Search Page

Showing 41 - 50 of 51
KE-21 - System Modelling for Effective GIS Management

A geographic information system in operation is highly complex, as the scope of the GIS&T Body of Knowledge demonstrates. Modern society relies on many complex systems, but most are self-contained mechanisms with limited and well defined interfaces. A GIS is a complex open system that extends across the realms of hardware, software, data, science, and human processes. A conceptual model of a GIS can be an effective tool to design, implement, operate, maintain, manage, and assessment tool.

DC-24 - Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS)

Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) are revolutionizing how GIS&T researchers and practitioners model and analyze our world. Compared to traditional remote sensing approaches, UAS provide a largely inexpensive, flexible, and relatively easy-to-use platform to capture high spatial and temporal resolution geospatial data. Developments in computer vision, specifically Structure from Motion (SfM), enable processing of UAS-captured aerial images to produce three-dimensional point clouds and orthophotos. However, many challenges persist, including restrictive legal environments for UAS flight, extensive data processing times, and the need for further basic research. Despite its transformative potential, UAS adoption still faces some societal hesitance due to privacy concerns and liability issues.

AM-90 - Computational Movement Analysis

Figure 1. Group movement patterns as illustrated in this coordinated escape behavior of a group of mountain goat (Rubicapra rubicapra) evading approaching hikers on the Fuorcla Trupchun near the Italian/Swiss border are at the core of computational movement analysis. Once the trajectories of moving objects are collected and made accessible for computational processing, CMA aims at a better understanding of the characteristics of movement processes of animals, people or things in geographic space.

 

Computational Movement Analysis (CMA) develops and applies analytical computational tools aiming at a better understanding of movement data. CMA copes with the rapidly growing data streams capturing the mobility of people, animals, and things roaming geographic spaces. CMA studies how movement can be represented, modeled, and analyzed in GIS&T. The CMA toolbox includes a wide variety of approaches, ranging from database research, over computational geometry to data mining and visual analytics.

DA-09 - GIS&T and Geodesign

Geodesign leverages GIS&T to allow collaborations that result in geographically specific, adaptive and resilient solutions to complex problems across scales of the built and natural environment. Geodesign is rooted in decades of research and practice. Building on that history, is a contemporary approach that embraces the latest in GIS&T, visualization, and social science, all of which is organized around a unique framework process involving six models. More than just technology or GIS, Geodesign is a way of thinking when faced with complicated spatial issues that need systematic, creative, and integrative solutions.  Geodesign holds great promise for addressing the complexity of interrelated issues associated with growth and landscape change. Geodesign empowers through design combined with data and analytics to shape our environments and create desired futures.

FC-37 - Spatial Autocorrelation

The scientific term spatial autocorrelation describes Tobler’s first law of geography: everything is related to everything else, but nearby things are more related than distant things. Spatial autocorrelation has a:

  • past characterized by scientists’ non-verbal awareness of it, followed by its formalization;
  • present typified by its dissemination across numerous disciplines, its explication, its visualization, and its extension to non-normal data; and
  • an anticipated future in which it becomes a standard in data analytic computer software packages, as well as a routinely considered feature of space-time data and in spatial optimization practice.

Positive spatial autocorrelation constitutes the focal point of its past and present; one expectation is that negative spatial autocorrelation will become a focal point of its future.

AM-68 - Rule Learning for Spatial Data Mining

Recent research has identified rule learning as a promising technique for geographic pattern mining and knowledge discovery to make sense of the big spatial data avalanche (Koperski & Han, 1995; Shekhar et al., 2003). Rules conveying associative implications regarding locations, as well as semantic and spatial characteristics of analyzed spatial features, are especially of interest. This overview considers fundamentals and recent advancements in two approaches applied on spatial data: spatial association rule learning and co-location rule learning.

KE-32 - Competence in GIS&T Knowledge Work

“Competence” is a word that rolls off the tongues of instructional designers, education administrators, and HR people. Others find it hard to swallow. For some GIS&T educators, competence connotes an emphasis on vocational instruction that’s unworthy of the academy. This entry challenges skeptical educators to rethink competence not just as readiness for an occupation, but first and foremost as the readiness to live life to the fullest, and to contribute to a sustainable future. The entry considers the OECD’s “Key Competencies for a Successful Life and Well-Functioning Society,” as well as the specialized GIS&T competencies specified in the U.S. Department of Labor’s Geospatial Technology Competency Model. It presents findings of a survey in which 226 self-selected members of Esri’s Young Professionals Network observe that competencies related to the GTCM’s Software and App Development Segment were under-developed in their university studies. Looking ahead, in the context of an uncertain future in which, some say, many workers are at risk of “technological unemployment,” the entry considers which GIS&T competencies are likely to be of lasting value.

AM-03 - Buffers

This short article introduces the definition of buffer and explains how buffers are created for single or multiple geographic features of different geometric types. It also discusses how buffers are generated differently in vector and raster data models and based on the concept of cost.

CP-06 - Graphics Processing Units (GPUs)

Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) represent a state-of-the-art acceleration technology for general-purpose computation. GPUs are based on many-core architecture that can deliver computing performance much higher than desktop computers based on Central Processing Units (CPUs). A typical GPU device may have hundreds or thousands of processing cores that work together for massively parallel computing. Basic hardware architecture and software standards that support the use of GPUs for general-purpose computation are illustrated by focusing on Nvidia GPUs and its software framework: CUDA. Many-core GPUs can be leveraged for the acceleration of spatial problem-solving.  

KE-31 - Professional Certification

Professional Certification has been a part of the GIS enterprise for over two decades. There are several different certification programs and related activities now in operation within GIS, though there has been much debate over its merits, how it should be done and by whom. 

Pages