This book is a valuable resource for the increasing body of researchers and practitioners in the field of geospatial technologies. Written by leading researchers and experts it is designed in such a way that technical achievements and challenges of geospatial computing applications are followed by various applications developed for society. As such, they serve as a bridge between technologists and solution developers, which is critical in the context of developing countries. There have been significant advances in geospatial technologies in India in the last decade, including advances in spatial data infrastructures, geocomputation and spatial databases, and innovative applications in natural resource development. Ranging from LIDAR standards, to data integration using ontologies, and mobile computing, such progress enhances the utility of the technology for both urban and rural development. This book discusses these achievements and considers the way forward.

We need new maps is the central claim made in this book. In a world increasingly influenced by human action and interaction, we still rely heavily on mapping techniques that were invented to discover unknown places and explore our physical environment. Although the traditional concept of a map is currently being revived in digital environments, the underlying mapping approaches are not capable of making the complexity of human-environment relationships fully comprehensible. Starting from how people can be put on the map in new ways, this book outlines the development of a novel technique that stretches a map according to quantitative data, such as population. The new maps are called gridded cartograms as the method is based on a grid onto which a density-equalising cartogram technique is applied. The underlying grid ensures the preservation of an accurate geographic reference to the real world. It allows the gridded cartograms to be used as basemaps onto which other information can be mapped. This applies to any geographic information from the human and physical environment. As demonstrated through the examples presented in this book, the new maps are not limited to showing population as a defining element for the transformation, but can show any quantitative geospatial data, such as wealth, rainfall, or even the environmental conditions of the oceans. The new maps also work at various scales, from a global perspective down to the scale of urban environments. The gridded cartogram technique is proposed as a new global and local map projection that is a viable and versatile alternative to other conventional map projections. The maps based on this technique open up a wide range of potential new applications to rediscover the diverse geographies of the world. They have the potential to allow us to gain new perspectives through detailed cartographic depictions.

Spanning the Islamic world, from ninth-century Baghdad to nineteenth-century Iran, this book tells the story of the key Muslim map-makers and the art of Islamic cartography. Muslims were uniquely placed to explore the edges of the inhabited world and their maps stretched from Isfahan to Palermo, from Istanbul to Cairo and Aden. Over a similar period, Muslim artists developed distinctive styles, often based on geometrical patterns and calligraphy. Map-makers, including al-Khwarazmi and al-Idrisi, combined novel cartographical techniques with art, science and geographical knowledge. The results could be aesthetically stunning and mathematically sophisticated, politically charged as well as a celebration of human diversity. 'Islamic Maps' examines Islamic visual interpretations of the world in their historical context, through the lives of the map-makers themselves. What was the purpose of their maps, what choices did they make and what was the argument they were trying to convey? Lavishly illustrated with stunning manuscripts, beautiful instruments and Qibla charts, this book shows how maps constructed by Muslim map-makers capture the many dimensions of Islamic civilisation, providing a window into the worldviews of Islamic societies.

This book explores the impact of augmenting novel architectural designs with hardware-based application accelerators. The text covers comprehensive aspects of the applications in Geographic Information Science, remote sensing and deploying Modern Accelerator Technologies (MAT) for geospatial simulations and spatiotemporal analytics. MAT in GIS applications, MAT in remotely sensed data processing and analysis, heterogeneous processors, many-core and highly multi-threaded processors and general purpose processors are also presented. This book includes case studies and closes with a chapter on future trends. Modern Accelerator Technologies for GIS is a reference book for practitioners and researchers working in geographical information systems and related fields. Advanced-level students in geography, computational science, computer science and engineering will also find this book useful.

