The National Science Foundation will sponsor a workshop December 1012 1998 at the Upham Hotel, Santa Barbara. The workshop will include about 35 international scholars, and is being organized under the Varenius program, NCGIA’s project to advance geographic information science, by a steering committee of Michael Goodchild (NCGIA/UCSB), Luc Anselin (University of Texas at Dallas), Arthur Getis (San Diego State University), Ayse Can (Fannie Mae), John Paul Jones II (University of Kentucky), Morton O’Kelly (Ohio State University), John Wilson (University of Southern California), and Paul Longley (University of Bristol). Funds are available to support participation.
Since their inception, geographic information systems have been promoted
as vehicles for conducting spatial analysis, that is, for supporting scientists
trying to extract meaning and insight from geographic data. Geographers
in particular have hoped that GIS would be the 'trojan horse' encouraging
and facilitating greater attention to spatial perspectives in other disciplines,
and thus raising the utility and practical relevance of geography, and
to a large degree this expectation has been realized. But the pace of methodological
change in both GIS and spatial analysis has been so rapid in recent years
that a stock-taking is appropriate. An assessment is needed of how successful
GIS has been at making spatial analysis widely available to physical and
social scientists, and of what new directions might be researched in the
future. How satisfactory is the environment currently provided by GIS,
and how might it be improved? Is spatial analysis being neglected by the
sheer diversity of current research in geographic information science?
Have GIS and spatial analysis responded appropriately to the critiques
published in recent years by social theorists and humanist geographers?
How likely are current research efforts to provide an optimum environment
for research in geography, regional science, and other disciplines that
study the Earth's surface in the coming decade?