GIS and related technologies

• What is a GIS?
• The Basics of Geographic Information Systems
• Center for Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis.
• Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies.
• Real-Time Virtual Geographical Information System.
• The potential methodological impact of GIS on the Social Sciences
• Virtual environments
• Weather satellite picture of North America
• Nice geography and GIS servers - or so it's claimed!
• An Overview of the Global Positioning System (GPS)
• Introduction to GPS applications
• GIS WWW Server Resource List
• Feng Shui and GIS
• Serving Digital Map Information through the World-Wide Web and Wide-Area Information Server Technology
• GIS Tutorial
• Geographical Information Retrieval and Spatial Browsing
• Internet GIS and RS Information Sites
• AAG GIS Specialty Group HyperNews Forum
• Alexandria Digital Library
• Remote Sensing of Red-Cockaded Woodpecker Habitat
• Jacek Malczewski's Compilation of Internet Resources for Geo-Information-Based Decision Analysis
• Uncertainty in Spatial Data: Defining, Visualizing, and Managing Data Errors
• Using the Landscape Metaphor to Understand Population Data
• From Theoretical Critique to Critical Practice of GIS
• Satellite Remote Sensing
• Geographic Information Systems
• Point Handling
• GIS and Society
• Within-Field Location and Sensing Technology
• The Three Dimensional Visualization & Analysis of Geographic Data
• GIS Access and Marketing with Multimedia on the World Wide Web
• Asia Population Database Documentation
• Collaborative Spatial Decision Making on the Internet
• Data Infrastructure for Epidemiology
• Naive Geography - This paper defines the notion and concepts of Naive Geography, the field of study that is concerned with formal models of the common-sense geographic world. Naive Geography is the body of knowledge that people have about the surrounding geographic world. Naive Geography is envisioned to comprise a set of theories that provide the basis for designing future Geographic Information Systems that follow human intuition and are, therefore, easily accessible to a large range of users.
• Geocognostics - A New Paradigm for Spatial Information? - Has a reference to the previous paper
• Geoinformatics
• Diffusion of Geographic Information Innovations
• Applications of GIS for Demographic and Related Statistics: A Demonstration for Nepal
• New Applications of Spy Satellites
• GIS Related Sites
• Interfaces for Public Information and Scientific Research
• Designing Zoning Systems for Representation of Socio-Economic Data
• Great GIS Net Sites! Index
• Visualization Techniques for Landscape Evaluation
• The GIS Master Bibliography
• The Stages Of GIS Reasoning
• Mapping Science Committee Futures Workshop
• Brave New GIS Worlds
• Identifying Ethics in GIS
• GIS Information Resources List: Recent Additions & Updates
• Great GIS Net Sites! - many commercial GIS firms, including Thinkspace
• GIS as a Tool in Linguistics
• Workshop on Spatial Metaphors -- Position Paper
• Satellite Platforms and their Sensors
• Odd Willy Brude - Remote Sensing page
• Spatial Odyssey
• Hidden GIS Technocracy
• A User-Based Cognitive Approach To Modeling Highly Dynamic Information Problem Situations
• Geographic Information Analysis and Human Capital Research
• Spatial analysis in public health administration: a demonstration from WIC
• Applications of GIS for Demographic and Related Statistics: A Demonstration for Nepal
• GPSy -- A Macintosh GPS Program
• Theory in a Complex World: Agent-Based Simulations of Geographic Systems
• Earth Observation Websites
• Multi-spectral Video Image of the Flooding of the Riviere aux Sables, Jonquiere, Quebec
• Precision Farming Center - Bjertorp
• Internet GIS Resources
• Terrain Trafficability Modeling
• Terrain Analysis from Visibility Metrics
• Demonstration of VGIS Project (Using Java)
• Geographic Information Systems and Applications
• ESRI Canada Ltd. - What is GIS?
• Spatial Conflicts in the Information Age
• NARSAL Home Page (NAtural Resources Spatial Analysis Laboratory)
• Application of Arc/Info GIS to Policing in a Local Town
• Geodesic Math
• A Role for Geographic Information Systems in the Secondary Schools
• Ontario Information & Privacy Commissioner - Geographic Information Systems
• GIS at Sandia National Laboratories
• Steven Manson - Links to GIS Sites
• Peter Young : 3D Information Visualisation
• Position Paper on Collaborative Spatial Decision-Making
• The Business Geographics Resource Site
• GIS in the Rockies - How to use the Internet for research
• Are Remote Sensing Journals Geography Journals?
• A Geographer's Knowledge Base - geography and GIS
• By Letting Us Fly Through Mountains And Galaxies Of Information, Visualization Could Help Make The Web A More Useful Resource
• Urbanizing GIS: Philadelphia's Strategy to Bring GIS to Neighborhood Planning
• How GPS Works
• Sites of Geospatial Data
• GPS World Home Page
• Geo Information Systems Home Page
• Data Mining Solutions and the Establishment of a Data Warehouse: Corporate Nirvana for the 21st Century?
• What Is...Data Mining (a definition)
• Data Mining - PC Webopaedia Definition and Links
• Art, Design, and Visual Thinking - An Interactive Textbook
• R. Buckminster Fuller's Synergetics - an online book
• Mapping the Environment on the Web
• Future of Spatial Data and Society
• Why Whales Don't Freeze or Kidney-Shaped Airports: Spatial Analysis and Spatial Design
• USGS: Geo Data
• Hydroconsult's GIS Page
• Local Thinking About the National Spatial Data Infrastructure
• Goodchild and Folk -- Research Mechanisms
• Spatial/Environmental Winds of Change
• Of todes and worms: An Experiment in bringing Time to ARC/INFO
• Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure
• Business Geographics
• Stephen G. Eick -- Network Visualization Images
• The Archaeological Uses of Remote Sensing in Tropical Environments, Focusing on Mesoamerica
• Environmental Restoration Information System and Geographic Information System Network
• Geographic Clustering
• A Prediction of the Internet's Effect on Land Records In the United States - Also discusses the model for land records in Ontario, Canada
• GIS WORLD Outlook '97
• Amara's Visualization Page
• Visual Communication Links
• Geomatics Canada/Géomatique Canada
• Advanced Visualization Interfaces
• Sara's Research: Spatial Metaphors For Browsing Large Data Archives
• SQWID - A Java-Based Query Visualization System
• Region of Camp Pendleton Biodiversity Study
• French Guiana Mapped Using ERS Radar Imagery
• Frontiers in Conceptual Navigation
• Frontiers in Conceptual Navigation 2
• Space Imaging
• Digital Street Networks
• Spatial Data in the Classroom
• Data Integration Research: Overview And Future Prospects
• The National Geospatial Data Framework
• The GIS Homepage
• Terrain Analysis Home Page
• Open Spatial Decision Making on the Internet - a simple demonstration of a GIS-based Spatial Decision Support System for siting radioactive waste disposal facilities in Britain
• Decision Analysis and Group Decision Making
• Java and Geography
• GeoWeb Java Corner
• Global Spatial Data Infrastructures
• Geographic Databases Research - Overview And Future Prospects
• Ecotourism Interactive GIS
• Calibrating & Testing a Gravity Model for Any Size Urban Area
• Mapping with GPS Data
• Building a Mathematical Model
• How Does Digital Mapping Profit Organizations?
• Mapping Cyberspace with GIS
• Mapping the future
• An Introduction to Fractals
• GIS / Cartography: starting points
• Welcome to Internet GIS World - Internet GeoStar
• Papers on Space Imaging
• Manifold GIS System Start Page
• Geographic Information Systems - GIS
• UB GIAL - Internet Geography Information
• Towards Application of GIS for Visualising Fractal Phenomena
• Cellular Automata
• The GIS Data Depot - The Supersite for GIS Data on the Internet - The purpose of the GIS Data Depot is to promote the open exchange and free transfer of geospatial data over the Internet.
• Correlation, Tracking, and Fusion - Commercial applications include air traffic control, resource management for vehicle routing (including planes, trucks, trains, and containers), physical security and perimeter control, inventory control, and drug interdiction
• Computing and the Science of Geography
• SpatialNews - Bringing GISnews, CAD and Mapping news to your desktop
• Modeling Third Wave (Virtual) Accessibility
• Building Georeferenced Collections
• Combinatorial Optimization and Society
• The GIS History Project
• The Virtual Earth
• The Future of GIS
• Getting Started With GIS
• The Outlook for the Future of GIS
• The Future Of GIS
• Modelling and Supporting Multi-Actor Spatial Planning using Multi-Agents Systems
• Goal Programming Information Site
• Spatial Decision Support Systems in Natural Resources, a Review
• GeoCommunity - The Source for GIS Data, News, Software, Discussion & Fun - premier resource for GIS/CAD professionals
• Some Internet Resources for Mathematical Modelling
• GIS Frequently Asked Questions and General Info List Index
• Spatio-Temporal Data Model
• Of Todes And Worms: An Experiment In Bringing Time To Arcinfo
• The Design of A Web-based Geographic Information System for Community Participation
• Multidimensional Modeling
• Mapping Webography
• The Geographic Spread of Influenza
• Real Intelligence: the case for deductive geocomputation
• Potential for Integrated GIS-Agriculture Models for Precision Farming Systems
• Canada Centre for Remote Sensing Home Page
• GeoConnections / CGDI web site - CGDI will coordinate and make Canada's geospatial data bases accessible on the Internet.
• Spatial Data on the Web
• FieldNote: Extending a GIS into the Field - Intended for use in both student and research fieldwork, providing facilities for instruction, data recording and information retrieval tailored to the users¹ requirements.
• Retrieving Information By Context - With the increased availability of personal computers with attached sensors to capture their environment, there is a big opportunity for context-aware applications.
• Useful Links: Mobile Computing and GPS
• On-Line Resources for Land Surveying and Geomatics: GPS li>Population Project Homepage - The global demography project is an effort to generate consistent, spatially referenced global population data sets for global and regional environmental analysis, demographic research, etc.
• Introduction to the Varenius Project - Geographic information is first defined as an abstraction of primitive tuples linking geographic locations to general descriptors. Geographic concepts originate in the human mind, and are instantiated in geographic information. Geographic information technologies apply digital methods to geographic information. Finally, geographic information science is defined as the set of basic research issues arising from these technologies.
• Ontologies and Knowledge Sharing in Urban GIS - This paper discusses issues related to the use of ontologies in the development of urban geographic information systems and proposes the creation of software components from diverse ontologies as a way to share knowledge and data.
• CEONet Central Services - Enabling access to Geospatial Data and Services from around the world...TO YOUR DESKTOP!
• GeoGratis - GeoGratis is a web and file transfer protocol (ftp) site that distributes geospatial data of Canada. Data is available for download, without charge.
• Spatial Modeling of Fire Frequency
• ArcInfo And S-Plus For Segregation Analysis - Using various data manipulation functions and procedures in S-Plus, different types of spatial information are then combined with attribute data to calculate a family of spatial segregation indices.
• Spatial Mapping of Poverty and Inequality
• Welcome to the Official Home of the GRASS GIS!