This book is the first to document in depth the history of lunar and planetary cartography in Russia. The first map of the far side of the Moon was made with the participation of Lomonosov Moscow University (Sternberg Astronomical Institute, MSU) in 1960. The developed mapping technologies were then used in preparing the "Complete Map of the Moon" in 1967 as well as other maps and globes. Over the years, various maps of Mars have emerged from the special course "Mapping of extraterrestrial objects" in the MSU Geography Department, including the hypsometric map of Mars at a scale of 1:26,000,000, compiled by J.A. Ilyukhina and published in 2004 in an edition of 5,000 copies. A more detailed version of this map has since been produced with a new hypsometric scale. In addition, maps of the northern and southern hemispheres of Mars have been compiled for the hypsometric globe of Mars. Relief maps of Venus were made in 2008, 2010, and 2011, and hypsometric maps of Phobos and Deimos at a scale of 1:60,000 were published in 2011. History of Lunar and Planetary Cartography in Russia provides detailed information on the compilation of this diverse range of maps and will be of interest to all lunar and planetary cartographers.

The availability of new high resolution satellite data brings with it the need for new image analysis methods. Traditional pixel-oriented algorithms do not give credit to the spatial coherence of high resolution imagery. In particular, for detection and classification of man-made structures, object-based procedures are much more appropriate. The use of object features such as scale, compactness, orientation and texture, in addition to spectral characteristics, extends the possibilities of remote sensing satellite image analysis considerably.This book describes recent progress in object-based image interpretation, and also presents many new results in its application to verification of nuclear non-proliferation.

This is the eleventh volume in the series Light Scattering Reviews, devoted to current knowledge of light scattering problems and both experimental and theoretical research techniques related to their solution. The focus of this volume is to describe modern advances in radiative transfer and light scattering optics. This book brings together the most recent studies on light radiative transfer in the terrestrial atmosphere, while also reviewing environmental polarimetry. The book is divided into nine chapters: * the first four chapters review recent advances in modern radiative transfer theory and provide detailed descriptions of radiative transfer codes (e.g., DISORT and CRTM). Approximate solutions of integro-differential radiative transfer equations for turbid media with different shapes (spheres, cylinders, planeparallel layers) are detailed; * chapters 5 to 8 focus on studies of light scattering by single particles and radially inhomogeneous media; * the final chapter discusses the environmental polarimetry of man-made objects.

Lessons learned in the last several years have given clear indications that the prediction and efficient monitoring of disasters is one of the critical factors in decision-making process. In this respect space-based technologies have the great potential of supplying information in near real time. Earth observation satellites have already demonstrated their flexibility in providing data to a wide range of applications: weather forecasting, person and vehicle tracking, alerting to disaster, forest fire and flood monitoring, oil spills, spread of desertification, monitoring of crop and forestry damages.

This book focuses on a wider utilisation of remote sensing in disaster management. The discussed aspects comprise data access/delivery to the users, information extraction and analysis, management of data and its integration with other data sources (airborne and terrestrial imagery, GIS data, etc.), data standardization, organisational and legal aspects of sharing remote sensing information.

These Proceedings present selected research papers from CSNC2016, held during 18th-20th May in Changsha, China. The theme of CSNC2016 is Smart Sensing, Smart Perception. These papers discuss the technologies and applications of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), and the latest progress made in the China BeiDou System (BDS) especially. They are divided into 12 topics to match the corresponding sessions in CSNC2016, which broadly covered key topics in GNSS. Readers can learn about the BDS and keep abreast of the latest advances in GNSS techniques and applications.

This book brings together a collection of invited interdisciplinary persp- tives on the recent topic of Object-based Image Analysis (OBIA). Its c- st tent is based on select papers from the 1 OBIA International Conference held in Salzburg in July 2006, and is enriched by several invited chapters. All submissions have passed through a blind peer-review process resulting in what we believe is a timely volume of the highest scientific, theoretical and technical standards. The concept of OBIA first gained widespread interest within the GIScience (Geographic Information Science) community circa 2000, with the advent of the first commercial software for what was then termed 'obje- oriented image analysis'. However, it is widely agreed that OBIA builds on older segmentation, edge-detection and classification concepts that have been used in remote sensing image analysis for several decades. Nevert- less, its emergence has provided a new critical bridge to spatial concepts applied in multiscale landscape analysis, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and the synergy between image-objects and their radiometric char- teristics and analyses in Earth Observation data (EO).

