Objectives of the Workshop:
The workshop is the first such event in Project Varenius, a three-year research
project being undertaken by NCGIA (the National Center for Geographic Information
and Analysis, http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu) to advance the field
of geographic information science, with funding anticipated from the National
Science Foundation. In the proposal for Varenius we identified three strategic
areas for research in geographic information science: cognitive models of geographic
space; computational implementations of geographic concepts; and geographies
of the information society. We defined the third area to include those issues
of fundamental significance raised by the growth of geographic information and
associated technologies. It includes impacts of digital geographic information
and associated technologies on society; the social, institutional, and economic
issues that they raise; the kinds of geographies being constructed in virtual
worlds; and the future roles of geographic information in society.
The objectives of the meeting:
- to examine the range of research topics identified in this strategic
area;
- to identify important gaps in the set of topics;
- to summarize progress to date, including that achieved by previous
initiatives, such as the European Science Foundation's GISDATA program; NCGIA's past and
current research initiatives that fall in this area; the National Research
Council's 1996 workshop on the future of the National Spatial Data
Infrastructure; etc.
- to identify those topics most likely to yield to research organized
according to the mechanisms and timetable of the Varenius Project;
- among these, to recommend topics of high priority for subsequent
development as Varenius Project research initiatives; and
- to identify suitable members for a five-person science panel to track
progress in this strategic area.
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