• IGU GISc Study Group
• ArcData Online Map Studio - ArcData Online enables you to access a wide variety of geographic data sets to display and download over the Web.
• MapInfo for Mac Tutorial Table of Contents
• Geography and GIS Related Sites
• GeoGratis - Home Page - Welcome to GeoGratis! GeoGratis is a web and file transfer protocol (ftp) site that distributes geospatial data of Canada. Data is available for download, without charge. Vector mapping data is available in scales ranging from 1:250 000 to 1:30 000 000 in a variety of file formats. Similarly, several types of full resolution satellite imagery are on-line. Please note that some files are large, therefore plan to download outside Eastern Standard Time peak hours.
• GTOPO30 - Global Topographic Data
• Ultimate Directories for Technology Professionals - GIS, CAD, Mathematics, Engineering, etc.
• Matrix Operations Online - Solve matrix multiplication, addition and subtraction online. Calculate inverses and determinants.
• Simplex Method of Solving Linear Programs
• Calculus Tutorial Page
• Graph Theory Tutorials
• GeoComputation 99 Abstracts, Papers, and Presentations - The keynote lecturers were leading researchers in the field of geocomputation and related disciplines, who were invited by the conference.
• Geospatial Information & Technology Association - The mission of Geospatial Information & Technology Association is to provide excellence in education and information exchange on the use and benefits of geospatial information and technology in telecommunications, infrastructure and utility applications worldwide.
• Cartographic Boundary Files Tools and Utilities - U.S. Bureau of the Census - This section of the Census Bureau's website is an awesome data resource. This is your gateway to free geospatial data downloads from the bureau, complete with meta data and other technical information. All downloads are available in E00, SHP, or ASCII formats.
• GeoCommunity - GIS Tools and Utilities - Geo Tran - This program was developed by Forestry Canada to allow field staff to make quick, accurate conversions between various systems of location, including Alberta legal land descriptions (ATS), latitude and longitude (lat-long) and UTM coordinates. This is actually a subroutine in a much larger program designed to make effective use of manpower and supplies during forest fire season. The GEO program is straight-forward, although not extremely user-friendly. To the best of my knowledge, there are no restrictions in copying or use of this program.
• GIS Lounge - Gateway to GIS by Caitlin Dempsey, with an up-to-date webdirectory, a newsletter and some basic texts on GIS, careers in GIS and US resources. The directory has sections of Digital Elevation Models, formats, ArcView resources, tutorials, urban land use and many others. Especially strong in US resources.
• Global Geomatics' GIS On The Digital Front Lines Of Military Operations - Combat as well as peacekeeping commanders must at all times have detailed knowledge of the terrain and the disposition and activities of the forces confronting them. State-of-the art digital information systems have become principal components of today's armed forces surveillance assets; and mapping software for accessing, manipulating, and displaying cartographic, photographic, and photogrammetric data is front and center in the array of digital reconnaissance tools.
• web-mapper.com - The First On-Line Resource Devoted To Internet-based GIS.
• NCGIA Core Curriculum in GISci - Detailed Outline
• Free GIS Placename Data
• Federal Geographic Data Committee - The Federal Geographic Data Committee coordinates the development of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI). The NSDI encompasses policies, standards, and procedures for organizations to cooperatively produce and share geographic data. The 17 federal agencies that make up the FGDC are developing the NSDI in cooperation with organizations from state, local and tribal governments, the academic community, and the private sector.
• Information Visualization Resources
• Modeling Third Wave (Virtual) Accessibility - This paper discusses ideas on past, present and possible future ways to model accessibility using geographic information technologies. Although accessibility modeling is traditionally associated with shortest path (transit) calculations, we have used it for urban and regional planning purposes to address not so much the routes as the population or area served (or marginalized) by possible routes. Third Wave phenomena such as telecommuting and teleshopping are changing the way we view and model urban accessibility. Primary interest rests on developing and mapping new indices to represent the concept of virtual accessibility to economic activity centers.
• The History and Application of GIS in Education - This paper focuses on the history and application of Geographic Information Systems as a tool of data analysis in K-12 Education, specifically science education. The development of science education into its current state, the evolution of GIS, and finally the interaction of GIS and education are also discussed. Historical, practical, and theoretical applications of GIS in education will be addressed.
• The GISPortal! Great GIS Net Sites! - Your Source for Mapping Technology since 1994 The GISPortal (also known as Great GIS Net Sites!) is one of the top web sites for Geographic Information System (GIS) industry information. If you like maps, mapping technology, cool on line 3D mapping software, and the best look at the GIS market anywhere, you've found the right place!
• Introduction to GML Geography Markup Language - This paper provides a brief introduction to Geography Markup Language (GML). The paper is the first in a series of papers to get you acquainted with this exciting way to represent and manipulate geographic information. Future articles on the Java Location Services site will introduce you to a variety of GML topics including GML map making, GML data transformations, spatial queries and geographic analysis, GML-based spatial databases, and a variety of GML applications including applications to mobile computing systems. We expect GML to revolutionize the treatment of spatial information. GML is web friendly. For the first time spatial information will have a truly public encoding standard.
• GIS Tools and Utilities - We have made every effort to acquire and provide links to utilities and software that will help you with any difficulties you may be experiencing with your digitizing tablet.
• Affordable Surveying, Mapping and Engineering Software for the Natural Resource Industries - Free Surveying and Mapping Software
• Exploring the structure of space: towards geo-computational theory - Space is a concept which is central to our understanding of the world. Indeed, in recent years it seems to have taken pride of place in many more fields of enquiry than might be thought strictly sensible. 'Spaces' of various sorts seem to be everywhere these days: geographic space, urban space, architectural space, virtual space, cyberspace (that old chestnut), body space, mental space, cognitive space,'the space of flows', geographic space, psychological space, dream space, symbolic space... the list is potentially endless. The sheer multiplicity of spaces in contemporary academic discourse is overwhelming. Such widespread use is in danger of making the term meaningless. At the very least, it requires those of us who want to use the concept to define what we mean.
  In this paper I use a recent concept from geographic modelling - proximal space - as the starting point for an exploration of the properties of space, in particular its effects on certain kinds of dynamic processes. Two possible representations of such a proximal model of space are introduced: graphs and cellular automata (CA), along with a brief consideration of some of the analytical techniques which have previously been used to investigate these representations.
• The Integration of Geographic Visualization with Databases, Data Mining, Knowledge Construction and Geocomputation - The paper has three main sections covering (1) data mining and exploratory data analysis, (2) knowledge construction and (3) system and data model issues. For the first two sections the techniques are described according to the mode of scientific inquiry (inference) that they support in order to differentiate the roles played by the system and the user. Each section concludes by describing the major research questions and issues that need to be resolved in order for exploratory geographic visualization to reach its full potential as a medium for science and education. These questions are summarized and framed in a broader context in the concluding section.
• Welcome to the UCGIS (University Consortium for Geographic Information Science) Home Page
• Geographic Information And Society - Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have had an arguably greater direct impact on society than has any other facet of the discipline of geography in recent times. The theme of this paper, 'geographic information and society' reflects the engagement of Geographic Information Science (GISc) with all that constitutes society, understood as a "cluster of socially constructed institutions, relationships, and forms of conduct that are reproduced and reconstructed across time and space, and the conditions under which such phenomena are formed." This engagement is unquestionably an unusual and important element of geography at the end of the twentieth century. The study of this reciprocally interactive relationship is concerned with the effects of the widespread use of, primarily digital, geographic information on society's constituent members and groups; power and authority, structures and institutions; and its philosophies and ethics. Conversely, it is concerned with how contemporary and historical social processes and conditions affect and have affected the technology and science of geographic information. The rapid evolution and adoption of geographic information systems and related technologies have brought about a concomitant growth and rationalization of knowledge about geographic information and its uses within society. In turn, greater knowledge suggests, on the one hand, a fuller appreciation of the prevalence, contributions, and use of geographic data for the public and private good and, on the other, of its potential for intrusion and as a public and private bad.
• GIS as Media? Or how media Theories can help us understand GIS and society - The social implications of GIS have been debated among scholars in several disciplines during the past five years. GIS have been either conceived by practitioners as value-free, neutral tools for problem solving or castigated by critical social theorists as socially biased technologies serving only corporate and state interests. Neither of these polarized views is very helpful for us to understand the complex relationship between GIS and society. This paper argues that GIS are increasingly becoming media for communicating various crucial social and environmental information to the general public. By reconceptualizing GIS as media, this paper conducts a detailed tetradic analysis on the social implications of GIS using Marshall McLuhan's law of media. The analysis reveals the paradoxical and ambivalent nature of GIS technology. To make GIS fulfill democratic ideals in society, this paper calls for a shift of perspective from viewing GIS as an instrument for problem solving to viewing it as media for communication. This shift from instrumental to communicative rationality enables us to more critically and holistically examine how space, people, and environment have been represented, manipulated, and visualized in GIS, and thus promotes a more critical and democratic GIS practice in the society.
• GISLinx - Over 1,700 Categorized GIS Sites!: Resources: GIS Starting Points
• The Future Of GIS - Items for consideration - notes and ideas only.
• Are image-objects the key for upscaling remotely sensed data? - To better understand the effects of scale on landscape patterns, we describe the relationship between remote sensing imagery and the modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP), and describe an object-specific upscaling technique which overcomes MAUP. We also suggest that landscapes are dissipative-structures, and theorize how a multiscale extension to this object-specific framework applied to remote sensing data may assist in defining critical landscape thresholds, domains of scale, the grain and extent at which ecosystem models could be developed and applied, and methods for linking data between these scales.
• Free GIS and CAD Software
• GPS WebLinks
• The Global Positioning System
• Selected websites pertaining to geospatial data sources. - Lots more can be seen by entering keyword "geospatial" into your favourite search engine. Medical geography uses the concepts and techniques of geography to investigate health-related issues. This report aims to make the health services research community more aware of methods and approaches offered by the discipline of geography to the field of health services research. With the computer programs and applications now available, it is possible to create maps and spatial interpretations that are not complex and do not require special data or systems. Data that apply to standard geographic areas can be mapped quickly and included in almost any type of printed report or visual medium. This report leads the reader through several commonly used methods for producing maps and visual displays that can be used for policy analysis, research, and/or planning purposes. It incorporates demonstrations and interpretations of applications using real-world examples. The applications reflect both the disease ecology and spatial analysis aspects of medical geography.
• Crime Mapping Research Center Homepage - Welcome to the web site for the Crime Mapping Research Center at the National Institute of Justice. Established in 1997, the goal of the Center is the promotion, research, evaluation, development, and dissemination of GIS (geographic information systems) technology and the spatial analysis of crime.
• p* Logit Models for Social Networks - The p* family of models developed by Wasserman and Pattison (1996), Pattison and Wasserman (1999), and Robins, Pattison, and Wasserman (1999) are based on the pathbreaking Markov spatial interaction models for random graphs of Frank and Strauss (1986) and Strauss and Ikeda (1990). These models allow researchers to break free of the severe independence assumptions of earlier statistical models for social networks, permitting a very general dependence structure for the network quantities. Further, the p* formulation allows network measurements to be viewed in a standard response/explanatory variables setting in which the response variable is the log odds of the probability that a relational tie is present. The explanatory variables can be quite general, including network structural properties like the tendency towards mutuality or transitivity; nominal, discrete or continuous actor attributes, as well as the interactions between these elements.
