names D aowaga ESRI Lake Tahoe ~~~ USGS Sierra Lake Types +Water Body Plate carre -Lake - Reservoir
The true spatial join is still elusive Much better techniques needed especially to deal with vague, vernacular references in text, speech, human discourse generally beyond formally defined ed coordinates well-defined metrics of confidence We are a long way from realizing the fully g y g y interoperable vision
The functionality of cybergis CyberGIS requires a formally defined functionality What is the appropriate level l of granularity of cybergis functions? How many functions are there? 542 in the ArcGIS 9.3.1 toolbox How to navigate among them? 18 top-level categories vaguely defined, overlapping Analysis, Spatial Analyst, Spatial Statistics, Geostatistical Analyst
Requirements A standard set of functions interoperable across all servers defined d granularity an atomic level in reality functionality is determined e ed in part by legacy and non-interoperable hidden from the user where appropriate
What is this really about? It used to be difficult to do senior undergraduate courses the GIS professional In a world of Google Earth what does everyone need to know? is spatial really special? do we SAPs think differently?
1. Linguistic Children with this kind of intelligence enjoy writing, reading, telling stories or doing crossword puzzles. 2. Logical-Mathematical Children with lots of logical intelligence are interested in patterns, categories and relationships. They are drawn to arithmetic problems, strategy games and experiments. 3. Bodily-Kinesthetic These kids process knowledge through bodily sensations. They are often athletic, dancers or good at crafts such as sewing or woodworking. 4. Spatial These children think in images and pictures. They may be fascinated with mazes or jigsaw puzzles, or spend free time drawing, building with Lego or daydreaming. 5. Musical Musical children are always singing or drumming to themselves. They are usually quite aware of sounds others may miss. These kids are often discriminating listeners. 6. Interpersonal Children who are leaders among their peers, who are good at communicating and who seem to understand others' feelings and motives possess interpersonal intelligence. 7. Intrapersonal These children may be shy. They are very aware of their own feelings and are selfmotivated. Howard Gardner http://www.professorlamp.com/ed/tag/7_intelligences.html
What is spatial thinking? Three aspects of spatial ability: Spatial knowledge symmetry, orientation, scale, distance decay, etc. Spatial ways of thinking and acting using diagramming or graphing, recognizing patterns in data, change over space from change over time, etc. Spatial capabilities ability to use tools and technologies such as spreadsheet, graphical, statistical, and GIS software to analyze spatial data http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11019.html
Fundamental spatial concepts Some acquired in early childhood distance, direction Some acquired only in higher h education spatial dependence, spatial heterogeneity not intuitive can be taught serve to distinguish the SAP
Karl Grossner www.teachspatial.org
186 concepts Overarching structures alphabetical sort part-whole relationships synonyms domain-specific meanings mapping to GIS functions level of conceptual complexity mapping to curriculum standards
Concluding comments Much still to be done Advancing technology creates a constant supply of interesting ti questions Need for future vision what will a geospatially enabled world look like in 2020? or 2015? how will society cope?