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.

Advanced Geographic Information Systems is a component of Encyclopedia of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences in the global Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), which is an integrated compendium of twenty one Encyclopedias. The content of the Theme on Advanced Geographic Information Systems is organized with state-oc-the-art presentations covering the following aspects of the subject: Spatio-Temporal Information Systems; Interacting with GIS - From Paper Cartography to Virtual Environments; Spatial Data Management: Topic Overview; Introduction to Spatial Decision Support Systems; GIS Interoperability, from Problems to Solutions. These volumes are aimed at the following five major target audiences: University and College students Educators, Professional practitioners, Research personnel and Policy analysts, managers, and decision makers and NGOs.

As Web service technologies have matured in recent years, an increasing number of geospatial Web services designed to deal with spatial information over the network have emerged. Geospatial Web Services: Advances in Information Interoperability provides relevant theoretical frameworks and the latest empirical research findings and applications in the area. This book highlights the strategic role of geospatial Web services in a distributed heterogeneous environment and the life cycle of geospatial Web services for building interoperable geospatial applications.

Developments in technologies have evolved in a much wider use of technology throughout science, government, and business; resulting in the expansion of geographic information systems. GIS is the academic study and practice of presenting geographical data through a system designed to capture, store, analyze, and manage geographic information. Geographic Information Systems: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications is a collection of knowledge on the latest advancements and research of geographic information systems. This book aims to be useful for academics and practitioners involved in geographical data.

GIS data and tools are revolutionizing transportation research and decision making, allowing transportation analysts and professionals to understand and solve complex transportation problems that were previously impossible. Here, Miller and Shaw present a comprehensive discussion of fundamental geographic science and the applications of these principles using GIS and other software tools. By providing thorough and accessible discussions of transportation analysis within a GIS environment, this volume fills a critical niche in GIS-T and GIS literature.