Linking People, Place, and Policy: A GIScience Approach describes a breadth of research associated with the study of human-environment interactions, with particular emphasis on land use and land cover dynamics. This book examines the social, biophysical, and geographical drivers of land use and land cover patterns and their dynamics, which are interpreted within a policy-relevant context. Concepts, tools, and techniques within Geographic Information Science serve as the unifying methodological framework in which landscapes in Thailand, Ecuador, Kenya, Cambodia, China, Brazil, Nepal, and the United States are examined through analyses conducted using quantitative, qualitative, and image-based techniques.

Linking People, Place, and Policy: A GIScience Approach addresses a need for a comprehensive and rigorous treatment of GIScience for research and study within the context of human-environment interactions. The human dimensions research community, land use and land cover change programs, and human and landscape ecology communities, among others, are collectively viewing the landscape within a spatially-explicit perspective, where people are viewed as agents of landscape change that shape and are shaped by the landscape, and where landscape form and function are assessed within a space-time context. This book articulates some of these challenges and opportunities.

Spatial information is pervaded by uncertainty. Indeed, geographical data is often obtained by an imperfect interpretation of remote sensing images, while people attach ill-defined or ambiguous labels to places and their properties. As another example, medical images are often the result of measurements by imprecise sensors (e.g. MRI scans). Moreover, by processing spatial information in real-world applications, additional uncertainty is introduced, e.g. due to the use of interpolation/extrapolation techniques or to conflicts that are detected in an information fusion step. To the best of our knowledge, this book presents the first overview of spatial uncertainty which goes beyond the setting of geographical information systems. Uncertainty issues are especially addressed from a representation and reasoning point of view. In particular, the book consists of 14 chapters, which are clustered around three central topics. The first of these topics is about the uncertainty in meaning of linguistic descriptions of spatial scenes. Second, the issue of reasoning about spatial relations and dealing with inconsistency in information merging is studied. Finally, interpolation and prediction of spatial phenomena are investigated, both at the methodological level and from an application-oriented perspective. The concept of uncertainty by itself is understood in a broad sense, including both quantitative and more qualitative approaches, dealing with variability, epistemic uncertainty, as well as with vagueness of terms.

The Earth s magnetic and gravity field play an important role in global and regional geodynamics. Satellite exploration of these fields has received great attention in recent years. Research satellites such as CHAMP and GRACE as well as the ESA explorer GOCE apply new measurement techniques, thus allowing the recovery of the gravitational and magnetic field with unprecedented accuracy and resolution, spatial as well as temporal. Combined with terrestrial observations and computer models, this data will help develop a more detailed understanding of the Earth as a system. In Germany, many of the processing, modelling and interpreting methodologies for these new observation techniques are developed under the umbrella of the R&D-programme GEOTECHNOLOGIEN, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The research projects focus on a better understanding of the spatial and temporal variations in the magnetic and gravity field and their relationship to the dynamics of the Earth s interior and global change processes.

This volume presents the results of the multidisciplinary studies covered by the programme for the period 2005-2008. It includes the following topics: High-accuracy gravity field models, near-real-time provision and usage of CHAMP and GRACE atmospheric sounding, sea level variations, improved GRACE gravity time series and their validation by ocean bottom pressure measurements, integration of space geodetic techniques as a basis for the Global Geodetic-Geophysical Observing System (GGOS), high-resolution magnetic field models and global magnetisation maps and time-variable gravity and surface mass processes."

This book contains twenty-eight papers by participants in the NATO Advanced Study Institute (ASI) on "Cognitive and Linguistic Aspects of Geographic Space," held in Las Navas del Maxques, Spain, July 8-20, 1990. The NATO ASI marked a stage in a two-year research project at the U. S. National Center for Geographic Infonnation and Analysis (NCOIA). In 1987, the U. S. National Science Foundation issued a solicitation for proposals to establish the NCGIA-and one element of that solicitation was a call for research on a "fundamental theory of spatial relations." We felt that such a fundamental theory could be searched for in mathematics (geometry, topology) or in cognitive science, but that a simultaneous search in these two seemingly disparate research areas might produce novel results. Thus, as part of the NCGIA proposal from a consortium consisting of the University of California at Santa Barbara, the State University of New York at Buffalo, and the University of Maine, we proposed that the second major Research Initiative (two year, multidisciplinary research project) of the NCOIA would address these issues, and would be called "Languages of Spatial Relations" The grant to establish the NCOIA was awarded to our consortium late in 1988.

