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.

The INCF Digital Atlasing Program: Report on Digital Atlasing Standards in the Rodent Brain

The goal of the INCF Digital Atlasing Program is to provide the vision and direction necessary to make the rapidly growing collection of multidimensional data of the rodent brain (images, gene expression, etc.) widely accessible and usable to the international research community. This Digital Brain Atlasing Standards Task Force was formed in May 2008 to investigate the state of rodent brain digital atlasing, and formulate standards, guidelines, and policy recommendations.

Our first objective has been the preparation of a detailed document that includes the vision and specific description of an infrastructure, systems and methods capable of serving the scientific goals of the community, as well as practical issues for achieving
the goals. This report builds on the 1st INCF Workshop on Mouse and Rat Brain Digital Atlasing Systems (Boline et al., 2007, _Nature Preceedings_, doi:10.1038/npre.2007.1046.1) and includes a more detailed analysis of both the current state and desired state of digital atlasing along with specific recommendations for achieving these goals

Real-time quasi-3D tomographic reconstruction

Developments in acquisition technology and a growing need for time-resolved experiments pose great computational challenges in tomography. In addition, access to reconstructions in real time is a highly demanded feature but has so far been out of reach. We show that by exploiting the mathematical properties of filtered backprojection-type methods, having access to real-time reconstructions of arbitrarily oriented slices becomes feasible. Furthermore, we present RECAST3D, software for visualization and on-demand reconstruction of slices. A user of RECAST3D can interactively shift and rotate slices in a GUI, while the software updates the slice in real time. For certain use cases, the possibility to study arbitrarily oriented slices in real time directly from the measured data provides sufficient visual and quantitative insight. Two such applications are discussed in this article

Linking Spatial Video and GIS

Spatial Video is any form of geographically referenced videographic data. The forms in which it is acquired, stored and used vary enormously; as does the standard of accuracy in the spatial data and the quality of the video footage. This research deals with a specific form of Spatial Video where these data have been captured from a moving road-network survey vehicle. The spatial data are GPS sentences while the video orientation is approximately orthogonal and coincident with the direction of travel. GIS that use these data are usually bespoke standalone systems or third party extensions to existing platforms. They specialise in using the video as a visual enhancement with limited spatial functionality and interoperability. While enormous amounts of these data exist, they do not have a generalised, cross-platform spatial data structure that is suitable for use within a GIS. The objectives of this research have been to define, develop and implement a novel Spatial Video data structure and demonstrate how this can achieve a spatial approach to the study of video. This data structure is called a Viewpoint and represents the capture location and geographical extent of each video frame. It is generalised to represent any form or format of Spatial Video. It is shown how a Viewpoint improves on existing data structure methodologies and how it can be theoretically defined in 3D space. A 2D implementation is then developed where Viewpoints are constructed from the spatial and camera parameters of each survey in the study area. A number of problems are defined and solutions provided towards the implementation of a post-processing system to calculate, index and store each video frame Viewpoint in a centralised spatial database. From this spatial database a number of geospatial analysis approaches are demonstrated that represent novel ways of using and studying Spatial Video based on the Viewpoint data structure. Also, a unique application is developed where the Viewpoints are used as a spatial control to dynamically access and play video in a location aware system. While video has been to date largely ignored as a GIS spatial data source; it is shown through this novel Viewpoint implementation and the geospatial analysis demonstrations that this need not be the case anymore

Documenting and validating Virtual Archaeology

The use of Virtual Archaeology is expanding rapidly, not only in the museum and archaeology professions, but also in the broadcast media, tourism and heritage industries. Many concerns have been expressed about the lack of transparency and difficulty in validating the models and presentations used in these contexts. A case study is used to illustrate the role of metadata in addressing these problems. The paper argues that appropriate metadata documentation of projects may extend the critical apparatus that we take for granted in scientific papers into the world of distributed Virtual Archaeology. Three recently introduced XML languages for multimedia (SMIL), vector graphics (SVG) and virtual reality (X3D) applications are examined with particular reference to their metadata hosting capabilities. Finally, an outline proposal for a Virtual Archaeology Metadata Profile and Schema is presented, based on refinements of the Dublin Core and other metadata schemas

A geo-database for potentially polluting marine sites and associated risk index

The increasing availability of geospatial marine data provides an opportunity for hydrographic offices to contribute to the identification of Potentially Polluting Marine Sites (PPMS). To adequately manage these sites, a PPMS Geospatial Database (GeoDB) application was developed to collect and store relevant information suitable for site inventory and geo-spatial analysis. The benefits of structuring the data to conform to the Universal Hydrographic Data Model (IHO S-100) and to use the Geographic Mark-Up Language (GML) for encoding are presented. A storage solution is proposed using a GML-enabled spatial relational database management system (RDBMS). In addition, an example of a risk index methodology is provided based on the defined data structure. The implementation of this example was performed using scripts containing SQL statements. These procedures were implemented using a cross-platform C++ application based on open-source libraries and called PPMS GeoDB Manager

Application of Decentralized and Self-Regulating Knowledge Bases for Assembly Design Automation

During product development, changes to parts that are already built into assemblies usually lead to the need to check the function and consistency of the assembly. This procedure is very time-consuming and has to be performed again for each change. In this paper, an approach is presented in which the individual parts are represented as agents that adapt themselves to new conditions. The agents are combined in a multi-agent system (MAS) and interact via communication over messages. For this purpose, a methodical procedure for the development of the MAS and the implementation in a CAD development environment is presented. The validation of the MAS is carried out on the application example of a gearbox