996 research outputs found
From SpaceStat to CyberGIS: Twenty Years of Spatial Data Analysis Software
This essay assesses the evolution of the way in which spatial data analytical methods have been incorporated into software tools over the past two decades. It is part retrospective and prospective, going beyond a historical review to outline some ideas about important factors that drove the software development, such as methodological advances, the open source movement and the advent of the internet and cyberinfrastructure. The review highlights activities carried out by the author and his collaborators and uses SpaceStat, GeoDa, PySAL and recent spatial analytical web services developed at the ASU GeoDa Center as illustrative examples. It outlines a vision for a spatial econometrics workbench as an example of the incorporation of spatial analytical functionality in a cyberGIS.
Designing Malleable Cyberinfastructure to Breach the Golden Barrier
Design research perspectives may have a great deal of insights to offer emergency response researchers. We consider man-made and natural disasters as events that often require rapid change to existing institutionalized technical, social, and cultural support structure—a fundamental problem for static systems. Built infrastructure such as electric power and telecommunications or emergency response systems such as fire, police, and National Guard all have static information systems that are tailored to their specific needs. These specialized systems are typical of those developed as a result of applying traditional information systems design theory. They are designed to control domain specific variables and mitigate a specific class of constraints derived from a wellarticulated environment with firm application boundaries. Therefore, typical mission-critical Information and Communication Infrastructure (ICTI) technologies empower knowledge workers with the ability to change current environmental events to ensure safety and security. Disasters create situations that are challenging for typical designs because a disaster erodes control and raises unexpected constraints during an emerging set of circumstances. The unpredictable circumstances of disasters demonstrate that current emergency response ICTI systems are ill equipped to rapidly evolve in concert to address the full scale and scope of such complex problems. A phenomenon found in the treatment of trauma victims, the Golden Trauma Time Interval, is generalized in this paper to all emergencies in order to inform designers of the next generation ICTI. This future ICTI or “Cyberinfrastructure” can provide the essential foundation necessary to dynamically adapt conventional ICTI into a configuration suitable for use during disasters. However, Cyberinfrastructure will suffice only if it can be sufficiently evolved as an Integrated Information Infrastructure (I3 ) that addresses the common sociotechnical factors in these domains. This paper describes fundamental design concepts derived from interdisciplinary theoretical constructs used to inform the creation of a framework to model “complex adaptive systems” (CAS) of which emergency response infrastructural systems and I3 are instances. In previous work, CAS was synthesized with software architecture concepts to arrive at a design approach for the electric power grid’s I3. We will present some of the foundational concepts of CAS that are useful for the future design and development of a Cyberinfrastructure. The ICTI may exist today in a raw form to accomplish the task, but further ICTI design research is required to pinpoint critical inhibitors to its evolution. Also, social, organizational, and institutional issues pertaining to this research will be highlighted as emergency response system design factors needing further consideration. For example, this discussion infers a resolution to the basic tradeoff between personal privacy rights and public safety
From Artifacts to Aggregations: Modeling Scientific Life Cycles on the Semantic Web
In the process of scientific research, many information objects are
generated, all of which may remain valuable indefinitely. However, artifacts
such as instrument data and associated calibration information may have little
value in isolation; their meaning is derived from their relationships to each
other. Individual artifacts are best represented as components of a life cycle
that is specific to a scientific research domain or project. Current cataloging
practices do not describe objects at a sufficient level of granularity nor do
they offer the globally persistent identifiers necessary to discover and manage
scholarly products with World Wide Web standards. The Open Archives
Initiative's Object Reuse and Exchange data model (OAI-ORE) meets these
requirements. We demonstrate a conceptual implementation of OAI-ORE to
represent the scientific life cycles of embedded networked sensor applications
in seismology and environmental sciences. By establishing relationships between
publications, data, and contextual research information, we illustrate how to
obtain a richer and more realistic view of scientific practices. That view can
facilitate new forms of scientific research and learning. Our analysis is
framed by studies of scientific practices in a large, multi-disciplinary,
multi-university science and engineering research center, the Center for
Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS).Comment: 28 pages. To appear in the Journal of the American Society for
Information Science and Technology (JASIST
An "All Hands" Call to the Social Science Community: Establishing a Community Framework for Complexity Modeling Using Agent Based Models and Cyberinfrastructure
To date, many communities of practice (COP) in the social sciences have been struggling with how to deal with rapidly growing bodies of information. Many CoPs across broad disciplines have turned to community frameworks for complexity modeling (CFCMs) but this strategy has been slow to be discussed let alone adopted by the social sciences communities of practice (SS-CoPs). In this paper we urge the SS-CoPs that it is timely to develop and establish a CBCF for the social sciences for two major reasons: the rapid acquisition of data and the emergence of critical cybertools which can facilitate agent-based, spatially-explicit models. The goal of this paper is not to prescribe how a CFCM might be set up but to suggest of what components it might consist and what its advantages would be. Agent based models serve the establishment of a CFCM because they allow robust and diverse inputs and are amenable to output-driven modifications. In other words, as phenomena are resolved by a SS-CoP it is possible to adjust and refine ABMs (and their predictive ability) as a recursive and collective process. Existing and emerging cybertools such as computer networks, digital data collections and advances in programming languages mean the SS-CoP must now carefully consider committing the human organization to enabling a cyberinfrastructure tool. The combination of technologies with human interfaces can allow scenarios to be incorporated through 'if' 'then' rules and provide a powerful basis for addressing the dynamics of coupled and complex social ecological systems (cSESs). The need for social scientists to be more engaged participants in the growing challenges of characterizing chaotic, self-organizing social systems and predicting emergent patterns makes the application of ABMs timely. The enabling of a SS-CoP CFCM human-cyberinfrastructure represents an unprecedented opportunity to synthesize, compare and evaluate diverse sociological phenomena as a cohesive and recursive community-driven process.Community-Based Complex Models, Mathematics, Social Sciences
Designing Institutional Infrastructure for E-Science
A new generation of information and communication infrastructures, including advanced Internet computing and Grid technologies, promises more direct and shared access to more widely distributed computing resources than was previously possible. Scientific and technological collaboration, consequently, is more and more dependent upon access to, and sharing of digital research data. Thus, the U.S. NSF Directorate committed in 2005 to a major research funding initiative, “Cyberinfrastructure Vision for 21st Century Discovery”. These investments are aimed at enhancement of computer and network technologies, and the training of researchers. Animated by much the same view, the UK e-Science Core Programme has preceded the NSF effort in funding development of an array of open standard middleware platforms, intended to support Grid enabled science and engineering research. This proceeds from the sceptical view that engineering breakthroughs alone will not be enough to achieve the outcomes envisaged. Success in realizing the potential of e-Science—through the collaborative activities supported by the "cyberinfrastructure," if it is to be achieved, will be the result of a nexus of interrelated social, legal, and technical transformations.e-science, cyberinfrastructure, information sharing, research
Thirty Years of Spatial Econometrics
In this paper, I give a personal view on the development of the field of spatial econometrics during the past thirty years. I argue that it has moved from the margins to the mainstream of applied econometrics and social science methodology. I distinguish three broad phases in the development, which I refer to as preconditions, takeoff and maturity. For each of these phases I describe the main methodological focus and list major contributions. I conclude with some speculations about future directions.
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