Acoustic Signal Processing for Ocean Explortion has two major goals: (i) to present signal processing algorithms that take into account the models of acoustic propagation in the ocean and; (ii) to give a perspective of the broad set of techniques, problems, and applications arising in ocean exploration. The book discusses related issues and problems focused in model based acoustic signal processing methods. Besides addressing the problem of the propagation of acoustics in the ocean, it presents relevant acoustic signal processing methods like matched field processing, array processing, and localization and detection techniques. These more traditional contexts are herein enlarged to include imaging and mapping, and new signal representation models like time/frequency and wavelet transforms. Several applied aspects of these topics, such as the application of acoustics to fisheries, sea floor swath mapping by swath bathymetry and side scan sonar, autonomous underwater vehicles and communications in underwater are also considered.

Over the past 20 years the costs of natural disasters have escalated significantly. The lives of over 800 million people have been disrupted and the number of catastrophes has nearly quadrupled. At present, the increasing global threat of natural disasters, in spite of our increased knowledge, is ominous. With the growth in world population, the increasing of resources in newly developing areas, and the increasing cost and sophistication of engineering structures and technical installations, there is an urgent need to seek to understand the potential threats posed by natural hazards and to ascertain the best ways of mitigating their damaging effects. To meet this urgent threat, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in December 22, 1989 passed a Resolution which declared the 1990s to be the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR). As a contribution to the decade, the International Symposium Hazards--91 was held in Perugia, Italy, during 4--9 August 1991. The conference was attended by specialists from 34 countries, and a total of 110 papers were presented at 20 sessions, covering a very broad range of topics which proved to be of significant value for future research. The sixteen articles included in this book provide a unique overview of the state-of-the-science in geophysical hazards including climatic, atmospheric, hydrological and geological hazards. Furthermore, the results of a panel on the IDNDR and the recommendations adopted during the meeting are presented at the end of this volume. Recent Studies in Geophysical Hazards is thus an excellent reference source for scientists, engineers, and policy makers.

Through the results of a developed case study of information system for low temperature geothermal energy, GIS to Support Cost-effective Decisions on Renewable Sources addresses the issue of the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in evaluating cost-effectiveness of renewable resource exploitation on a regional scale. Focusing on the design of a Decision Support System, a process is presented aimed to transform geographic data into knowledge useful for analysis and decision-making on the economic exploitation of geothermal energy. This detailed description includes a literature review and technical issues related to data collection, data mining, decision analysis for the informative system developed for the case study. A multi-disciplinary approach to GIS design is presented which is also an innovative example of fusion of georeferenced data acquired from multiple sources including remote sensing, networks of sensors and socio-economic censuses. GIS to Support Cost-effective Decisions on Renewable Sources is a useful, practical reference for engineers, managers and researchers involved in the design of GIS, decision support systems, investment planning/strategy in renewable energy and ICT innovation in this field.

The diversity of life is displayed by a diversity the biodiversity elements. These unique of structural and functional elements. Many approaches are usually tailored to the region of aspects of this diversity are critical for main the world where the scientists' work is focused. taining the healthy functioning of biological This book presents accounts of many tech systems both within short and long time scales. niques that are currently being used in different Some highly diverse features of nature arise parts of the globe by conservation scientists. simply from the heterogeneous patterns that Many different techniques are necessary to comprise the web of nature. Many of these handle the differences in data types and data features contribute to the beauty and quality of coverages that occur across the globe. Also, a life. Humans do not yet understand enough variety of mapping approaches are needed about the complexity of nature to distinguish today to strengthen the many diverse critical those elements that act to support natural conservation objectives. These objectives include vitality from those elements that contribute the identification of the distribution patterns exclusively to our experience of beauty and for a species or habitat type and the placement quality in life. of protected area boundaries.

A significant part of understanding how people use geographic information and technology concerns human cognition. This book provides the first comprehensive in-depth examination of the cognitive aspects of human-computer interaction for geographic information systems (GIS). Cognitive aspects are treated in relation to individual, group, behavioral, institutional, and cultural perspectives. Extensions of GIS in the form of spatial decision support systems and SDSS for groups are part of the geographic information technology considered. Audience: Geographic information users, systems analysts and system designers, researchers in human-computer interaction will find this book an information resource for understanding cognitive aspects of geographic information technology use, and the methods appropriate for examining this use.