• Statistics, Geostatistics & Image Processing Web Sites
• A Brief Introduction To Genetic Algorithms (Moshe Sipper)
• Intro to Genetic Algorithms
• Introduction to Genetic Algorithms
• The Genetic Algorithms Archive
• Introduction To Genetic Algorithms With Java Applets
• The Genetic Algorithms Archive
• A Genetic Algorithm for Locating Optimal Sites on Raster Suitability Maps - Raster suitability maps can be generated within a GIS using standard multi-criteria evaluation techniques, but their use for site location is problematic when the sites are larger than the cell size. A candidate site is a region, i.e. a cluster of contiguous cells, which meets both spatial and non-spatial criteria. When the site size is much larger than the cell size, shape becomes a meaningful criterion. The search space for this problem is large and complex; there are many alternate clusters of cells and small changes in the size, location, or configuration, of clusters can have large affects on utility. This paper describes a genetic algorithm which searches for optimal clusters and thereby locates optimal sites. In simulated problems the genetic algorithm finds better solutions than a heuristic search does.
• Intelligent Systems for GIS - "Intelligent" computing techniques (neural networks, genetic algorithms, expert systems, fuzzy logic, dynamical systems theory, etc.) have enjoyed considerable success in data analysis, decision support and modelling. Applications include customer profiling, sales forecasting, fraud detection, economic modelling, optimising retail store layouts and store locations, financial forecasting and risk assessment. Geographical Information Systems have similarly transformed national, regional and local planning, environmental resource management, locational planning, etc. In this paper, we examine the possibility of fully integrating these technologies and discuss methods for achieving this. We outline each of the various Intelligent techniques, their general areas of application and specific applications relevant to GIS. We then present two new methods for integrating the techniques with GIS for spatial analysis and modelling. Next we describe GeoAnalyser, a simple spatio-temporal analysis tool which utilises Non-linear Dynamics and Genetic Algorithms for industrial modelling.
• A Semi-Automatic Method To Build Territorial Partitions - The goal of this article is to assess the suitability of a semi-automatic method to build spatial partitions. Processed data are geographical intercommunal flows, especially agricultural flows. Geographical entities are french communes to compose spatial aggregates. Spatial clustering implements two complementary aggregation methods. During a first stage, an automatic algorithm (hierarchical clustering or genetical algorithms associated to a head function) follows a defined heuristic to generate a territorial partition. Then, an exploratory method allows user to analyse geographical flows, to evaluate partition and its spatial aggregates, and to modify them interactively, if necessary. These approaches are finaly compared according to different points of view : the employed method, the built partition and the user. Consecutive partitions and aggregation methods may be used by french statistical offices, such as INSEE and SCEES, whose we keep in touch through national research programs (PSIG and INRA-DADP).
• Building New Spatial Models: a Supercomputing Approach - The majority of spatial models used in geography are "old". Most first appeared over 25 years ago and have merely been embellished in various ways. One reason is that they work well enough. Another is that it has traditionally been easier to "borrow" and extend models that exist than it has to develop new models from scratch. Perhaps also model building was not fashionable. A further reason is that model design in a geographical context has never been easy. The mathematical and statistical aspects are complex, relevant theoretical bases are at best weak and often missing, and until fairly recently there was hardly any data on which to calibrate and evaluate them. The GIS era has breathed a fresh life into this area by providing an increasingly spatial data rich environment within which to build models and also an increasing end-user need for the intelligent use of GIS by modelling rather than merely describing spatial behaviour and relationships.
• The use of Flocks to drive a Geographic Analysis Machine - Artificial Life is becoming a topic of major international interest in a wide variety of fields, yet is largely unknown in the social sciences. This paper looks at one investigation into the nature and utility of Artificial Life in an exploratory geographical analysis context. Attention is focused on the application of ideas related to flocking behavior and swarm optimisation to develop new types of spatial analysis technology.
• Association of Geographic Information Laboratories - To promote academic teaching and research on GIS by representing the interests of those involved in GI-teaching and research at the national and the European level, and the continuation and extension of existing networking activities.
• Monitoring Oil Spills With Satellite Imagery - Thanks to the work of the European Space Agency, the controversial practice of using satellite SAR imagery to help detect and prosecute illegal oil discharge has become more widely accepted. The technology is now well on its way to becoming the standard for oil spill monitoring and detecting operations in the Mediterranean.
• Turning a Map Into a Layer Cake of Information - Companies use them to plan store locations, watchdog groups to track discrimination and law enforcement agencies to fight crime. Geographic information systems, as they are called, are increasingly ubiquitous computerized mapping programs that help corporations, private groups and governments make decisions. These GIS programs work by connecting information stored in a computer database to points on a map. Information is displayed in layers, with each succeeding layer laid over the preceding ones, like transparent sheets on an overhead projector. The resulting maps often reveal trends or patterns that might be missed if the same information was presented in a spreadsheet.
• Geocoding - Real estate agents are maximizing sales by developing flexible geocoding applications.
• UNIGIS: Tele-learning Program in Geographic Information Systems - UniGIS is for professionals in the GIS workforce. The program focusses on the design and implementation of Geographic Information Systems in real-life situations. Participants can take the program at home on their own schedule, with no loss of salary.
• Data Modeling For Multi-Resolution Map Generalization - QThiMer -- for QTM hierarchy -- is a hybrid geospatial data model that fuses vector- topological descriptions of sets of geographic features with quadtree representations of spherical point locations. It is also the name of a software testbed that generates, generalizes, analyzes and displays cartographic data such as might be maintained in a geographic information system. The software is used to construct displays of the source data at smaller scales than those at which they were captured. The initial goal of this research is to evaluate how well hierarchically-encoded coordinates assist on-the-fly map generalization: is this approach to filtering spatial data effective and efficient, and might it support tasks more demanding than zooming in and out? To this end, a platform for spatial data management, transformation and analysis has been constructed. While it presently only processes one feature class at a time, it is designed to handle more, whether modeled as overlayed coverages or independent objects. And while we have not connected this approach to decomposing space with hierarchical feature classification for map generalization, the two perspectives are related and should be united. This paper describes (1) the quaternary triangular mesh (QTM) hierarchical location encoding scheme; (2) QThiMer datatypes and data modeling; (3) aspects of a user interface to this testbed; and (4) some unsolved problems in applying this approach to map generalization. A companion paper describes the generalization algorithms being explored, illustrating cartographic and statistical results.
• Welcome to Spatial Effects - a refreshingly novel site with, as its name implies, some interesting effects. As one viewer said, "I've just been looking at your web site (a cursory look at this point) and it is amazing! So much information, but so well laid-out, and very aesthetically pleasing."
• Spatial Effects: Related Geospatial Sites - The following classified links are all hopefully still current. Use them to gain access to tens of thousands of other links and terrabytes of spatial data. You also have the option of adding new links to this collection.
• GIS Goes Mainstream - Many processes involved in manipulating spatial data are already controlled by user-friendly GUIs. At the same time, GIS is being drawn into mainstream IT by a convergence of developments and technologies -- open interoperability standards, open databases capable of managing and storing data of all types; the explosive growth of the Internet; the advent of broadband capability, enormous increases in computer power -- these and others are factors in the democratization of GIS. In addition, wireless technology, the removal of restrictions on GPS accuracy, and the growing availability of one-meter satellite imagery are expected to generate new products, applications and a robust market in what is being called "location-based services," a term that is becoming almost synonymous with GIS. In fact, GIS is the foundation and catalyst for location-based services. As the technology moves into mainstream IT, progressively smarter servers, wizards and GUIs will make many applications involving spatial data about as complicated as online house-hunting.
• Image Analysis Workshop
• Information Technology Trends and Challenges - It is fun to reflect on the past of information technology and to prognosticate about its future, but if that exercise is to be of any value, it should help us to better use the increasingly sophisticated and flexible tools that the industry continues to provide. This is really the challenge - for individuals and organizations to better employ information technology to make a real difference on the quality of our lives and environment. Through my experience with the use of information technology and my exposure to the industry, I see the following major trends that will influence our own personal and professional lives over the next several decades.
• URISA - Ontario Chapter - URISA - Ontario Chapter is a non-profit organization providing educational programs and services related to Spatial Information Systems and integrated solutions. The Chapter currently has over 500 members including individuals and groups from all levels of government, GIS an applications vendors, consultants, educators, students, and the business community at large.
• The Likelihood of Becoming a GIS User - Successful introduction of geographic information systems (GIS) into public sector agencies depends largely on how organizational members accept and utilize the new technology. Personal characteristics, attitudes, and background exert substantial influence on individual decisions about the degree and manner in which GIS is employed to pursue an organizational mission and tasks. This paper examines the significance of human factors, including perception of GIS benefits, compatibility with personal values and beliefs, previous computer experience, perceived complexity of GIS, exposure to GIS, computer anxiety, attitude toward work-related change, and communication behavior. Relevant contextual organizational factors and management activities are also considered. Responses to a mail survey of over 600 local government employees were analyzed using logistic regression procedure to identify the factors that contribute to the staff becoming GIS users and to the administrators supporting GIS use in their agencies. The results are interpreted as probabilities of adopting a GIS, given the presence of particular personal, organizational, or management factors.
• The Degree Confluence Project - The goal of the project is to visit each of the latitude and longitude integer degree intersections in the world, and to take pictures at each location. The pictures and stories will then be posted here.
• Interactive Statistical Calculation Pages - The web pages listed here comprise a powerful, conveniently-accessible, multi-platform statistical software package. There are also links to online statistics books, tutorials, downloadable software, and related resources. All of these resources are freely accessible, once you can get onto the Internet.
• Flowmap: State of the Art Windows 3.11/95 Software for Analysis of Flow Data - Flowmap 6 is a software package dedicated to analyzing and displaying interaction or flow data. This type of data is special in the sense that there are two different geographic locations connected to each data item: An origin location where the flow starts and an destination location where the flow ends. The flow data itself can be people (e.g. commuters, shoppers, hospital visitors), goods, usage of agricultural services or telecommunication and so on.
• GIS for Business - Businesses manage a world of information about sales, customers, inventory, demographic profiles, mailing lists, and much more. At the core of this information is an address, a service boundary, a sales territory, or a delivery route that can be illustrated and interactively managed on a map. By tying information to specific locations on interactive maps, businesses can identify patterns and understand relationships not apparent from static tables and charts.
• Data Mining on the Internet - Knowledge discovery in databases or data mining on the Internet has two implications: Mining the Internet itself and distributed data mining with the Internet as communication infrastructure. In this paper we first introduce the basics in the general data mining. We then describe mining the Internet, concentrating on mining the Web. We also discuss distributed data mining with the Internet as communication infrastructure. We conclude by listing several cutting-edge projects and research problems about data mining on the Internet.
