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DM-91 - Marine Spatial Data Infrastructure

Marine Spatial Data Infrastructure (MSDI), the extension of terrestrial Spatial Data Infrastructure to the marine environment, is a type of cyberinfrastructure that facilitates the discovery, access, management, distribution, reuse, and preservation of hydrospatial data. MSDIs provide timely access to data from public and private organizations of marine related disciplines such as hydrography, oceanography, meteorology and maritime economic sectors, to be used for applications such as the safety of navigation, aquatic and marine activities, economic development, security and defence, scientific research, and marine ecosystems sustainability. This chapter discusses the main pillars of a MSDI, its importance for facilitating public processes such as Marine Spatial Planning and Coastal Zone Management, the wide range of stakeholders, implementation challenges, and future developments, such as the FAIR design principles, new data sources and services.

CP-15 - Mobile Devices

Mobile devices refer to a computing system intended to be used by hand, such as smartphones or tablet computers. Mobile devices more broadly refer to mobile sensors and other hardware that has been made for relatively easy transportability, including wearable fitness trackers. Mobile devices are particularly relevant to Geographic Information Systems and Technology (GIS&T) in that they house multiple locational sensors that were until recently very expensive and only accessible to highly trained professionals. Now, mobile devices serve an important role in computing platform infrastructure and are key tools for collecting information and disseminating information to, from, and among heterogeneous and spatially dispersed audiences and devices. Due to the miniaturization and the decrease in the cost of computing capabilities, there has been widespread social uptake of mobile devices, making them ubiquitous. Mobile devices are embedded in Geographic Information Science (GIScience) meaning GIScience is increasingly permeating lived experiences and influencing social norms through the use of mobile devices. In this entry, locational sensors are described, with computational considerations specifically for mobile computing. Mobile app development is described in terms of key considerations for native versus cross-platform development. Finally, mobile devices are contextualized within computational infrastructure, addressing backend and frontend considerations.

CV-40 - Mobile Maps and Responsive Design

Geographic information increasingly is produced and consumed on mobile devices. The rise of mobile mapping is challenging traditional design conventions in research, industry, and education, and cartographers and GIScientists now need to accommodate this mobile context. This entry introduces emerging design considerations for mobile maps. First, the technical enablements and constraints that make mobile devices unique are described, including Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers and other sensors, reduced screensize and resolution, reduced processing power and memory capacity, less reliable data connectivity, reduced bandwidth, and physical mobility through variable environmental conditions. Scholarly influences on mobile mapping also are reviewed, including location-based services, adaptive cartography, volunteered geographic information, and locational privacy. Next, two strategies for creating mobile maps are introduced—mobile apps installed onto mobile operating systems versus responsive web maps that work on mobile and nonmobile devices—and core concepts of responsive web design are reviewed, including fluid grids, media queries, breakpoints, and frameworks. Finally, emerging design recommendations for mobile maps are summarized, with representation design adaptations needed to account for reduced screensizes and bandwidth and interaction design adaptations needed to account for multi-touch interaction and post-WIMP interfaces.

AM-44 - Modelling Accessibility

Modelling accessibility involves combining ideas about destinations, distance, time, and impedances to measure the relative difficulty an individual or aggregate region faces when attempting to reach a facility, service, or resource. In its simplest form, modelling accessibility is about quantifying movement opportunity. Crucial to modelling accessibility is the calculation of the distance, time, or cost distance between two (or more) locations, which is an operation that geographic information systems (GIS) have been designed to accomplish. Measures and models of accessibility thus draw heavily on the algorithms embedded in a GIS and represent one of the key applied areas of GIS&T.

KE-34 - Multi-Organizational GIS Coordination

For many years, collaboration has been a key cornerstone in the success of efforts achieved by the geospatial community.  When paired with governance, collaborative efforts often lead to sustainability and have the effect of broadening the benefits that can be achieved.  The following text shares how the geospatial community uses collaboration and governance as tools to achieve benefits across the community.  Case studies are provided to illustrate the process and the outcomes achieved. 

