Introduction: the Varenius project
Geographic information science is an increasingly popular term for the complex set of issues and fundamental questions that arise in creating, storing, analyzing, displaying, and otherwise handling geographic information. Like most types of information, the handling of geographic information is rapidly undergoing a transition to a digital world of high interconnectivity, low cost, and new potential. The geographic information technologies—geographic information systems (GIS), Earth imaging systems, the Global Positioning System (GPS)—have experienced enormous popularity and growth in recent years, but their widespread use is stimulating a need for basic research. Geographic information science is a multidisciplinary field, bringing the expertise of geographers, cartographers, computer scientists, statisticians, cognitive scientists, and many others to bear on common and substantive problems. The level of interest in geographic information science is demonstrated by the recent establishment and growth of the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (www.ucgis.org), a group of close to 50 universities with substantial multidisciplinary research activities in the field.
The Varenius project seeks to stimulate greater collaboration and focus among scientists interested in these issues, and to recruit others whose expertise may be relevant. The project is named for Bernhard Varenius, a 17th Century Dutch geographer and author of the Geographia Generalis, a work that had significant influence on early geographic thought and on the work of the Newtonians. Additional background information on the project will not be reviewed here, as it is available on the project’s Web site www.ncgia.org.
The project is structured around three Strategic Areas, as follows:
Cognitive Models of Geographic Space
Theories and models of human spatial cognition have included both general and particular components. There seem to be some universals of human spatial cognition, and these appear to arise from the physics of human environments, from the nature of human bodies and senses, and especially from the ways people interact with and are influenced by their environments, both physical and social. But there are also many aspects of human spatial cognition that seem to vary across individuals. Some of these variations may be correlated with factors such as culture, language, or gender, while others may be truly individual differences. Of particular interest here is that GIS-using professionals from different fields may have systematic differences in their cognitive models for geographic phenomena and processes. Work on cognitive aspects of GIS user interfaces has emphasized spatial cognition by ‘spatially aware professionals’ who made up the bulk of the GIS user community in the early 1990s. However, as information systems come ‘on line’ to the general public through home Internet access and other means, we will need to know a great deal more about spatial cognition in general. Current geographic information systems are difficult to use without extensive education and training that is generally unavailable to the public. Even academic researchers find it difficult to identify available training opportunities, or to fit them into their already full professional schedules. Making the technology truly easy and natural to use will empower new communities of users, thus increasing the value of the software and databases being built now and in the future by government and the private sector.
Computational Implementations of Geographic Concepts
Most current methods in geographic information science were designed from the perspectives of the computer scientist and the cartographer, aiming at efficiency in capture, storage, and processing of cartographic features. The state of the art in formalizations of geographic knowledge, as reflected in most current GISs, requires that certain constraints be fulfilled before a user is allowed to perform any analysis. They include:
Geographies of the Information Society
The third strategic area for NCGIA research is the emerging geographies of the information society where our proposed basic research will identify positive and negative impacts of technology on individuals, organizations, and society, and examine the new geographic structures of the information age. The widespread development and adoption of the geographic information technologies is occurring simultaneously, and many debates about geographic information mirror broader debates about information generally, particularly in areas such as ownership of data and invasion of privacy. New, more efficient techniques are emerging for collecting and processing spatial data and for communicating geographic knowledge from the field to the consumer, all driven by the changing economics of information creation, dissemination, and use. The use of geographic information technologies is providing to users substantial economic, legal, and political advantages. The world of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI), in which everyone can be a producer as well as a consumer, will be very different from the one we are used to, with its linear flow of data from producing agency to consuming public. It will require research to develop measures of fitness for use, based on metrics that take producers' descriptions of data available, and consumers' descriptions of data required, as operands. More profoundly, however, it raises fundamental questions about how information is described between one person and another, and about the processes by which semantic meaning is communicated.
The Varenius project will sponsor a series of Specialist Meetings at which topics under these three broad Strategic Areas will be discussed, and developed into concrete research agendas. Although the project does not include funding to carry out the research, a program of small Seed Grants will be used to further stimulate activity, particularly through the development of proposals for major funding. The project also includes funding for a program of Visiting Scholars.
Establishing the project structure
During the first nine months the various components of the project structure were put in place. These included appointing the three Panels who are responsible for overseeing activities in the three Strategic Areas, appointing an Advisory Board, beginning the work of these groups and the Executive Committee, and establishing topics and timetables for the Specialist Meetings.
The Executive Committee includes the Director (Michael Goodchild, UC Santa Barbara, project PI); the Assistant Director (Karen Kemp, UC Santa Barbara); the three Panel Chairs (David Mark, SUNY Buffalo, Chair of the Panel on Cognitive Models of Geographic Space; Max Egenhofer, University of Maine, Chair of the Panel on Computational Implementations of Geographic Concepts; and Eric Sheppard, University of Minnesota, Chair of the Panel on Geographies of the Information Society); and one member of the Advisory Board (Karen Siderelis, State of North Carolina).
The Executive Committee meets monthly, mostly by conference call. It oversees all day-to-day activities of the project. The committee began meeting at the start of the project; Eric Sheppard joined in March when his appointment as Panel Chair was confirmed by NSF, and Karen Siderelis joined in August following her appointment by the Board, and its approval by NSF.
The Advisory Board oversees all aspects of the project. It will normally meet in February/March, but held its 1997 inaugural meeting August 18–19, in Santa Barbara. The membership of the Board is as follows:
Within the Varenius project structure, each Strategic Area is overseen by a Panel, consisting of a Chair and four to six members, drawn from the international ranks of the most productive and best-known scholars in the field. Appointments to the Panels were made in February and March. The Panels held their first meetings May 2–4 in Santa Barbara; full reports of these meetings and subsequent activities are included in this report.
The Varenius project will offer small grants in order to stimulate proposal-generation and research immediately following each Specialist Meeting. Funds amounting to approximately $15,000 will be available to cover travel, hiring of assistance, and other costs. The program will be given its first test in connection with the first Specialist Meeting, due to be held in Santa Barbara December 5–6. Guidelines for the Seed Grants program have been submitted to NSF, revised following advice, and are awaiting approval. The draft guidelines are included as Appendix 2 of this section.
As noted earlier, the main activity of the project in the coming months will center on the Specialist Meetings, of which nine are currently planned (see the Panel reports below for the status of these plans). General guidelines to aid in planning Specialist Meetings have been developed, and are available via the Varenius web site at www.ncgia.org.
The project includes funding for a program of Visiting Scholars. 1997 was a transition year from the previous NCGIA Visiting Scholar program, to the new Varenius structure which is expected to be in full operation following the first Specialist Meeting in December. This report includes a full report on the Visiting Scholars accommodated by NCGIA during the period 1/1/97–11/30/97.