Tag Archives: GIScience
10 New Activities from Local to Global Scale Using Public Domain Data and GIS
Ten new hands-on activities that accompany the Esri Press book The GIS Guide to Public Domain Data book that Jill Clark and I authored have been posted to the web, along with the data and the answer keys, on the Spatial Reserves site.
Look in the section “exercises and data for the book.” The activities are available through Scribd or through Google Docs. The data for the exercises are stored on ArcGIS Online. We contribute to the blog weekly, expanding on issues raised in the exercises and the book, such as data sources, data quality, data formats, fee vs. free, legal issues, volunteered geographic information, cloud GIS, and much more.
Exercises and Data for The GIS Guide to Public Domain Data
The activities cover a wide variety of scales, themes, and issues, and include:
Activity 1: Assessing the Impacts of potential climate change on coasts, ecoregions, population, and land cover, globally.
Activity 2: Siting an internet café in Orange County, California.
Activity 3: Siting a fire tower in the Loess Hills, Nebraska.
Activity 4: Analyzing floods and floodplains along the Front Range, Colorado.
Activity 5: Assessing potential hurricane hazards in Texas.
Activity 6: Analyzing land use and sustainability in Brazil.
Activity 7: Creating a map for an ecotourism company in New Zealand.
Activity 8: Assessing citizen science portals and analyzing citizen science data in invasive species.
Activity 9: Investigating 3 hazards of 2010: The Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland, and the Haiti earthquake.
Activity 10: Selecting the most suitable locations for tea cultivation in Kenya.
How might you use these activities, blog, and book in your teaching GIS and learning GIS?
Envisioning the Spatial University
There are plenty of reasons why spatial thinking and geospatial technologies have yet to fulfill their transformative potential in higher education. However, it’s likely that concerted efforts by a few key institutions could have a dramatic impact. Mindful of this, it is apparent that there are five characteristics of “The Spatial University” ….
Learn more and participate today!
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Call for Presentations: Special GIScience Research Session
Call for Presentations:
Special GIScience Research Session
ESRI International Users Conference
23-27 July, 2012
San Diego, California
ESRI invites you to present a peer-reviewed paper in a special joint GIScience Research Session for the 2012 ESRI International Users Conference and Educational Users Conference. Papers in this special tract must focus on cutting-edge research in GIScience. Full papers will be included in a special issue of Transactions in GIS to be distributed at the 2012 International Users and Education Users Conferences. Abstracts (500 words) must be submitted to Dr. John Wilson, University of Southern California, by 15th November, 2011.
The Transactions in GIS editorial team will review abstracts based on their GIScience content and select nine abstracts to become full papers. Notice of acceptance will occur by 1st December, 2011. Full papers (maximum 6,000 words plus figures, tables, and references in appropriate format for publication) must be submitted to Dr. Wilson for independent review by 8th January, 2012. Reviewed papers will be returned to authors by 1st February, 2012 and final manuscripts must be returned by 1st March, 2012, to be included in the special issue of Transactions in GIS.
For questions or guidelines on this special GIScience Research Track, contact Michael Gould at mgould@esri.com.
Abstracts should be submitted via e-mail with a subject line “ESRI GIScience Abstract, Authors Last Name” no later than 15th November, 2011 to:
Dr. John Wilson, jpwilson@usc.edu
Esri Appoints Dawn J. Wright as Chief Scientist
Ocean scientist, geographer, and geographic information system (GIS) author Dawn J. Wright will join Esri as its chief scientist on October 3, 2011. She will help formulate and advance the intellectual agenda for the environmental, conservation, climate, and ocean sciences aspect of Esri’s work while also representing Esri to the national/international scientific community.
“As a scientist, Wright brings a background of rigor that will strengthen our alignment with the requirements of the scientific community,” said Jack Dangermond, Esri president. “In her capacity as chief scientist, she will interface with government, business, industry, and the public and collaborate with them to understand and find solutions for our planet.”
