Interoperating Geographic Information Systems

Geographic information systems have developed rapidly in the past decade, and are now a major class of software, with applications that include infrastructure maintenance, resource management, agriculture, Earth science, and planning. But a lack of standards has led to a general inability for one GIS to interoperate with another. It is difficult for one GIS to share data with another, or for people trained on one system to adapt easily to the commands and user interface of another. Failure to interoperate is a problem at many levels, ranging from the purely technical to the semantic and the institutional. Interoperating Geographic Information Systems is about efforts to improve the ability of GISs to interoperate, and has been assembled through a collaboration between academic researchers and the software vendor community under the auspices of the US National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis and the Open GIS Consortium Inc. It includes chapters on the basic principles and the various conceptual frameworks that the research community has developed to think about the problem. Other chapters review a wide range of applications and the experiences of the authors in trying to achieve interoperability at a practical level. Interoperability opens enormous potential for new ways of using GIS and new mechanisms for exchanging data, and these are covered in chapters on information marketplaces, with special reference to geographic information. Institutional arrangements are also likely to be profoundly affected by the trend towards interoperable systems, and nowhere is the impact of interoperability more likely to cause fundamental change than in education, as educators address the needs of a new generation of GIS users with access to a new generation of tools. The book concludes with a series of chapters on education and institutional change. Interoperating Geographic Information Systems is suitable as a secondary text for graduate level courses in computer science, geography, spatial databases, and interoperability and as a reference for researchers and practitioners in industry, commerce and government.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Conference on Interoperating Geographic Information Systems, INTEROP'99, held in Zurich, Switzerland in March 1999. The volume presents 22 revised full papers carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. Also included are three invited full papers. The book addresses various topics of database interoperability and spatial data processing in particular identification, infrastructure, implementation, vectors and graphics, semantics, heterogeneous databases and representation.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Conference on Interoperating Geographic Information Systems, INTEROP'99, held in Zurich, Switzerland in March 1999. The volume presents 22 revised full papers carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. Also included are three invited full papers. The book addresses various topics of database interoperability and spatial data processing in particular identification, infrastructure, implementation, vectors and graphics, semantics, heterogeneous databases and representation.

As the use of geographical information systems develops apace, a significant strand of research activity is being directed to the fundamental nature of geographic information. This volume contains a collection of essays and discussions on this theme. What is geographic information? What fundamental principles are associated with it? How can

Computer science provides a powerful tool that was virtually unknown three generations ago. Some of the classical fields of knowledge are geodesy (surveying), cartography, and geography. Electronics have revolutionized geodetic methods. Cartography has faced the dominance of the computer that results in simplified cartographic products. All three fields make use of basic components such as the Internet and databases. The Springer Handbook of Geographic Information is organized in three parts, Basics, Geographic Information and Applications. Some parts of the basics belong to the larger field of computer science. However, the reader gets a comprehensive view on geographic information because the topics selected from computer science have a close relation to geographic information. The Springer Handbook of Geographic Information is written for scientists at universities and industry as well as advanced and PhD students.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the International Workshop on Integrated Databases, Digital Images and GIS, ISD'99, held in Portland, Maine, USA in June 1999. The 18 revised full papers presented went through a double reviewing process and were selected from nearly 40 original submissions. The book is divided into parts on object extraction from raster images, geospatial analysis, formalisms and modeling, and data access.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Conference on Geographic Information Science, GIScience 2002, held in Boulder, Colorado, USA in September 2002.The 24 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 64 paper submissions. Among the topics addressed are Voronoi diagram representation, geospacial database design, vector data transmission, geographic information retrieval, geo-ontologies, relative motion analysis, Web-based maps information retrieval, spatial pattern recognition, environmental decision support systems, multi-scale spatial databases, mobile journey planning, searching geographical data, indexing, terrain modeling, spatial allocation, distributed geographic internet information systems, and spatio-thematic information programming.

Since the first symposium in 1984 the International Symposia on Spatial Data Handling (SDH) has become a major resource for recent advances in GIS research. The International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling is regarded as a premier international research forum for GIS. All papers are fully reviewed by an international program committee composed of experts in the field.

A close relationship exists between GIS and numerous applications, including cartography, photogrammetry, geodesy, surveying, computer and information science, and statistics, among others. Scientists coined the term "geographic information science (GIScience)" to describe the theory behind these fields. A Research Agenda for Geographic Information