Ontological Foundations for Geographic Information Science

We propose as a UCGIS research priority the topic of “Ontological Foundations for Geographic Information.” Under this umbrella we unify several interrelated research subfields, each of which deals with different perspectives on geospatial ontologies and their roles in geographic information science. While each of these subfields could be addressed separately, we believe it is important to address ontological research in a unitary, systematic fashion, embracing conceptual issues concerning what would be required to establish an exhaustive ontology of the geospatial domain, issues relating to the choice of appropriate methods for formalizing ontologies, and considerations regarding the design of ontology-driven information systems. This integrated approach is necessary, because there is a strong dependency between the methods used to specify an ontology, and the conceptual richness, robustness and tractability of the ontology itself. Likewise, information system implementations are needed as testbeds of the usefulness of every aspect of an exhaustive ontology of the geospatial domain. None of the current UCGIS research priorities provides such an integrative perspective, and therefore the topic of “Ontological Foundations for Geographic Information Science” is unique

Merging Special Collections with GIS Technology to Enhance the User Experience

This analysis evaluates how PhillyHistory.org merged their unique special collection materials with geospatial-based progressive technology to challenge and educate the global community. A new generation of technologically savvy researchers has emerged that expect a more enhanced user experience than earlier generations. To meet these needs, collection managers are collaborating with community and local institutions to increase online access to materials; mixing best metadata practices with custom elements to create map mashups; and merging progressive GIS technology and geospatial based applications with their collections to enhance the user experience. The PhillyHistory.org website was analyzed to explore how they used various geospatial technology to create a new type of digital content management system based on geographical information and make their collections accessible via online software and mobile applications

The Repast Simulation/Modelling System for Geospatial Simulation

The use of simulation/modelling systems can simplify the implementation of agent-based models. Repast is one of the few simulation/modelling software systems that supports the integration of geospatial data especially that of vector-based geometries. This paper provides details about Repast specifically an overview, including its different development languages available to develop agent-based models. Before describing Repast’s core functionality and how models can be developed within it, specific emphasis will be placed on its ability to represent dynamics and incorporate geographical information. Once these elements of the system have been covered, a diverse list of Agent-Based Modelling (ABM) applications using Repast will be presented with particular emphasis on spatial applications utilizing Repast, in particular, those that utilize geospatial data

Grid Enabled Geospatial Catalogue Web Service

Geospatial Catalogue Web Service is a vital service for sharing and interoperating volumes of distributed heterogeneous geospatial resources, such as data, services, applications, and their replicas over the web. Based on the Grid technology and the Open Geospatial Consortium (0GC) s Catalogue Service - Web Information Model, this paper proposes a new information model for Geospatial Catalogue Web Service, named as GCWS which can securely provides Grid-based publishing, managing and querying geospatial data and services, and the transparent access to the replica data and related services under the Grid environment. This information model integrates the information model of the Grid Replica Location Service (RLS)/Monitoring & Discovery Service (MDS) with the information model of OGC Catalogue Service (CSW), and refers to the geospatial data metadata standards from IS0 19115, FGDC and NASA EOS Core System and service metadata standards from IS0 191 19 to extend itself for expressing geospatial resources. Using GCWS, any valid geospatial user, who belongs to an authorized Virtual Organization (VO), can securely publish and manage geospatial resources, especially query on-demand data in the virtual community and get back it through the data-related services which provide functions such as subsetting, reformatting, reprojection etc. This work facilitates the geospatial resources sharing and interoperating under the Grid environment, and implements geospatial resources Grid enabled and Grid technologies geospatial enabled. It 2!so makes researcher to focus on science, 2nd not cn issues with computing ability, data locztic~, processir,g and management. GCWS also is a key component for workflow-based virtual geospatial data producing

Unifying Multiple Knowledge Domains Using the ARTMAP Information Fusion System

Sensors working at different times, locations, and scales, and experts with different goals, languages, and situations, may produce apparently inconsistent image labels that are reconciled by their implicit underlying relationships. Even when such relationships are unknown to the user, an ARTMAP information fusion system discovers a hierarchical knowledge structure for a labeled dataset. The present paper addresses the problem of integrating two or more independent knowledge hierarchies based on the same low-level classes. The new system fuses independent domains into a unified knowledge structure, discovering cross-domain rules in this process. The system infers multi-level relationships among groups of output classes, without any supervised labeling of these relationships. In order to self-organize its expert system, ARTMAP information fusion system features distributed code representations that exploit the neural network’s capacity for one-to-many learning. The fusion system software and testbed datasets are available from http://cns.bu.edu/techlabNational Science Foundation (SBE-0354378); National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NMA 201-01-1-2016

Development Of A Spatial Web-Based Graphical User Interface With Gis For Real Estate Users

Geographic information is a valuable source for applications and analysis, where location of objects and events, can enhance the decision making activities. Recently, the interoperability of geospatial data has been an ongoing research activity and goal of the geospatial information user community for decades. Focusing on data integration scenarios, the recent popularity and adoption of the internet and web services, has provided a new means of interoperability for geospatial information, differing from previous approaches to information exchange. Currently the interoperability approaches of geospatial information with real estate data are inadequate. This thesis argues that utilizing the interoperability real estate data, with geospatial data using web services, is the best method to achieve efficient data exchange than traditional approaches. The thesis demonstrates this by developing a spatial web service to facilitate transferring data, from real estate users, to Geographic Information System (GIS) data layers. The thesis also discusses how web services affect data preparation and data updating. Various scenarios of geocoding and transferring real estate data into geospatial data will be discussed. A web interface implementation is presented, to illustrate the validity of the interoperable spatial web service approach, with real estate for which this thesis argues. The interface has two ways communication. On one hand users will be able to use the spatial web service to integrate the property data, with GIS service provider. On the other hand, user will be able to receive a map report for the geocoded property

Transferring Google Earth observations to GIS-software : example from gully erosion study

High-resolution images available on Google Earth are increasingly being consulted in geographic studies. However, most studies limit themselves to visualizations or on-screen measurements. Google Earth allows users to create points, lines, and polygons on-screen, which can be saved as Keyhole Markup Language (KML) files. Here, the use of R statistics freeware is proposed to easily convert these files to the shapefile format [or .shp file format'], which can be loaded into Geographic Information System (GIS) software (ESRI ArcGIS 9 in our example). The geospatial data integration in GIS strongly increases the analysis possibilities

Data Assimilation Enhancements to Air Force Weathers Land Information System

The United States Air Force (USAF) has a proud and storied tradition of enabling significant advancements in the area of characterizing and modeling land state information. 557th Weather Wing (557 WW; DoDs Executive Agent for Land Information) provides routine geospatial intelligence information to warfighters, planners, and decision makers at all echelons and services of the U.S. military, government and intelligence community. 557 WW and its predecessors have been home to the DoDs only operational regional and global land data analysis systems since January 1958. As a trusted partner since 2005, Air Force Weather (AFW) has relied on the Hydrological Sciences Laboratory at NASA/GSFC to lead the interagency scientific collaboration known as the Land Information System (LIS). LIS is an advanced software framework for high performance land surface modeling and data assimilation of geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) information