• Links to GIS and Remote Sensing Sites
• GEOIDE - Geomatics is being increasingly used to provide tools for the management and development of natural and renewable resources. Information for management and decision-making is needed by industry and federal, provincial and municipal governments. Canada's regional diversity and the fact that resource exploitation is often in remote areas requires innovative data acquisition and data management solutions. Earth observation information and in particular satellite data, provide an important data source for monitoring and management in all of the above sectors. The use of space radar, LIDAR and hyper-spatial and hyperspectral resolution (airborne and Small Satellites) data will have an impact on management and information discrimination in the natural resources sector. Geospatial data are essential for the mapping and management of these resources. In addition, high precision GPS data are required for many of the applications of geospatial data. The temporal and quality aspects of data management are critical for the management and development of these natural and renewable resources. Information is often needed on an ongoing basis. For example, forest clear-cut inventory is updated on a yearly basis. In addition, many scenarios require data prior to, during and after exploitation. A typical example here is the mining industry.
• GIS and Hydrogeology
• An Open Global Infrastructure for Spatial-Aware Applications - Due to the lack of a generic platform for location- and spatial-aware systems, many basic services have to be reimplemented in each application that uses spatial-awareness. A cooperation among different applications is also difficult to achieve without a common platform. In this paper we present a platform that solves these problems. It provides an infrastructure that is based on computer models of regions of the physical world, which are augmented by virtual objects. We show how virtual objects make the integration of existing information systems and services in spatial-aware systems easier. Furthermore, our platform supports interactions between the computer models and the real world and integrates single models in a global "Augmented World".
• Amit's List of Spatial Reasoning Resources - Welcome to the list of Online Spatial Reasoning Resources. The original list, created after our IJCAI-95 Tutorial on Spatial Reasoning. became quite popular, and I am now releasing its first major update, with dozens of new sites and updated links and contents for the previous pointers.
• Spatial Theory Reseach - This document lists some of the centres and people involved in research on spatial information theory, GIS, and related topics. It does not claim to be comprehensive, and it is biassed towards work of a theoretical nature.
• Census Geography - The planning of a census begins several years before the actual Census Day. Before data collection can take place, geographic boundaries delineating enumeration areas (EAs) must be drawn across the country. A census representative (CR) is responsible for the enumeration of each EA. More than 44,000 maps must be generated from information provided by provincial authorities and planning boards before collection can begin. Once collection and processing have been completed, data are disseminated for geographic levels ranging from Canada-wide totals to individual communities. Between collection and dissemination, geographic coding occurs in a wide range of census operations. Hence, defining Canada's geographies for the purpose of conducting a census becomes an integral part of the process as it forms the basis from which our government takes shape and from which data about Canadians can be captured, monitored and analysed.
• CSDMS - Benefits of GIS for Society - As the leading regional center committed to the promotion of GIS and its usage in various development activities, CSDMS assists South Asian community in developing their capabilities and policies to maximize the benefits of GIS through advocacy, training, information and the provision of expert advice and assistance.
• GIS And Society - Geographic information systems (GISs) are becoming routine analysis and display tools for spatial data, used extensively in applications such as land-use mapping (for urban planning purposes), transportation mapping and analysis (for determining efficient transportation routes for deliveries and emergency response), geodemographic analysis (for facilities location), utilities infrastructure mapping (for precise gas, water, and electric line mapping), and multiple applications in natural resource assessment (including water quality assessment and wildlife habitat studies). GISs allow efficient and flexible storage, display, and exchange of certain kinds of spatial data, as well as potential interface opportunities for a variety of quantitative spatial analysis models. Users include: federal, state and local governments and their agencies, private firms, non-profit organizations, grassroots and community groups, universities, and research institutes. Yet, like all technologies, GIS co-evolves with the societies of which it is a part.
• GIS Links and Resources
• Geographical Information Systems (GIS) WWW Resource List - This is an index of World-Wide Web (WWW) servers which are likely to be of interest to the GIS community. It is maintained by Bruce M. Gittings and Anup Pradhan at the Department of Geography in the University of Edinburgh, in collaboration with the Association for Geographic Information. These servers all provide pages in the English language.
• The Future Of The Spatial Information Infrastructure - Spatial data infrastructures and geolibraries are institutional concepts being advanced in order to respond to needs for wide-ranging spatially referenced information in various problem-solving domains. These diverse needs are spread across government, industry, academic, and public interest sectors. The term "infrastructure" typically brings to mind public facilities such as roads, sewer lines, electric lines, airports and similar physical structures or networks in which government has played a major role in their construction or ongoing support. Thus, terms such as the National Information Infrastructure (NII) and National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) typically bring to mind the facilities being financed through tax dollars in order to allow the more efficient transmission and communication of information in support of the general and widespread interests of broad sectors of society. Information infrastructure also brings to mind the facilities, processes, and standards by which essential government information is made available to citizens, businesses, scientists and other governmental agencies and bodies. Government involvement in information infrastructure development is critical to advancing the economic and social wellbeing of our nation's citizens and UCGIS endorses the general goals and objectives of the NSDI as published by the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC 1997).
• GIS in Public Participation Settings - This presentation reports on meetings, discussions and projects concerned with the theme "public participation GIS" (PPGIS). Emerging visions of public contexts for GIS are contrasted with some of the present limitations of GIS implementation. The opportunity to develop new community institutions and the need for new professional roles within a culture of information sharing are discussed as reflections of the public participation theme. The significance of places to community members points toward including narratives and stories as an initial step in developing a multimedia GIS. This would also begin to enable communities to locate situational precedents and communicate about them with each other while maintaining a geographic information context. Suggestions for future work and research are offered.
• Navigation in the Information Age - The use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) by indigenous peoples for self-determination, sustainable resource management, and assertion of land claims is increasing worldwide. GIS can be described as a powerful computerized version of the Western written map, with the ability to store, analyze, and display large amounts of diverse spatial data. This research undertook to explore the GIS initiative of the sovereignty group "Nation of Hawai'i," and to study recent literature and the larger context of GIS use in Hawai'i, for the purpose of better understanding if and how GIS can assist the Nation of Hawai'i in its struggle for self-determination and eventually, for sustainable managment of the Hawaiian archipelago. For this research, a collaborative approach to participant observation was chosen to create a stronger sense of anthropological reflection, and to enable a more ambitious project to be undertaken.
• Representing Individuals and Societies in GIS - An inherent difficulty in representing and understanding individuals and societies in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has been the static, land-attribute framework of current GIS. Yet societies are dynamic; composed of disparate and mobile individuals whose interactions lead to emergence of the complex, non-linear phenomena that shape our spaces and societies. The very complexity of social phenomena means that harnessing the power of computers to aid our understanding is far more critical here than it is for the simpler landscape issues traditionally addressed with GIS. Our challenge is not merely to clarify the limitations of current computer representations, but rather to elucidate alternative representations that do facilitate effective representation and integration of the complex relationships between People, Space, and Environment. Individual-Based Models may offer a more appropriate system for representing and studying many complex social interactions within a spatial framework. Such models enable us to specify individuals and populations of individuals who each have distinct knowledge, needs, desires, resources, information access, locations, abilities, mobilities, and time-specific locations; all within a spatial framework that includes not only spatial and environmental context, but also the context provided by other individuals and their potential interactions.
• IPmapper - IPmapper helps businesses Geo-Target online customers and Internet users.
• Oregon Telecommunications Atlas - This report overviews telecommunications. It compiles research for mapping the Oregon Telecom environment. It is a preliminary survey of data compiled from a variety of trade publications and internet resources. This report has six parts, (1) a broad narrative overview of telecommunications and Oregon anecdotes, (2) Telecommunications facilities by city, (3) County inventory - mostly cell tower locations in lat/long, (4) Oregon maps of cell and fiber infrastructure, (5) Oregon Radio and Television broadcasters, (6) Reference links.
• Virginia Geographic Information Network - The Virginia Geographic Information Network (VGIN) is the lead public agency in the Commonwealth for spatial data and GIS. VGIN's mission is to facilitate the cost-effective development and use of spatial data, GIS, and related technologies in organizations throughout the Commonwealth.
• Modern Geomatics and National Development - Information technology is critical to national development. This paper will examine some of the major issues relating to this relationship by using the emerging field of geomatics as a specific example. First I would like to define briefly the two terms I am using. Geomatics is a collective term applied to what were previously independent fields of study such as cartography, photogrammetry and remote sensing, geodesy, GIS and other mapping sciences. Geomatics is defined as: " Ša field of activities, which, using a systematic approach, integrates all the means used to acquire and manage spatial data required as part of scientific, administrative, legal and technical operations involved in the process of production and management of spatial information". (Canadian Institute of Geomatics, 1995) This field is now dominated by computer, telecommunications and other related information technologies.
• The future of GIS - Maps have traditionally been used to explore the Earth and to exploit its resources. GIS technology, as an expansion of cartographic science, has enhanced the efficiency and analytic power of traditional mapping. Now, as the scientific community recognizes the environmental consequences of human activity, GIS technology is becoming an essential tool in the effort to understand the process of global change. Various map and satellite information sources can be combined in modes that simulate the interactions of complex natural systems. Through a function known as visualization, a GIS can be used to produce images - not just maps, but drawings, animations, and other cartographic products. These images allow researchers to view their subjects in ways that literally never have been seen before. The images often are equally helpful in conveying the technical concepts of GIS study subjects to non-scientists.
• Geographic information in Internet related technologies - The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyse some of the possibilities and problems associated with the current and future Internet GIS. The term Internet GIS is here defined as geographical information (GI) services made available via the Internet.
  This thesis is based on studies such as a municipality's comprehensive plan presented on the Internet and uncertainty in analysis result. In these studies it is shown that:

  New citizen categories are reached if plans are presented also via the Internet. New categories of users create an increased demand on presentation methods. E.g. to be able to assess uncertainty in an analysis result Monte Carlo simulation can be a useful tool.

  
  The future Internet GIS is dependent of the evolution in many different fields, such as component-based program development, distributed systems, new hardware platforms, new types of services, standardisation etc. In this thesis some of the basic and emerging Internet related technologies are described. Current trends and are pointed out and exemplified. Previous studies are described and put into relation from different aspects with the growing area of Internet GIS. The terminology b2b (business-to-business), b2c (business-to-consumer) and g2c (government-to-citizen) from the e- business area are used to categorise different areas of use of Internet GIS.
  Among other conclusions that can be drawn in this thesis are for example that the development of GIS products in general is changing from having been technology-driven to becoming user-driven. Today's Internet GIS is mostly oriented towards map presentation. The future Internet GIS will most probably contain increased functionality, e.g. analysis capabilities. New types of mobile hardware platforms will probably create a demand for new types of GI services on the Internet, e.g. based on the current location of the user. Internet GIS within all the sectors b2b, b2c and g2c will most probably continue to grow in the future. When a wide variety of users and their hardware platforms access GI services on the Internet, important questions about data quality management, semantic interoperability and perception must be asked.