This book is the provisional result of more than 10 years of continued discussion with friends and colleagues from neighbouring disciplines. Although only a small minority ofthe millions of GIS users on this planet are geographers, it seems that somehow, geographers are a kind ofnatural contact persons for historians, archae- ologists, economists, social scientists or others who are looking for appropriate ways ofworking with spatial data. We received constant encouragements and many valuable suggestions from our colleagues. Particularly we wish to thank the members ofthe GIS Study Group of the German Association of Geography (AK GIS) as well as the participants of a workshop in June 2000 on "Mapping Europe's historic boundaries and borders" which was generously sponsored by the European Science Foundation. Among the individuals we owe special appreciation are Humphrey Southall and Ian Gregory (The Great Britain Historical GIS Programme, University ofPortsmouth), Michael Goerke (European University Institute, Florence), Konrad Pierau (Center for His- torical Social Research, University of Cologne), Bernhard Holfter (Forderverein Historische Grundkarte, Leipzig) and Stephan Riediger (Department of History, University of Mannheim).

Rapid development of remote sensing technology in recent years has greatly increased availability of high-resolution satellite image data. However, detailed analysis of such large data sets also requires innovative new techniques in image and signal processing.

This important text/reference presents a comprehensive review of image processing methods, for the analysis of land use in residential areas. Combining a theoretical framework with highly practical applications, making use of both well-known methods and cutting-edge techniques in computer vision, the book describes a system for the effective detection of single houses and streets in very high resolution.

Topics and features: with a Foreword by Prof. Dr. Peter Reinartz of the German Aerospace Center; provides end-of-chapter summaries and review questions; presents a detailed review on remote sensing satellites; examines the multispectral information that can be obtained from satellite images, with a focus on vegetation and shadow-water indices; investigates methods for land-use classification, introducing precise graph theoretical measures over panchromatic images; addresses the problem of detecting residential regions; describes a house and street network-detection subsystem; concludes with a summary of the key ideas covered in the book.

This pioneering work on automated satellite and aerial image-understanding systems will be of great interest to researchers in both remote sensing and computer vision, highlighting the benefit of interdisciplinary collaboration between the two communities. Urban planners and policy makers will also find considerable value in the proposed system."

Recent years have seen an explosive growth in the use of new database applications such as CAD/CAM systems, spatial information systems, and multimedia information systems. The needs of these applications are far more complex than traditional business applications. They call for support of objects with complex data types, such as images and spatial objects, and for support of objects with wildly varying numbers of index terms, such as documents. Traditional indexing techniques such as the B-tree and its variants do not efficiently support these applications, and so new indexing mechanisms have been developed. As a result of the demand for database support for new applications, there has been a proliferation of new indexing techniques. The need for a book addressing indexing problems in advanced applications is evident. For practitioners and database and application developers, this book explains best practice, guiding the selection of appropriate indexes for each application. For researchers, this book provides a foundation for the development of new and more robust indexes. For newcomers, this book is an overview of the wide range of advanced indexing techniques. Indexing Techniques for Advanced Database Systems is suitable as a secondary text for a graduate level course on indexing techniques, and as a reference for researchers and practitioners in industry.

Spatially aware wireless and Internet devices, cloud computing, NoSal databases, social networks and semantic web offer new ways of accessing, analyzing, and elaborating geo-spatial information in both real-world and virtual spaces. This book explores the how-to's of the most promising recurrent technologies and trends in GIS, such as Semantic GIS, Web GIS, Mobile GIS, NoSal Geographic Databases, Cloud GIS, Geo Social networks, Spatial Data Warehousing-OlAP, and Open GIS. The text discusses and emphasizes the methodological aspects of such technologies and their applications in GIS.

Satellite Data Compression covers recent progress in compression techniques for multispectral, hyperspectral and ultra spectral data. A survey of recent advances in the fields of satellite communications, remote sensing and geographical information systems is included. Satellite Data Compression, contributed by leaders in this field, is the first book available on satellite data compression. It covers onboard compression methodology and hardware developments in several space agencies. Case studies are presented on recent advances in satellite data compression techniques via various prediction-based, lookup-table-based, transform-based, clustering-based, and projection-based approaches. This book provides valuable information on state-of-the-art satellite data compression technologies for professionals and students who are interested in this topic. Satellite Data Compression is designed for a professional audience comprised of computer scientists working in satellite communications, sensor system design, remote sensing, data receiving, airborne imaging and geographical information systems (GIS). Advanced-level students and academic researchers will also benefit from this book.

A Coming of Age: Geospatial Analysis and Modelling in the Early Twenty First Century Forty years ago when spatial analysis first emerged as a distinct theme within geography's quantitative revolution, the focus was largely on consistent methods for measuring spatial correlation. The concept of spatial au- correlation took pride of place, mirroring concerns in time-series analysis about similar kinds of dependence known to distort the standard probability theory used to derive appropriate statistics. Early applications of spatial correlation tended to reflect geographical patterns expressed as points. The perspective taken on such analytical thinking was founded on induction, the search for pattern in data with a view to suggesting appropriate hypotheses which could subsequently be tested. In parallel but using very different techniques came the development of a more deductive style of analysis based on modelling and thence simulation. Here the focus was on translating prior theory into forms for generating testable predictions whose outcomes could be compared with observations about some system or phenomenon of interest. In the intervening years, spatial analysis has broadened to embrace both inductive and deductive approaches, often combining both in different mixes for the variety of problems to which it is now applied.