Vespucci Summer Institute Pushes VGI Frontier
Vespucci Summer Institute Pushes VGI Frontier
This past week (6-10 June 2011) thirty-four geographic information researchers, some early-career and some well-seasoned, gathered at the first week of the 9th Vespucci Summer Institute on GI Science in Fiesole (Tuscany) to take a critical look at Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI). Participants came from North America, Europe, and as far away as Bombay and Rwanda.
Vespucci institutes are characterized not for being tutorial but rather for being group discussion and project-centered, and in this case both were facilitated by VGI experts Dr. Michael Goodchild (UC Santa Barbara) and Dr. Muki Haklay (University College London) as well as organizers/facilitators Dr. Michael Gould (Esri) and Dr. Werner Kuhn (University of Muenster, Germany). Discussion quickly spread far from the usual core of VGI examples i.e. Ushahidi and Open Street Map, to get into key perceived problems regarding trust, ethics, incentive systems and semantic interoperability.
Taken in front of the “Villa Maiano”, site of the institute.
The attendees were split into 5 working groups and they all worked 3 of the 5 days to prepare a project aimed at moving VGI from a space-based to a place-based focus. Group number 2 was the winner, with a project called MyPLACE (People, Location And Community Empowerment) that incorporated an incentive-based online game as a means to extract key qualitative characteristics of people favorite places which could then populate a knowledge base for future exploitation.
Members of the winning group are:
* Indy Hurt. U. California Santa Barbara
* Filippo Celata. U. Rome La Sapienza
* Clarisse Kagoyire ITC, U. Twente (The Netherlands)
* Stefan Kaup. U. Dortmund
* Monica Stephens. U. Arizona
* Imad Humayun. U Muenster
The Peter A. Burrough award for the best project was presented at the closing dinner on Friday, June 10. This is the first year that Vespucci makes this particular award, dedicated to the memory of Professor Burrough, who was a pioneer in GI Science and author of the first recognized GIS textbook.
A great time was had by all, not surprising given the special place, food and people. The second Vespucci institute week will take place in late July, on the topic of Process Ontology, and is oversubscribed. But perhaps you can join us next summer for a seminal 10th anniversary institute!
- Michael Gould, Esri Education Director
Geospatial Higher Education in Europe: AGILE
Learn about the Association of Geographic Information Laboratories for Europe and how the organization’s activities can inform your work.
The Association of Geographic Information Laboratories for Europe (AGILE) was established in 1998 to promote academic teaching and research on GIS at the European level and to ensure the continuation of the networking activities that have emerged as a result of the EGIS Conferences and the European Science Foundation GISDATA Scientific Programmes.
AGILE seeks to ensure that the views of the geographic information teaching and research community are fully represented in the discussions that take place on future European research agendas. AGILE also provides a permanent scientific forum where geographic information researchers can meet and exchange ideas and experiences at the European level.
Call for Presentations: Special GIScience Research Track ESRI International Users Conference
ESRI invites you to present a peer-reviewed paper
presentation in a special joint GIScience
Research Track for the 2011 ESRI International Users Conference and
Educational Users Conference. Papers in this special tract must focus on
cutting-edge research in GIScience. Full papers will be included in a special issue
of Transactions in GIS to be distributed
at the 2011 International Users and Education Users Conferences. Abstracts (500
words) must be submitted to Dr. John Wilson, University of Southern
California, by 1st December, 2010.
The Transactions in GIS editorial team will review abstracts
based on their GIScience content and select nine abstracts to become full
papers. Notice of acceptance will occur by 8th December, 2010. Full
papers (maximum 6,000 words plus figures, tables, and references in appropriate
format for publication) must be submitted to Dr. Wilson for independent review
by 1st February, 2011. Reviewed papers will be returned to authors
by 1st March, 2011 and final manuscripts must be returned by 15th
March, 2011, to be included in the special issue of Transactions in GIS.
For questions or guidelines on this special GIScience Research Track, please see: http://www.esri.com/GIScience
or contact Michael Gould at mgould@esri.com.