• GIS Power Politics: State and Local Players Fight for a Voice in Spatial Data Planning - City and county governments have spent years building powerful repositories of geospatial data necessary to deliver a majority of public services -- everything from building roads to dispatching ambulances. But local geographic information systems players until recently have been shut out of the strategic -- and largely federal -- effort to stitch together the nation's spatial data holdings into a national GIS infrastructure.
• GIS, Spatial Econometrics and Social Science Research - The subset of the domain of spatial analysis that pertains to the statistical analysis of spatially referenced data has recently gained a growing acceptance as a methodology in the mainstream social sciences. I will focus my remarks on this specific issue, leaving the discussion of aspects of spatial analysis such as optimization and decision support systems to others.
  The recent dissemination of a spatial analytic perspective in the social sciences (outside of the discipline of geography) is often attributed to the rapid spread of GIS technology to the desktop and the availability of a vast array of geographically referenced socio-economic data. This has led to the use of GIS for data organization and visualization as well as increasingly in an inductive approach to exploring data for meaningful patterns and structures (exploratory spatial data analysis). While these have undeniably been important factors, an equally crucial aspect has been the need to operationalize "new" theoretical constructs that explicitly incorporate space in the analysis of human (economic) behavior. Many of these concepts are similar (though not always acknowledged) to the models proposed by economic geographers and regional scientists in the 1960s, and stress the importance of location, neighborhood, region and spatial (social) interaction. Current examples in economics are the emphasis on spatial externalities and regional clusters (e.g., Krugman, Arthur, Porter), theories of interacting agents and interdependent decision making (e.g., Pollak, Ioannides, Durlauf, Brock, Brueckner), the importance of social interaction and group effects (e.g., Akerlof, Aoki) and neighborhood effects (Borjas). Similar examples can be cited in recent work in other social sciences, such as sociology, political science and criminology. Unlike their antecedents of the 1960s, description and discussion of these theories appears in the "core" journals of the mainstream disciplines, such as the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy and Econometrica for economics.
• Spatial Analysis Workshop Program - Position Papers
• A short Genetic Algorithm tutorial - The Genetic Algorithm can solve problems that do not have a precisely-defined solving method, or if they do, when following the exact solving method would take far too much time. There are many such problems; actually, all still-open, interesting problems are like that.
• Geographies of the Information Society - The use of geographic information technologies is providing to users substantial economic advantages, legal advantages, and political advantages. Possession of geographic information has also contributed to military power and even to U.S. western expansion and the political power of the colonizer. We need to reflect on the potential significance of technological and institutional changes to the widening or lessening of social and economic gaps in society.
• Archiving the digital and digitizing the archive - The digital era is providing us with timely opportunities to rethink the ways in which historical and geographical information is gathered, organized, and represented. Geolibraries, virtual museums, on-line archival databases, and other forays into the realm of digitality are taking advantage of increasing telecommunication and computing speeds, expanding storage capacities, Geographic Information Systems, digital reproduction technologies, and the Internet to construct widely accessible digital archives for scholarly, pedagogical, and public uses. The archive is a staple of historical geographical research, and this paper brings a historical geographical perspective to the archiving of digital geographic information and to the digital representation of historical archives.
  The intention of this paper is to re-orient the manner in which digital archives are thought about, and in so doing contribute to the enhancement of the design, implementation, and use of digital archives. The language that is often employed to describe digital archives tends to emphasize the ways in which they differ from traditional archives. While the technological advances that digital archives entail certainly warrant the drawing of such distinctions, I argue that relevant distinctions may also be drawn between the archiving of digital information and the digitization of archival information. I focus on three examples of digital archives: the Digital Earth Project (http://www.digitalearth.gov/), the Digital Imaging the Media Technology Initiative (http://images.library.uiuc.edu/), and the Chicago Imagebase Project(http://www.uic.edu/depts/ahaa/imagebase/).
• Here is where you are - "Farmers with access to the technology of precision agriculture," said conference keynote speaker Michael Goodchild of the University of California, Santa Barbara, "can build maps of their fields and growing crops at much higher resolution than traditional soil maps, and can capture and compile detailed spatial information using devices attached to their harvesters and tractors. Local governments can rent vans equipped with GPS units, drive along every street and produce maps at higher accuracy and much lower cost than the traditional production arrangements of central governments."
• Navigation in the Information Age: An Exploration of the Potential Use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for Sustainability and Self-Determination in Hawai`i. - Table of Contents - The use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) by indigenous peoples for self-determination, sustainable resource management, and assertion of land claims is increasing worldwide. GIS can be described as a powerful computerized version of the Western written map, with the ability to store, analyze, and display large amounts of diverse spatial data. This research undertook to explore the GIS initiative of the sovereignty group "Nation of Hawai`i," and to study recent literature and the larger context of GIS use in Hawai`i, for the purpose of better understanding if and how GIS can assist the Nation of Hawai`i in its struggle for self-determination and eventually, for sustainable management of the Hawaiian archipelago. For this research, a collaborative approach to participant observation was chosen to create a stronger sense of anthropological reflection, and to enable a more ambitious project to be undertaken.
• GIS and the 4th Dimension - In an attempt to avoid a "laundry list" of challenges facing our maturing technology, I have narrowed the list to just three topics we ought to discussŠ       
  • first, a brief reflection on the historical setting over three decades and the legacy left by the pioneers;
  • secondly, a series of contemporary applications that demonstrate the common threads among GIS procedures and applications, and
  • finally, some thoughts on trends that provide new ways of linking mapped data, processing and spatial reasoning.
  Accompanied by a series of graphic slides.
• Spatial Analysis In A GIS Environment - The purpose of this paper is to identify a variety of methods, techniques, and approaches for the analysis of spatial and time-space data and models, utilizing the ability of geographic information systems (GISs) to store, select, manipulate, explore, analyze, and display georeferenced data.
• USGS Center for Spatial Analysis Technologies - Center for Spatial Analysis Technologies Georgia Tech and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) combined efforts in 1991 to establish joint "Centers for Spatial Analysis Technologies". The Centers house interdisciplinary teams working together in three aspects of spatial analysis technologies: education, service, and research. The Centers began with the establishment of a USGS Center for Spatial Analysis Technologies (CSAT) and establishment of a parallel center by Georgia Tech, the Georgia Tech Center for Geographic Information Systems (CGIS). The centers are co-located on the Georgia Tech campus along with the Georgia GIS Data Clearinghouse and a contingent of scientists from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. These two centers represent a commitment by USGS and Georgia Tech to explore synergistic partnership in the application of technology to environmental sciences.
• Experiential And Formal Models Of Geographic Space - This paper is concerned with human experience and perception of phenomena and relations in space. This focus is in contrast to previous work that has examined space and spatial relations as objective phenomena of the world. This concern leads in turn to a goal: to identify models of space that can be used both in cognitive science and in the design and implementation of geographic information systems (GISs). Experiential models of the world are based on sensorimotor and visual experiences with environments, and form in individual minds as the associated bodies and senses experience their worlds. Formal models consist of axioms expressed in a formal language, together with mathematical rules to infer conclusions from them. This paper reviews both kinds of models, considering them each to be abstractions of the same 'real world.'
• GIS, Mapping, Database and 3D Software from Manifold Net - GIS technology can be used for scientific investigations, resource management, and development planning. For example, a Windows GIS might allow emergency planners to easily calculate emergency response times in the event of a natural disaster, or a GIS might be used to find wetlands that need protection from pollution. GIS and mapping software play a central role in the geographic decision making of cities, government, universities, military, environmental studies, and numerous institutions world wide. Software for GIS, especially high value or free software for GIS is of special importance. Manifold System is a typical modern Windows GIS. Universities can get it virtually free of charge, which was a key factor in its deployment. It can be used with more of the GIS data links and other GIS and mapping information on the Web than almost any other Windows GIS or mapping software at any price for any system.
• Uncertainty In Geospatial Information Representation, Analysis And Decision Support - The goal of the proposed research will be to improve the mechanisms by which users of the defense geospatial information infrastructure are made aware of the presence of uncertainty in data, and its implications for decision-making. We plan to address elements of all six of the areas identified in the solicitation (elements of uncertainty, measures, models, portrayal, propagation, and higher dimensions) in a coordinated approach. The research will be conducted by five teams, with frequent opportunity for cross-fertilization between them. We will hold a series of opening meetings with NIMA, annual project meetings, and a summer institute; interact with other research groups, notably through the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science; host a visiting scholar program; and ensure the dissemination of results through a variety of means. By the second year of the program we plan to have in place the organizational structure of a center of excellence, under the umbrella of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis.
• Developing Macro Queries in Geographical Information Systems - The paper examines the problems associated with DSS interfaces. In particular it examines the role of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) as decision support tools. There are a number of reasons why GIS are not more widely adopted and for their powerful capabilities being underused. The paper presents an interface design that facilitates the development of the user's skill and expertise in macro development. The system that has been developed and evaluated uses knowledge and information about the data and operations to make working with the GIS easier. The users are able to develop their own customised higher order operations which can be reused in the query building process. Evaluations of the VFQL found that users could develop solutions to simpler tasks more quickly and with fewer errors than a comparative text based command language. On more complex tasks there was no significant difference. From this we deduce that VFQL demonstrates certain design features to help the development of macros or small programs for users but that the complexity of the problem in difficult tasks is likely to be the most important determinant of the error rate and time to complete the task. The ideas presented can be applied to a wide of decision support systems.
• Forecasting Systems Using The Laboratory And Epidemiology To Prevent Outbreaks Of Existing And Emerging Diseases - Recent experience shows that infectious animal diseases are increasing in importance world-wide and that disease emergencies are occurring with increasing frequency. Even industrialised nations have been affected. For example, outbreaks of classical swine fever in Germany and the Netherlands in the last two years have cost in excess of $2 billion to control. The epidemic of BSE in the UK has caused not only a world- wide ban of beef export from the UK but also a fundamental rethink of public health and animal feeding practices. In the past three years, there have been FMD emergencies in South-east Europe, South-east Asia and Africa; rinderpest in East Africa, the Near East and South Asia CBPP in Eastern, southern and West Africa; classical swine fever in the Caribbean; African swine fever in southern and West Africa. This year a major epidemic of Rift Valley fever and other insect-transmitted diseases has affected or threatened several countries of eastern Africa.
  Besides their economic significance in terms of production losses, these epidemics have disrupted international trade. A questionnaire was designed to poll OIE Member Countries in order to gauge their capacity for disease forecasting. The questionnaire revealed a wide disparity among member countries in the flow of disease information from farm to national headquarters. For notifiable disease information seems to take up to a week for most countries, except in Europe where disease notification was reported as taking less than a day.
  Computer supported, quantitative epidemiology, including risk analysis, disease modelling, GIS-based disease mapping, decision support systems and disease forecasting emerged as an area of deficiency in most national veterinary planning. A hierarchical system for a global early warning system against epidemic diseases is therefore proposed. FAO, through the EMPRES programme, has started to embark on such a concept to be developed in close collaboration with the OIE and other organisations. It is also apparent that a prerequisite for an efficient global early warning system is the capacity at the national level to collect data in a harmonised manner and to process such data. Regional organisations, OIE and FAO Commissions and international agencies can help in capacity development of the national veterinary authorities of member countries in these disciplines. It is also proposed that national veterinary authorities should incorporate concepts of emergency preparedness at an early stage in their plans for progressive control programmes of infectious diseases.