This book is based on the premise that research necessary to advance the utility of geographic informatior. systems must extend far beyond concerns with technical issues. The search for formalisms and generalizable principles relative to the behavior and needs of individuals, organizations and institutions is just as important in enabling optimal use of geographic information innovations. This book consists of papers prepared by participants in the NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) on "Modeling the Diffusion and Use of Geographic Information Technologies. " The workshop was held AprilS-II, 1992, in Sounion, Greece. The idea for the workshop and this volume arose from discussions among U. S. and European researchers who had been involved in carrying out studies on the use and diffusion of geographic information innovations and actively involved in critically analyzing each other's work. We felt the time was ripe for reporting studies recently accomplished by the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (U. S. A. ), the Economic and Social Research Council (U. K. ), and others relative to these research topics. A workshop would allow contact among and international comparisons with those who were working independently on similar problems with similar or alternative approaches. It would also allow the bringing together of scholars in technology diffusion, management information systems, and sociology with scholars from the GIS community.

Since the publication of Jerlov's classic volume on optical oceanography in 1968, the ability to predict or model the submarine light field, given measurements of the inherent optical properties of the ocean, has improved to the point that model fields are very close to measured fields. In the last three decades, remote sensing capabilities have fostered powerful models that can be inverted to estimate the inherent optical properties closely related to substances important for understanding global biological productivity, environmental quality, and most nearshore geophysical processes. This volume presents an eclectic blend of information on the theories, experiments, and instrumentation that now characterize the ways in which optical oceanography is studied. Through the course of this interdisciplinary work, the reader is led from the physical concepts of radiative transfer to the experimental techniques used in the lab and at sea, to process-oriented discussions of the biochemical mechanisms responsible for oceanic optical variability. The text will be of interest to researchers and students in physical and biological oceanography, biology, geophysics, limnology, atmospheric optics, and remote sensing of ocean and global climate change.

A universal approach to the ontology of geographic space has already been, and is going to be, a comprehensive task for establishing more effective spatial models. The concept of a universal spatial ontology should be independent of location, culture, and time. It should be fundamental and universal in the same way that the number p defines the ratio between the diameter and the circumference of a circle. The term universal therefore means all-embracing and for general propose. Universal Ontology of Geographic Space: Semantic Enrichment for Spatial Data aims to escalate the current scope of research to support the development of semantically interoperable systems of geographic space. This reference will aid university lecturers and professors, students, researchers, developers of spatial applications.

Metadata play a fundamental role in both DLs and SDIs. Commonly defined as "structured data about data" or "data which describe attributes of a resource" or, more simply, "information about data," it is an essential requirement for locating and evaluating available data. Therefore, this book focuses on the study of different metadata aspects, which contribute to a more efficient use of DLs and SDIs. The three main issues addressed are: the management of nested collections of resources, the interoperability between metadata schemas, and the integration of information retrieval techniques to the discovery services of geographic data catalogs (contributing in this way to avoid metadata content heterogeneity).

Wildland fires are becoming one of the most critical environmental factors affecting a wide range of ecosystems worldwide. In Mediterranean ecosystems (including also South-Africa, California, parts of Chile and Australia), wildland fires are recurrent phenomena every summer, following the seasonal drought. As a result of changes in traditional land use practices, and the impact of recent climate warming, fires have more negative impacts in the last years, threatening lives, socio-economic and ecological values. The book describes the ecological context of fires in the Mediterranean ecosystems, and provides methods to observe fire danger conditions and fire impacts using Earth Observation and Geographic Information System technologies.

This doctoral thesis applies measurements of ground deformation from satellite radar using their potential to play a key role in understanding volcanic and magmatic processes throughout the eruption cycle. However, making these measurements is often problematic, and the processes driving ground deformation are commonly poorly understood. These problems are approached in this thesis in the context of the Cascades Volcanic Arc. From a technical perspective, the thesis develops a new way of using regional-scale weather models to assess a priori the influence of atmospheric uncertainties on satellite measurements of volcano deformation, providing key parameters for volcano monitoring. Next, it presents detailed geodetic studies of two volcanoes in northern California: Medicine Lake Volcano and Lassen Volcanic Centre. Finally, the thesis combines geodetic constraints with petrological inputs to develop a thermal model of cooling magma intrusions. The novelty and range of topics covered in this thesis mean that it is a seminal work in volcanic and magmatic studies.