Abstracts should be submitted via e-mail with a subject line
“ESRI GIScience Abstract, Authors Last Name” no later than 1st December,
2010 to:
Dr. John Wilson, jpwilson@college.usc.edu
Call for Papers: Space-Time Integration in GIS and GIScience
Every year, the Association of American Geographers (AAG) identifies a particularly timely or relevant set of themes to feature during its Annual Meetings. Last year an over-riding theme was climate change, for example, and previous years have included featured sessions on topics such as human rights, landscape and literature, sustainable development in Africa, geography of water, and many other topics.
A special Symposium focused on the research status, recent advances and research needs of space-time integration, modeling and analysis in geography and GIScience will be organized within the AAG Annual Meeting in Seattle, April 12-16, 2011. This special set of invited papers will feature many leading GIScience researchers from Asia and Europe as well as from other regions of the world, and will form a high-profile international symposium within the AAG Annual Meeting.
Space-time analysis is a rapidly growing research frontier in geography, GIS, and GIScience. Advances in integrated GPS/GIS technologies, the availability of large datasets (over time and space), and increased capacity to manage, integrate, model and visualize complex data in (near) real time, offer the GIS and geography communities extraordinary opportunities to begin to integrate sophisticated space-time analysis and models in the study of complex environmental and social systems, from climate change to infectious disease transmission.
GIS: The Road Ahead
Geographic knowledge will soon become pervasive on the Web, letting everyone harness the power of GIS, says ESRI president Jack Dangermond in this insightful video interview. Web GIS will let farmers in Africa easily get data about soil and weather conditions. GIS technology already is helping government be more transparent for citizens.
The Grand Challenges of Geographic Information Science
At this year’s annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Dr. Dawn Wright (Oregon State University) and Dr. Chaowei Yang (George Mason University) organized a session to address: “What are the grand challenges of Geographic Information Science?” Their definition of grand challenges were “questions and directives that: (1) are extremely hard to do, yet are do-able; (2) produce outcomes potentially affecting millions, if not hundreds of millions of people; (3) require multiple research projects across many subdisciplines in order to be satisfactorily addressed; (4) consist of well-defined metrics such that, through creativity and commitment, can be realistically met and [there is understanding when the] end has been reached; (5) capture the popular imagination, and thus political support.”
Running through the session was the theme of the digital earth—to make accessible a wealth of geospatial data and tools that enables people to make everyday decisions more efficiently and wisely based on the spatial perspective. The now-familiar concept of citizens as sensors was mentioned frequently. That the EPA discussed having citizens monitor air and water quality is another indication that citizen science will be increasingly relied upon as part of the geo-monitoring system for the planet. That has enormous implications for standards, quality, and the metadata and databases that will need to be in place for it to be effectively used.
Dr. Peggy Agouris’ report about the recent NSF-sponsored workshop on geospatial and geotemporal informatics was encouraging. The workshop identified new challenges in information extraction and modeling, stated that data collection was still important and needed to be supported in industry, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies, and identified support for cross-discipline discovery using spatiotemporal information.
Tim Nyerges (University of Washington and University Consortium of GIS) reminded us of Keith Clarke’s UCGIS grand challenges from 2006: What is the cost to the nation of geospatial information that is inaccurate, over-accurate, or out-of-date? What role can geospatial technologies play in eliminating geographic illiteracy? In what ways have we yet to exploit the superiority of digital maps over paper maps? Can we complete a digital earth by 2009? (!) By how much can effective use of geospatial information improve human safety and welfare while reducing the associated costs? How can we best articulate GIScience as a core of interdisciplinary science, supporting information integration across multiple disciplines in large research projects? Tim also spoke about developing an assembly of geospatial technical and social components and activities that implement a regional network for disaster preparedness and response for the nation. This seems especially urgent in light of the Gulf oil spill!
Next week, I will put forward some “grand challenges” for GIS in education, and I welcome your thoughts.
–Joseph Kerski, ESRI Education Manager