• Information Technology Support for Open Source Intelligence Analysis and Production - The design, development and use of computer-based problem-solving systems will change dramatically as we approach the twenty-first century. Our expectations about what these systems should do are rising as rapidly as the requisite technology is evolving. By the year 2000, intelligence analysts will use the new technology to deal with all sorts of simple and complex problems. They will also benefit from systems capable of providing much more than database support and low-level inference-making.
  In fact, the very definitions that determine the nature and purpose of intelligence analysis and production will give way to a much broader understanding of the process. Where today intelligence is something governments collect, analyze and "produce," tomorrow it will just as likely refer to the process by which public and private sector competitors monitor, assess, warn and manage.
  The future will also see the pluralization of data sources. While there has been an increasing reliance upon open sources, the future will see that reliance grow even more dramatically as more and more organizations collect and analyze data of special importance to their military, political, economic and social missions. The very nature of open source data will itself change as governments, companies, and global, international, national, and local news organizations produce more and more data -- in order to extract more and more descriptive, explanatory and predictive-estimative information. The open <---> closed source continuum will remain intact as the players along the continuum change. In the 1950s nearly all of the "closed" players were governmental focusing on military capabilities and intentions; by the 21st century national, multinational and global corporations (and other economic "alliances") will find themselves all along the continuum. "Private" data collections -- used for special analytical purposes -- will emerge as the public and private news organizations grow in number and capability. The other published media will continue to serve as reservoirs of information, reservoirs that will yield intelligence wholes greater than the sum of their parts.
  At the heart of the data, information and knowledge bases, and the analysis and production of finished public and private sector intelligence, will be information technology.
  This paper examines the trend in open source analysis and production and the role that information technology -- very broadly defined -- can play in the intelligence analysis and production process. It assumes that information technology has come of age and that opportunities now exist for relatively conservative applications of extremely powerful methods, tools and techniques. The paper deals with the range of information technology that might support the analysis and production process as well as some especially promising tools and techniques. It concludes with a set of recommendations for future investments in the technology, methodology and analysis.
• Spatial information technologies to manage uncertainty in agriculture - Australian agriculture is predominantly an extensive activity. It occupies large areas over which managers have limited control. Furthermore, the intensity of information about its own function has traditionally been low and, under conventional management at least, data about even the most basic performance criteria such as product quantity, quality or off-site effects is extremely limited. Within the past decade or so, however, farming has witnessed the introduction of field-based technologies which promise to substantially improve this condition, and provide farmers with the capacity to substantially increase the level of information and control of operation. This paper describes the process in four sections:
  • the problem of uncertainty which arises in the absence of information
  • the technology available to address it
  • methods available to apply the technology, and
  • the current state-of-play in Australia and overseas.
• On Epidemiology and Geographic Information Systems: A Review and Discussion of Future Directions - Geographic information systems are powerful automated systems for the capture, storage, retrieval, analysis, and display of spatial data. While the systems have been in development for more than 20 years, recent software has made them substantially easier to use for those outside the field. The systems offer new and expanding opportunities for epidemiology because they allow an informed user to choose between options when geographic distributions are part of the problem. Even when used minimally, these systems allow a spatial perspective on disease. Used to their optimum level, as tools for analysis and decision making, they are indeed a new information management vehicle with a rich potential for public health and epidemiology.
• GIS Online Website - Welcome to GIS Online, the homepage for the world of Distributed Geographic Information (DGI). This site is a companion to the new book from OnWord Press, GIS Online: Information Retrieval, Mapping, and the Internet. This site extends the topics covered in the book for its readers, including updated information, news, and links to interesting sites. Be patient with us as we continue to build this site.
• Econometric Resources on the Net
• Javascript Multiple Regression
• Finite Mathematics and Applied Calculus Resource Page - Visit our On-line Interactive Tutorials | On-line game theory simulator | Linear Programming Grapher | Simplex Method Tool | Matrix Algebra Tool | Time Value of Money Utility | Surface Graphing Utility | On-Line Numerical Integration | Probability Distribution Generator and Grapher for Bernoulli Trials | Markov system in action | Lecture Notes on Differential Geometry & General Relativity | On-Line Pivot and Gauss-Jordan Tool | Linear Approximation and Error Estimation | On-line math utilities -- All created on a Macintosh!
• Optimization Technology Center at Argonne National Laboratory and Northwestern University
• Omniseek: Science and Tech: /Science & Tech /Math /Operations Research /
• Spatial Statistics
• Multivariate Statistics: An Introduction - Welcome to this introduction to the family of data analysis techniques often grouped together under the name, "multivariate statistics." The word multivariate should say it all -- these techniques look at the pattern of relationships between several variables simultaneously. This may sound scary, but fear not -- you do not need training in highly advanced statistics to follow the explanation in these pages. We will look at three types of multivariate methods -- factor analysis, multidimensional scaling, and cluster analysis.
• Michael Trick's Operations Research Page
• Networks Optimization - Network models are applicable for an enormous variety of decision problems. Some of these decision problems are really physical problems, such as transportation or flow of commodities. Many network problems are more abstract representations of processes or activities, such as the critical path activity network in project management. These problems are easily illustrated by using a network of arcs, and nodes.
• Introduction to genetic algorithms with Java applets - These pages introduce some fundamentals of genetics algorithms. Pages are intended to be used for learning about genetics algorithms without any previous knowledge from this area. Only some knowledge of computer programming is assumed. You can find here several interactive Java applets demonstrating work of genetic algorithms.
• GIS as a systems analytic approach for the treatment of spatial information - GIS developments are a manifestation of the "Cybernetics revolution" that preceded the huge growth of information theories and technologies. In this lecture we briefly present the fundamental ideas of systems analysis modelling, in particular we insist on the concepts of input/output relationship and the notion of a state variable. We also give some hints on the possible use of a systems analytic model for simulating a complex reality.
• The works of Heiner Benking - Heiner Benking is a map-maker, model-builder, and planner who has worked in development, environment, technology, management consulting, and the automation-, data- and communication industry.
• Geographical Information Systems for Urban Design: Providing new tools and digital data for urban designers - We are exploring the potential of geographical information systems (GIS) as a basis for an urban design support system. We believe that the current powerful desktop GIS can be adapted and augmented to provide a computer-based support environment in which spatial data at the urban design scale can be managed, visualised and explored. Furthermore, analytical design tools can be imbedded in the GIS.
• Visual Communication in Urban Planning and Urban Design - This Case Study documents the current status of visual communication in urban design and planning. Visual communication is examined through discussion of standalone and network media, specifically concentrating on visualisation on the World Wide Web (WWW).
  First, we examine the use of Solid and Geometric Modelling for visualising urban planning and urban design. This report documents and compares examples of the use of Virtual Reality Modelling Language (VRML) and proprietary WWW based Virtual Reality modelling software. Examples include the modelling of Bath and Glasgow using both VRML 1.0 and 2.0. The use of Virtual Worlds and their role in visualising urban form within multi-user environments is reviewed. The use of Virtual Worlds is developed into a study of the possibilities and limitations of Virtual Internet Design Arena's (ViDA's), an initiative undertaken at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London. The use of Virtual Worlds and their development towards ViDA's is seen as one of the most important developments in visual communication for urban planning and urban design since the development plan.
  Secondly, the role of photorealistic media in the process of communicating plans is examined. The process of creating photorealistic media is documented, and examples of the Virtual Streetscape and Wired Whitehall Virtual Urban Interface System are provided. The conclusion is that, although the use of photo-realistic media on the WWW provides a way to visually communicate planning information, its use is limited. The merging of photorealistic media and solid geometric modelling in the creation of Augmented Reality is reviewed. Augmented Reality is seen to provide an important step forward in the ability quickly and easily to visualise urban planning and urban design information.
  Third, the role of visual communication of planning data through GIS is examined in terms of desktop, three dimensional, and Internet based GIS. The evolution to Internet GIS is seen as a critical component in the development of virtual cities that will allow urban planners and urban designers to visualise and model the complexity of the built environment in networked virtual reality.
  Finally, a viewpoint is put forward of the Virtual City, linking Internet GIS with photorealistic multi-user Virtual Worlds. At present there are constraints on how far virtual cities can be developed, but a view is provided on how these networked virtual worlds are developing to aid visual communication in urban planning and urban design.
• GIS and Remote Sensing for Archaeology: Burgundy, France-Introduction - A period of over 2,000 years (from the Celtic Iron Age to the present) is being analyzed. The overall goal of the research has been to understand long-term interaction between the different cultures and the physical environment, including the present time. Research has focused on the application of aerial photography and aerial reconnaissance, remote sensing, GIS, GPS, visualization, and related tools in this context. The work continues.
• Internet Mapping With XML - Internet GIS is an increasingly important component of GIS implementation. The ability to extend the audience of GIS to a larger circle of users holds out the possibility of a much larger return on investment. In addition customer satisfaction can be enhanced by providing automated information services based on visually referenced databases. A popular GIS website recently conducted a poll aimed at GIS implementers asking if they planned to add web mapping to their GIS configuration. Although easily dismissed for its less than random sampling, the poll did point out that more than half of respondents were planning to extend their GIS investment onto the Internet in the next six months. Recent technical developments by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) provide a foundation for non-proprietary, open source Internet Mapping. As these XML technologies become better known, extending GIS configurations with Internet Mapping will become much easier and economical.
• Inventing a Participant Observatory: The Gulf of Maine Environmental Information Exchange - This paper describes the Gulf of Maine Environmental Information Exchange as an attempt to increase public awareness about the region's human and natural environments through support of an ongoing information discovery and sharing process based on inclusive participation. The region is marked by many historic interrelations that are influenced by the international boundary between the United States and Canada. Earlier attempts to coordinate marine policy across governmental agencies resulted in data-centered information management strategies. The Information Exchange represents a turn toward a people-centered process which aims to improve the public learning environment across the region. Mapping and related technologies are being applied in many ways within this framework, and expressions of what have been called GIS-2 or community-integrated GIS are emerging. After presenting an overview of the region and describing the origins of the Information Exchange, the concept of a public participation GIS (PPGIS) is reviewed in its relation to this project. The paper explores collaborative information system design as a form of public learning and suggests that information system design is closely related to issues of polity and the health of natural and human resources.
• Advancing Geographic Information Science - In the late 1980's, when the US National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) was established, the National Science Foundation and others in the GIS research community identified "geographic information and analysis" as the critical areas for research. The NCGIA's original mandate was to reduce impediments to the widespread use of the technology. Now, almost 10 years later, rapid growth in the use of GISystems across a wide spectrum of application areas demonstrates the success of these and related research efforts. As a result, NCGIA has now chosen to realign its research, education and outreach agendas focusing on more fundamental issues in geographic information science while at the same time maintaining the original three site consortium (with sites at University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB), State University of New York at Buffalo and University of Maine). This paper provides a preliminary announcement of NCGIA's new mission which will carry us forward into the 21st century.