This book provides an information fusion model with information fusion theory, geographic information system technology and modern mathematical methods to evaluate the risks of groundwater inrushes from aquifers underlying coal seams. In this new model, the water inrush vulnerable index was calculated with variable weights theory. It overcomes the defect of the traditional vulnerability index method that assumes constant weights for the factors controlling the water inrush. Mine water inrush events often occur during coal mine construction and production; they account for a large proportion of the nation's coal mine disasters and accidents in China. Between 2005 and 2014, 513 water inrush incidents have occurred with a total loss of 2,753 lives. As mining depths and mining intensity continue to increase, the hydrogeological conditions encountered are becoming more complex. The innovative model presented here was applied to two coal mines in China with proved better results than the traditional vulnerability index method.

The 15th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster offered a timely opportunity for an expert assessment of the current situation and suggestions for approaches to managing the information associated with the site and surrounding contaminated territories.
The great quantity of data coming from the contaminated region was and is very difficult to use without he aid of modern information technologies, especially Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS). Application of these technologies, and related expertise, became crucial to the region's economic recovery and sustainability planning. Given the real possibility of a similar accident at nuclear facilities elsewhere around the world, the development of recovery strategies based on experience gained at Chernobyl, using modern scientific methods and technologies, will be invaluable in the future. The presentations and discussion reported in the book have led to some key conclusions. Image maps derived from satellite imagery are the most economical, up to date and readily available basis for Chernobyl-related applications, as well as for other future applications. The study of soil-plant transfer of radionuclides afforded comparatively much more reliable data. GIS in association with adequate knowledge is a valuable tool in decision making and modelling of contaminated areas and objects.

Since first emerging as an issue of concern in the late 1960s, fear of crime has become one of the most researched topics in contemporary criminology and receives considerable attention in a range of other disciplines including social ecology, social psychology and geography. Researchers looking the subject have consistently uncovered alarming characteristics, primarily relating to the behavioural responses that people adopt in relation to their fear of crime. This book reports on research conducted over the past eight years, in which efforts have been made to pioneer the combination of techniques from behavioural geography with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in order to map the fear of crime.

The first part of the book outlines the history of research into fear of crime, with an emphasis on the many approaches that have been used to investigate the problem and the need for a spatially-explicit approach. The second part provides a technical break down of the GIS-based techniques used to map fear of crime and summarises key findings from two separate study sites. The authors describe collective avoidance behaviour in relation to disorder decline models such as the Broken Windows Thesis, the potential to integrate fear mapping with police-community partnerships and emerging avenues for further research. Issues discussed include fear of crime in relation to housing prices and disorder, the use of fear mapping as a means with which to monitor the impact of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) and fear mapping in transit environments.

"Modeling the Dynamics and Consequences of Land System Change" introduces an innovative three-tier architecture approach for modeling the dynamics and consequences of land system change. It also describes the principle, modules and the applications of the three-tier architecture model in detail. The approach holds strong potential for accurate predictions of the land use structure at the regional level, simulating the land use pattern at pixel level and evaluating the consequences of land system change. The simulation results can be used for the planning of land use, urban development, regional development, environmental protection, and also serve as valuable information for decision making concerning land management and optimal utilization of land resources.

The book is intended for the researchers and professionals in land use or land systems, regional environmental change, ecological conservation, as well as the land resource administrative agencies and environmental protection agencies.

Professor Xiangzheng Deng is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.