CV-12 - Multivariate Mapping

Bivariate and multivariate maps encode two or more data variables concurrently into a single symbolization mechanism. Their purpose is to reveal and communicate relationships between the variables that might not otherwise be apparent via a standard single-variable technique. These maps are inherently more complex, though offer a novel means of visualizing the nuances that may exist between the mapped variables. As information-dense visual products, they can require considerable effort on behalf of the map reader, though a thoughtfully-designed map and legend can be an interesting opportunity to effectively convey a comparative dimension.

This chapter describes some of the key types of bivariate and multivariate maps, walks through some of the rationale for various techniques, and encourages the reader to take an informed, balanced approach to map design weighing information density and visual complexity. Some alternatives to bivariate and multivariate mapping are provided, and their relative merits are discussed.

CV-33 - Narrative and Storytelling

Maps are powerful storytellers. Maps have a long history combining spatial relations with cartographic language to locate, analyze, ground, and express stories told across time and space. Today, “story maps” are increasingly visible in cartography, GIScience, digital humanities, data visualization, and journalism due to the volume of available data and increasingly accessible mapping tools. Perhaps, most importantly, maps present world views and much larger (often hidden) stories or “meta-narratives.” These underlying stories often emerge from dominant perspectives that are deeply informed by power structures like racism, patriarchy, ableism, etc. and further generate uneven geographies. Attention to power in narrative and storytelling reveals and gives voice to alternative storylines and perspectives that can be woven together across time and space. In this entry, I introduce multiple conceptualizations of maps and stories from cartography and data journalism to feminist mapping, Black geographies, and decolonial mapping to illustrate the power of narrative and storytelling in mapping. I argue that understanding the power of narrative and storytelling in mapping is an essential skillset for students and professionals alike.

PD-10 - Natural Language Processing in GIScience Applications

Natural Language Processing (NLP) has experienced explosive growth in recent years. While the field has been around for decades, recent advances in NLP techniques as well as advanced computational resources have re-engaged academics, industry, and the general public. The field of Geographic Information Science has played a small but important role in the growth of this domain. Combining NLP techniques with existing geographic methodologies and knowledge has contributed substantially to many geospatial applications currently in use today. In this entry, we provide an overview of current application areas for natural language processing in GIScience. We provide some examples and discuss some of the challenges in this area.

DC-16 - Nature of Multispectral Image Data

A multispectral image comprises a set of co-registered images, each of which captures the spatially varying brightness of a scene in a specific spectral band, or electromagnetic wavelength region. An image is structured as a raster, or grid, of pixels. Multispectral images are used as a visual backdrop for other GIS layers, to provide information that is manually interpreted from images, or to generate automatically-derived thematic layers, for example through classification. The scale of multispectral images has spatial, spectral, radiometric and temporal components. Each component of scale has two aspects, extent (or coverage), and grain (or resolution). The brightness variations of an image are determined by factors that include (1) illumination variations and effects of the atmosphere, (2) spectral properties of materials in the scene (particularly reflectance, but also, depending on the wavelength, emittance), (3) spectral bands of the sensor, and (4) display options, such as the contrast stretch, which affect the visualization of the image. This topic review focuses primarily on optical remote sensing in the visible, near infrared and shortwave infrared parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, with an emphasis on satellite imagery.  

FC-40 - Neighborhoods

Neighborhoods mean different things in varied contexts like computational geometry, administration and planning, as well as urban geography and other fields. Among the multiple contexts, computational geometry takes the most abstract and data-oriented approach: polygon neighborhoods refer to polygons sharing a boundary or a point, and point neighborhoods are defined by connected Thiessen polygons or other more complicated algorithms. Neighborhoods in some regions can be a practical and clearly delineated administration or planning units. In urban geography and some related social sciences, the terms neighborhood and community have been used interchangeably on many occasions, and neighborhoods can be a fuzzy and general concept with no clear boundaries such that they cannot be easily or consensually defined. Neighborhood effects have a series of unique meanings and several delineation methods are commonly used to define social and environmental effects in health applications.

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