• Innovation and the Developing System of Knowledge Production - In this paper, it is argued that a new mode of knowledge production is emerging with profound implications for both competitiveness and sustainability. To make a beginning, a distinction is drawn between two modes of knowledge production, Mode 1 and Mode 2. Mode 1 refers to a form of knowledge production - a complex of ideas, methods, values, norms - that has grown up to control the diffusion of the Newtonian model to more and more fields of enquiry and ensure its compliance with what is considered sound scientific practice. Mode 1 is meant to summarise in a single phrase the cognitive and social norms which must be followed in the production, legitimation and diffusion of knowledge of this kind. For many, Mode 1 is identical with what is meant by science. Its cognitive and social norms determine what shall count as significant problems, who shall be allowed to practice science and what constitutes good science. Forms of practice which adhere to these rules are by definition "scientific" while those that violate them are not. It is partly for these reasons that whereas in Mode 1 it is conventional to speak of science and scientists it has been necessary to use the more general terms knowledge and practitioners when describing Mode 2. This is intended merely to highlight differences not to suggest that practitioners of Mode 2 are not behaving according to the norms of scientific method. It is our contention that there is sufficient empirical evidence to indicate that a distinct set of cognitive and social practices is beginning to emerge and they are different from those that govern Mode 1. The only question may be whether they are sufficiently different to require a new label or whether they can be regarded simply as developments that can be accommodated within existing practices.
• The Evolution of Emergent Computation - A simple evolutionary process can discover sophisticated methods for emergent information processing in decentralized spatially-extended systems. The mechanisms underlying the resulting emergent computation are explicated by a novel technique for analyzing particle-based logic embedded in pattern-forming systems. Understanding how globally-coordinated computation can emerge in evolution is relevant both for the scientific understanding of natural information processing and for engineering new forms of parallel computing systems.
• The Statistics Homepage
• Some Practical Issues In Designing And Calibrating Artificial Human-Recreator Agents In GIS-Based Simulated Worlds - Much research work in recreation behaviour has been done over the last decade to more adequately understand societal and individual attitudes toward wilderness, reasons for participating in wilderness areas, and factors affecting wilderness behaviour, including the influences of management, crowding and conflict. The focus of this research is on empirically assessing recreator behaviour as a means of providing guidelines for improving and managing wilderness use. This work, while providing empirical data for understanding behavioural characteristics of a variety of recreation groups, has not been effectively incorporated into spatial simulation systems to assess the impact of alternative management decisions upon wilderness landscapes over time. While some have employed Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to provide a precise, georeferenced database of real world data as a foundation for some simulations, none have employed the use of artificial agents in simulating complex social interactions and decision making in the context of wilderness landscapes. Since it is likely that different decision-making contexts may result in different actions, the design of a human-like artificial agent must be bound ed or grounded with real data. This form of agent design has been referred to as 'calibrated agents', where the agents are calibrated and grounded empirically to actual rather than idealised human behaviour. One problem with this approach is in the design and calibration of these agents. This paper describes some of the issues confronted in designing human-like agents calibrated against recreators who use the Broken Arrow Canyon experimental area in the Coconino National Forest of the Sedona Ranger District. Issues related to calibrating the agent's visual, mobility and goal-oriented systems against real world data is discussed. Results of this work suggest that agents calibrated against experimental data may be useable as a basis for agent behaviour in larger theoretical models to assist the forest manager in answering questions about recreation management in a more general setting.
• The Future of Animated Maps - It is difficult to say when the first union between maps and animation was made, but it is most probable that since motion pictures of any kind were not developed until the nineteenth century, that would have been the first time that such a merger would have been possible. Whether such an animation was made in the first silent films is unknown, and lack of access to those first films makes research in that direction impossible within the parameters of this paper. However, at some point after the invention of motion pictures, someone came up with the idea of making moving maps. A major development in this direction was the creation of cell-based animation.
• Geomatics in Canada - The Geomatics in Canada web site contains links to companies in Canada that deal with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing. This site also has a job board for Canadian companies to post GIS and Remote Sensing related jobs in Canada free of charge.
• Participatory GIS for Neighborhood Planning - Participatory GIS involves community use of geographic information systems (GIS) tools and resources. We are seeing an increasing number of projects that provide grassroots community access to information technology and the Internet. More recently, projects are also emerging at the community level that attempt to teach community residents how to use GIS as a local empowerment tool. Our project built a GIS pilot project for a neighborhood in East Austin, Texas and exported various maps from that project to a pilot community website. This is a synopsis of our data development process and of the project outcome as well as some our plans for continuation of the project.
• USGS GIS software and Utilities
• GMDH: Group Method of Data Handling for complex systems modelling and forecasting - This site provides review of the GMDH approach and describes recent developments in complex systems modeling, forecasting, decision support and pattern recognition by the Group Method of Data Handling. The regularly updated mirror of this site is here.
• Social Critiques of GIS - In the early 1990s social critiques of GIS from human geographers began to appear. These initial critiques set off an ensuing debate between GISers, defending GIS and human geographers, who critiqued GIS. This debate materialized in academic journals including: Political Geography Quarterly, Environment and Planning A, and Progress in Human Geography. Schuurman (2000) notes that the GIS debate, while unique to the discipline of Geography, was part of a larger debate in other disciplines about the effects of technology. This presentation will be limited (unfortunately) to two aspects of this debate. It will first discuss conditions within human geography that made GIS a target of human geographers' critique. Second, this paper will discuss the particular critiques that were directed at GIS by human geographers. Though the reaction of such critiques and their effect on GIS is an important topic there is not enough time and space to address these issues. See Schuurman (2000) "Trouble in the Heartland: GIS and its critics in the 1990s" in Progress in Human Geography for a thoughtful look at this debate and its effects on the discipline of GIS.
• Rethinking GIS Research: Epistemology and Methodology Beyond Information Technology - Driven by spatial data and information technology, the research and application of GIS have made great progresses since 1980s in spatial dada handling, spatial analysis, and automatic geographical visualization. However, due to most of GIS theories are rooted in positivist philosophy of quantitative revolution, especially the spatial analysis and geographical modeling, the present GIS is not smoothly consistent with the contemporary human geographical theory and cannot be used facilely by human geographers. Considering the latest technological development and theoretical changes in geography, and their impacts on GIS in 1990s, new research agendas about GIS have been outlined by the leading GIS research organizations, for example, NCGIA's advanced geographical information science, OGC's OpenGIS and GeoComputation in UK. This paper attempts to 1) summarize the three approaches of GIS research: data- and technology-driven GIS, theory-driven GIS and application-driven GIS; 2) review some fundamental topics related to GIS epistemology and methodology critically; and 3) finally, argue to rethink some critical issues in GIS research.
• GIS and Decision Making - Research regarding GIS has evolved from the initial focus on technical issues, to concentrating on the need to consolidate the field as a discipline by itself ('GIS as Science'), and more recently to trying to understand the social outreach of the technology. One of the social benefits is 'better' decision making, which has always been considered 'the promised land' of GIS, but not much research has been done to try to understand how (and even if) the introduction of GIS technology impacts the decision process.
  The components of this social process termed decision-making are data, decision models, the decision environment and people; more data leads to more information, and decision models go a step further by transforming information into knowledge of consequences. By understanding how the rational actor uses a GIS to transform information into knowledge and the changes in the decision environment due to the introduction of the technology one would be able to improve GIS design, which in turn will lead to better decision-making, the ultimate objective for having the technology in the first place.
  This paper builds upon a case study in the Northeastern Brazilian State of Maranhão on the use of GIS for transportation planning, outlining the design considerations in terms of decision models (how and to what extent data are transformed into knowledge and actually used to improve the decisions being made) and including a discussion of the modifications of the decision environment due to the introduction of the technology, caused by the modifications of the interactions between the various decision-makers and the multiple bounding structural elements (political, resource limitations, institutional and social).
• A GIS Analysis of Geographic Variations in Travel Characteristics - This paper discusses the procedures of creating ArcInfo GIS databases of household and individual trip log data for the Treasure Coast Travel Characteristics Study recently conducted in south Florida. In this study, both household and individual trip log data were geocoded to the street-address level and point coverages of their locations were created. The derived ArcInfo coverages can show detailed geographic patterns of various travel characteristics using the ArcView 2 software. In addition, statistical analysis of these geographic variations can be performed on the data generated from GIS spatial analysis functions.
• A geographical method to assess technological hazards.The example of the storage and the distribution of the fuel oils in the urban region of Ile-de-France - As the land use - and the density - is a predominant factor to determine the level of risks, the european and national laws plan to limit the land uses around dangerous industrial plants, like fuel oil storages. In urban areas, it leads to reduce the construction possibilities ; that is why planners sometimes proposed to remove those embarrassing industries. But then, they don¹t take into account that the flows of dangerous substances may grow and increase transport-risks. With the help of a GIS where land use is precisely discribed, a method is developped to compare risks around a dangerous plant and risks relevant to the dangerous flows to and from that plant. It is based on the calculation of damages within the areas potentially touched by the consequences of an accident. The GIS is very useful to count these damages at a regional scale (where dangerous substances are delivered) and to compare the risks for various simulated locations of a plant in order to check the pertinence of the planners propositions of removal. The case of fuel oil storage and road trafic has been chosen, as they take place in a large urban area, the region of Ile - de-France for our example.
• The Application of Diverse Geo-Spatial Information into Fused Products for use by Military Commanders - A Case Study - This year, the Royal Navy has been carrying out a series of trials on a prototype system, which is aimed at the production of fused environmental products. The system, developed by TENET Defence, has been called 'HUGIN ChartLink' after one of the Norse god Odin's two Ravens, which circled the world collecting information for him. The purpose of these trials is to assess the benefit, at both the tactical and operational levels, of an advanced Geo-spatial Information System (GIS) on the collection, fusion and dissemination of survey, geographical and environmental data. The system allows, for the first time, the users onboard a Survey vessel or at Northwood Headquarters, to combine environmental and geo-spatial data from many different sources and produce a single 'fused product' for visualising the environment. Military Warfare Officers and Command Planning Staff can use the fused products to support mission planning, briefings and the decision-making process.
• GIS and Anthropology - This purpose of this paper is to further investigate the consequences of this lack of critical perspectives on time and space within anthropology. Central in this discussion will be a recently developed, highly powerful new set of technologies: Geographic Information Systems, or "GISs. GISs have come to play an important role in anthropology, especially in its subfields ecological anthropology and archeology, as well as in many other disciplines. In the past two decades, GISs have revolutionized the way in which we conceive of space, and time, with applications ranging from being an academic metaphor for human memory, a tool applicable to "any postmodernist problem in which space is of relevance", to a measure of family planning accessibility using satellite data. As such, this paper aims to explore some of the consequences of this impact on anthropology and academic life in general by paying attention to the philosophical assumptions underlying these technologies. The paper consists out of three sections. In the first section, I will try to place the discussion within a general theoretical framework. In the second section an overview will be given of the concepts of GISs, the "spatial perspective," and the use of GISs in anthropology. Finally, the implications of these developments for anthropology will be discussed in more detail.