The IAG International Symposium on Gravity, Geoid and Geodynamics 2000 (GGG2000) took place in Banff, Alberta, Canada, from July 31 to August 4, 2000. This symposium continued the tradition of mid-term meetings ("GraGeoMar96: Gravity, Geoid and Marine Geodesy," Tokyo, Japan, Sept. 30 - Oct. 5,1996) held between the joint symposia of the International Geoid and Gravity Commissions ("1st Joint Meeting of the International Gravity Commission and the International Geoid Commission," Graz, Austria, Sept. 11-17, 1994 and "2nd Joint Meeting of the International Gravity Commission and the International Geoid Commission," Trieste, Italy, Sept. 7-12, 1998). This time, geodynamics was chosen as the third topic to accompany the of gravity and geoid. The symposium thus aimed and succeeded at bringing traditional topics together geodesists and geophysicists working in the general areas of gravity, geoid and geodynamics. Besides covering the traditional research areas, special attention was paid to the use of geodetic methods for geodynamics studies, dedicated satellite missions, airborne surveys, arctic regions geodesy and geodynamics, new mathematical methods and the integration of geodetic and geophysical information. The Scientific Committee members (Jean Dickey, Martine Feissel, Rene Forsberg, Petr Holota, Inginio Marson, Masao Nakada, Richard W. Peltier, Reiner Rummel, Burkhard Schaffrin, Klaus Peter Schwarz, Michael G. Sideris, DetlefWolf and Patrick Wu) are sincerely thanked for selecting the session topics, which resulted in such an exciting scientific event. More specifically, the following ten sessions were organized: 1. Reference Frames and the Datum Problem C.

"China Satellite Navigation Conference (CSNC) 2014 Proceedings "presents selected research papers from CSNC2014, held on 21-23 May in Nanjing, China. The theme of CSNC2014 is 'BDS Application: Innovation, Integration and Sharing'. These papers discuss the technologies and applications of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and the latest progress made in the China BeiDou System (BDS) especially. They are divided into 9 topics to match the corresponding sessions in CSNC2014, which broadly covered key topics in GNSS. Readers can learn about the BDS and keep abreast of the latest advances in GNSS techniques and applications.

SUN Jiadong is the Chief Designer of the Compass/ BDS, and the Academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS); JIAO Wenhai is a researcher at China Satellite Navigation Office; WU Haitao is a professor at Navigation Headquarters, CAS; LU Mingquan is a professor at Department of Electronic Engineering of Tsinghua University.

One of the key milestones of radar remote sensing for civil applications was the launch of the European Remote Sensing Satellite 1 (ERS 1) in 1991. The platform carried a variety of sensors; the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is widely cons- ered to be the most important. This active sensing technique provides all-day and all-weather mapping capability of considerably ?ne spatial resolution. ERS 1 and its sister system ERS 2 (launch 1995) were primarily designed for ocean app- cations, but soon the focus of attention turned to onshore mapping. Examples for typical applications are land cover classi?cation also in tropical zones and mo- toring of glaciers or urban growth. In parallel, international Space Shuttle Missions dedicated to radar remote sensing were conducted starting already in the 1980s. The most prominent were the SIR-C/X-SAR mission focussing on the investigation of multi-frequency and multi-polarization SAR data and the famous Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). Data acquired during the latter enabled to derive a DEM of almost global coverage by means of SAR Interferometry. It is indispe- ableeventodayandformanyregionsthebestelevationmodelavailable. Differential SAR Interferometry based on time series of imagery of the ERS satellites and their successor Envisat became an important and unique technique for surface defor- tion monitoring. The spatial resolution of those devices is in the order of some tens of meters.

The book is based on selected contributions presented at the (General) Session on the "Observation, Prediction and Verification of Precipitation" of the 2006 EGU General Assembly held in Vienna, Austria. It focuses on current advances in the field of precipitation measurement (i.e. instrumentation), estimation (i.e. remote sensing) and prediction (i.e. modeling). Following an introduction, which includes definitions and a summary on the history of measurement, estimation and prediction of precipitation, modern methods in the measurement, estimation and predication of precipitation are presented followed by the integration of the three themes for improved precipitation estimates and prediction as well as calibration and fine-tuning of methods. It describes advances in in-situ ground based instruments, in remote sensing methods of precipitation from space, ground and underwater observations and state of the art methods of precipitation nowcasting and forecasting, along with verification.