This page provides research initiatives or priorities sited from
National Center for Geographic Information & Analysis (NCGIA)
and University Consortium of Geographic Information Science (UCGIS).
Research Initiatives
sited from NCGIA:
- Accuracy of spatial database: focusing on methods and techniques
for dealing with error and uncertainty in geographical data; aiming
to improve models of uncertainty, to develop methods for tracking
and encoding errors in databases, to formulate methods of computing
and communicating error in GIS products, and to develop policies
that encourage the implementation of accuracy assessment.
- Languages of spatial relationships: aiming to develop an
appropriate fundamental theory of spatial relations using natural
language and mathematics, based on the formalization of geometric
concepts as they are used in GIS and the cognitive aspects of
spatial relations.
- Multiple representations: aiming to develop the roles to to
ensure consistency and accuracy in cartographic and other forms of
generalization, in order to meet the need of organizing multiple
topological and metrical versions of the same data for efficient
access, and implementing linkages between multiple representations.
- The use and value of geographic information: aiming to improve
models for tracking the use of geographic information, to expand
methods for assessing the value and benefits of geographic
information, to formulate methods for better understanding the
factors and processes affecting acquisition, implementation, and
utilization of geographic information innovations, and to advance
methods for modeling the diffusion of geographic information
technologies.
- Architecture of very large spatial dataset:
aiming to develop new
approaches to the effective processing, storage, manipulation and
analysis of large spatial datasets, including data models,
structures, algorithms and user interfaces.
- Spatial Decision Support System: focusing on the optimal schema
for decision support in areas of ill-defined problem-solving;
modeling and data requirements; technology and implementation; and
user requirements and organizational issues.
- Visualizing the quality of spatial information: focusing on
effective means of managing and visually communicating components of
data quality to researchers, decision-makers, and users of spatial
information, particularly in the context of GIS.
- Formalizing cartographic
knowledge: including cartographic
language, evaluation of design, knowledge acquisition/elicitation
structuring/modeling knowledge.
- Institutions sharing geographic information: focusing on the
studies of theories of individual and organizational behavior and
the arenas among which sharing of spatial data occurs, could occur,
or could be enhanced; and observations of the process of spatial
data sharing in existing settings.
- Spatio-temperal reasoning in GIS:
aiming to study spatial
applications to identify properties of different time concepts,
explore alternative mathematical formalizations to Cartesian
coordinates and Euclidean geometry, build computational frameworks
and examine computational reasoning methods.
- Integration of remote sensing & GIS
- User Interfaces for GIS
- GIS & Spatial Analysis
- Multiple roles for GIS in U. S. global change research
- Law, information policy & spatial databases
- Collaborative spatial decision-making
- The social implications of how people, space & environment are
represented in GIS
- Interoperating GIS's
- Formal models of the common-sense geographic world
Research
Priorities sited from UCGIS
- Cognition of geographic information
- Spatial data acquisition and integration
- Spatial analysis in a GIS environment
- Interoperability of geographic information
- Distributed computing
- Future of the spatial information infrastructure
- GIS and society
- Uncertainty in geographic data and GIS-based activities
- Extensions to geographic representations
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