• Simulating Crimes and Crime Patterns Using Cellular Automata and GIS ­ with applications to robbery of commercial properties - The purpose of this research is to design and implement a Cellular Automata (CA) crimes and crime patterns simulation model and integrate it with Geographical Information Systems (GIS). CA, a digital computation concept which emerged in 1940s, has been applied to geographic science in recent decades, and was proven its value for modeling and visualizing complex spatially distributed processes. Most of CA simulation models have been developed in ecological science, environmental science, and city planning.
• Using GIS to Model and Visualize Congestion Effects on Individual Accessibility - Considerable attention has been devoted to the measurement of accessibility to employment, shopping, educational opportunities, health care facilities, and other services within cities. The use of Geographic Information Systems has enormous utility for such research because of its ability to not only represent the components of the urban environment, such as the home locations of individuals, employment opportunities and retail or other service locations, but also for modeling the spatial relationships among these components through the use of computationally intensive transport network analysis methods. The value of Geographic Information Systems is especially apparent with the use of disaggregate space-time accessibility measures because of their requirement for a very high degree of temporal and spatial resolution of the urban environment, and especially of the accurate representation of the movement possibilities of individuals through urban networks. While considerable attention has been directed at the representation of the urban environment it is argued here that accessibility research has not yet taken full advantage of the network analytical capabilities available within Geographic Information Systems. Instead, even when detailed representations of networks are used, potentially unrealistic measures of travel time based on assumptions about constant travel speeds through the network may be incorporated within studies. It can be argued that doing so creates limitations for accessibility measures as utilizing a single travel time for all hours of the day does not allow for the existence of daily congestion or hourly variations in traffic volumes. Applying a constant travel time to all areas of a city also does not allow for highly localized congestion within transport networks so that traffic flows and the effects of peak hour congestion are uniform throughout the entire urban area. The ability to incorporate spatially and temporally specific traffic congestion is therefore likely to offer considerable insight and detail into individual accessibility. This research seeks to show how these limitations can be overcome by measuring accessibility using space-time concepts with a detailed street network for the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area, using spatially and temporally varying estimates of highway travel times. Further, because the measurement of accessibility is based on actual travel diary with trip data for 200 individuals, it is possible to incorporate the locations and times of day during which travel took place for each individual. The resulting accessibility values therefore reflect not only each individual's daily activity patterns and constraints, the opportunities available to them in different locations of the city, but also the uneven spatial and temporal effects of congestion. These effects can be visualized by the use of network potential path areas to show the areas and potential activity opportunities which individuals would be able to reach during their travel, both with and without congestion effects. The use of standard ArcView GIS is fundamental to this application because of its network analytical abilities and the need to incorporate the spatial relationships existing between streets, activity locations, and activity opportunities contained in multiple data sets.
• Using Java to interact with geo-referenced VRML - Virtual reality technology is providing earth scientists and cartographers with new, exciting and interactive ways to model the world and real-life phenomena. One of the most important functions of traditional cartography is providing information about location: where the user is, where an object is located and what is at a location. This is equally, if not more, important for navigating virtual worlds and referencing information from the real world.
  The Virtual Field Course (VFC) is developing software to enable students to experience fieldwork environments through multimedia, including virtual reality. The VFC will exploit enhancement, interaction, extension and replacement potential of virtual reality within the context of the aims of residential fieldwork.
  As a preliminary to developing a spatial interface for a Virtual Field Course geo-referenced multimedia database, a 2-dimensional Java interface has been developed to provide information and interaction with 3-dimensional VRML terrain models. During this process both the scope and the constraints of geo-referenced VRML have been examined.
• Military Applications of GIS - Geographic Information Systems (GIS) play a pivotal role in military operations. The concept of Command, Control, Communication and Coordination in military operations is largely dependent on the availability of accurate, spatial information to arrive at quick decisions for operational orders. In the present digital era, GIS is an excellent tool for military commanders in the operations. The use of GIS applications in military forces has revolutionised the way in which these forces operate and function. Military forces use GIS in a variety of applications including cartography, intelligence, battle field management, terrain analysis, remote sensing, military installation management and monitoring of possible terrorist activity. A brief review of the military applications in land and sea based operations are presented in this article.
• Spatial Analysis Links - Introduction to GIS and spatial analysis.
• The Role of GIS on the Electronic Battlefield - Digitization of the battlefield - "The Electronic Battlefield" - is now demanding the next technological leap, which is the embracing of digital geographic information (DGI) and the means of exploiting DGI, which is the geographic information system or GIS. Note that I do not indicate the replacement of the paper map with DGI and GIS. That will not happen until GIS runs on an infrastructure that can be folded up into a side pocket, get soaking wet, require no external power, and be disposableŠ that is some distance in the future. For the foreseeable future, the paper map and GIS will be complementary.
• Military Applications of GIS
• Military Applications of GIS - Geographic Information System (GIS) play a pivotal role in Military operations as they are essentially spatial in ature The concept of Command, Control, Communication and Coordination in military operations are largely dependent on the availability of accurate information in order to arrive at quick decisions for operational orders. In the present digital era, GIS is an excellent tool for Military commanders in the operations. The use of GIS applications in defence forces has revolutionised the way in which these forces operate and function. Military forces use GIS in a variety of applications including cartography, intelligence, battle field management, terrain analysis, remote sensing, military installation management and monitoring of possible terrorist activity. This article presents a brief overview of the use of a GIS in military applications in land and sea based operation.
• Gis/Spatial Analysis "Cookbook" - GIS or Geographic Information Systems is a relatively new field where people can produce maps and analyze spatial data with a few clicks of their mouse. CSISS relates to GIS as it provides tools for Social Scientists such as a how-to guide, in order to make it easy for them to work with spatial data. Therefore, creating a how-to instructional guide (a GIS Cookbook) for using GIS related software is very beneficial to CSISS. The two most common software programs used in GIS are ESRI¹s Arc View and Arc Info. Because of the background that I have with these two software packages, I am able to assist in assembling, and publishing the cookbook on the web. In addition to GIS software knowledge, publishing on the web involves cropping pictures, changing data formats and importing and exporting data into and out of programs. Upon completion of several basic cookbook entries, the framework will be laid for future cookbook entries, which will provide detailed instruction into more complicated GIS-related tasks. If this project is accepted by the CSISS Advisory Board, and it is given the green light to continue, the possibility exists that the cookbook portion of the CSISS website will become world-renowned.
• Location Based Services - In this age of significant telecommunications competition, mobile network operators continuously seek new and innovative ways to create differentiation and increase profits. One of the best ways to do accomplish this is through the delivery of highly personalized services. One of the most powerful ways to personalize mobile services is based on location. We will discuss Location Based Services (LBS), but we will first discuss the basis of LBS - location technology.
• Location-based health information services: a new paradigm in personalised information delivery - The main goal of location-based health information services is to allow better presentation of the distribution of health and healthcare needs and Internet resources answering them across a geographical area, with the aim to provide users with better support for informed decision-making. Personalised information delivery requires the acquisition of high quality metadata about not only information resources, but also information service users, their geographical location and their devices.
• Strategic Location Decisions - To provide our customers who are faced with strategic location decisions with the best of breed capabilities, Expert Choice has partnered with DEALTEK to develop and market DEALS®. DEALS® is the leading edge web-based software that company executives, economic developers, and their service providers use to assess, model, and negotiate capital investment projects involving business facility and operations. DEALS is designed specifically to provide a decision process for development, expansion/consolidation, location/relocation, and other site selection projects.
• Grokking the infoviz - SOFTWARE firms still have the irritating habit of marketing new products as "killer applications". Yet almost none of the products they trumpet has a chance of measuring up to the program for which the term was invented 25 years ago: the spreadsheet. That was the reason why many people bought their first PC. It allowed them to build models and play with their data. With spreadsheets, "what if" scenarios could be calculated and recalculated easily. If the value in one cell was changed, the data in related cells were automatically adjusted. Users can, in the words of Clay Shirky, an American software expert, "converse with the data".
  Now, another kind of software that lets users converse with the data is going mainstream. It consists of programs that help you to visualise large amounts of information. They have made their way into the enterprise software used by large corporations. Interactive charts are showing up on websites. And earlier this year, Groxis, a start-up based in Sausalito, California, released Grokker, an innovative graphical tool that it also sells to consumers for $99. Will "infoviz", as geeks call the technology, become a killer application, rather as spreadsheets did?
• Papers in Regional Science: Special issue marking 50 years of Regional Science
• Geospatial Information Technology, Rural Resource Development, and Future Geographies - Geospatial information technologies, particularly as they relate to remote sensing and geographic information science (GIScience) are providing new perspectives for understanding rural systems. By utilizing geospatial technologies with more integrative research approaches, geographers can ask more socially relevant and innovative questions about the human-environmental system. Within remote sensing alone, there has been a significant leap forward in usable sensor systems for analyzing human dimensions of rural areas through high spatial and spectral resolution approaches. The impact of various forcing factors (e.g., water availability) in Kansas and Botswana, for example, within the context of human-environmental interactions can be more fully understood using such geospatial technology approaches. At the same time, through new infospheres, cybergeography, and sensitivity to new attitudes in learning by millinneals, future geographies are created that demand more geographic management systems (GMSs). At the center of such evolving trends, geographers are poised to provide important leadership in more fully understanding the human-environmental system as we begin the Association of American Geographers' next century.
• Do Maps Have Morals? - The Pentagon didn't invent the entire field of GIS. Yet the search for the dark, hidden ancestors of modern mapmaking illustrates something simple and true: maps--like technological progress itself--are not inherently benevolent.
  Even Dangermond, when pressed, concedes the point. "I'm not political about how technology gets used. It gets used," he says. "My own interest was obviously in the area of environmental things. But it gets used by everybody."
  The consequences of those uses vary. Six months ago, relief workers used digital maps to find their way through areas devastated by the Indian Ocean tsunami. The U.S. Air Force relies on such maps in Iraq. Aerial photographs and digital mapmaking tools are allowing the governments of Uruguay and Brazil to survey and sell off vast tracts of land. "Sitting there in Arlington, Virginia, you can buy land in Brazil," says Christopher Simpson, a professor of communications at American University in Washington, DC, who's been studying current uses of remote sensing in Latin America. In theory, Brazilian peasants can buy the land they currently till. But in practice, Simpson says, the best properties will be snapped up by "those with the most resources, who are best organized, with the best overview." In other words, those with access to digital maps of millions of unclaimed acres.
  Geographic information systems extend the reach of the human imagination, but in the end, they mainly help people do what they wanted to do in the first place. They're tools for preserving nature or destroying it, for defending human communities or obliterating them, for empowering or impoverishing. Maps can show us the way, wherever we choose to go.
• Iraq & Middle East Maps and Data - The war in Iraq has thrust GIS and Geospatial technologies into the limelight. Each day the public is presented with maps, imagery, and other spatial data products in an effort to provide a visual representation of the latest developments. The following directory provides some valuable pointers and descriptions of companies that are providing GIS-based solutions to help the public follow the war in Iraq.

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