A survey of the feasibility of aircraft- and satellite-based methods for revealing environmental-geological problems. Throughout, a balanced ratio between explanations on the methodological/technical side and presentations of case studies is maintained. The comparison of case studies from North America and Germany shows how the respective territorial conditions lead to distinct methodological approaches. Equally, the considerable dissimilarities in population density and in distances between waste disposal areas, settlements, and areas of protected groundwater necessitate a "diversified methods" approach.

Water is vital to life, maintenance of ecological balance, economic development, and sustenance of civilization. Planning and management of water resources and its optimal use are a matter of urgency for most countries of the world, and even more so for India with a huge population. Growing population and expanding economic activities exert increasing demands on water for varied needs--domestic, industrial, agricultural, power generation, navigation, recreation, etc. In India, agriculture is the highest user of water. The past three decades have witnessed numerous advances as well as have presented intriguing challenges and exciting opportunities in hydrology and water resources. Compounding them has been the growing environmental consciousness. Nowhere are these challenges more apparent than in India. As we approach the twenty first century, it is entirely fitting to take stock of what has been accomplished and what remains to be accomplished, and what accomplishments are relevant, with particular reference to Indian conditions."

"Remote Sensing of Urban and Suburban Areas" provides instructors with a text reference that has a logical and easy-to-follow flow of topics around which they can structure the syllabi of their urban remote sensing courses. Topics have been chosen to bridge the gap between remote sensing and urban studies through a better understanding of the science that underlies both fields. In so doing, the book includes 17 chapters written by leading international experts in respected fields to provide a balanced coverage of fundamental issues in both remote sensing and urban studies. Emphasis is placed on: theoretical and practical issues in contemporary urban studies and remote sensing; the spectral, spatial and temporal requirements of remotely sensed data in relation to various urban phenomena; methods and techniques for analyzing and integrating remotely sensed data and image processing with geographic information systems to address urban problems; and examples of applications in which applying remote sensing to tackle urban problems is deemed useful and important.

Water is vital to life, maintenance of ecological balance, economic development, and sustenance of civilization. Planning and management of water resources and its optimal use are a matter of urgency for most countries of the world, and even more so for India with a huge population. Growing population and expanding economic activities exert increasing demands on water for varied needs--domestic, industrial, agricultural, power generation, navigation, recreation, etc. In India, agriculture is the highest user of water. The past three decades have witnessed numerous advances as well as have presented intriguing challenges and exciting opportunities in hydrology and water resources. Compounding them has been the growing environmental consciousness. Nowhere are these challenges more apparent than in India. As we approach the twenty first century, it is entirely fitting to take stock of what has been accomplished and what remains to be accomplished, and what accomplishments are relevant, with particular reference to Indian conditions."

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.

Climate change has been addressed since last decade based on the influence of human activities like production of industrial effluents, land use changes and other activities due to development of the society. These are very important issues no doubt but the activities due to the influence of extraterrestrial phenomena have not been given its due importance. An attempt is being made here to understand the influence of extraterrestrial activities as one of the important factors of climate change has been attempted here. The influence of Sun and distant stars on the environment of the earth has been studied during the cyclic changes in the Sun as well as episodic changes in the environment due to the effect of other celestial objects in between Sun-Earth environment. The study has been carried out based on the changes within the Sun as well as changes during the solar eclipse. During these extra terrestrial changes it has been observed that the earth changes in its atmosphere as well as geosphere, which may have local effect but the increase of these local effect in large scale may contribute to the climate change. Solar radiation drives atmospheric circulation. Since solar radiation represents almost all the energy available to the Earth, accounting for solar radiation and how it interacts with the atmosphere and the Earth's surface is fundamental to understanding the Earth's energy budget.

Geometric properties and relations play central roles in the description and processing of spatial data. The properties and relations studied by mathematicians usually have precise definitions, but verbal descriptions often involve imprecisely defined concepts such as elongatedness or proximity. The methods used in soft computing provide a framework for formulating and manipulating such concepts. This volume contains eight papers on the soft definition and manipulation of spatial relations and gives a comprehensive summary on the subject.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Geographic Information Science, GIScience 2012, held in Columbus, OH, USA in September 2012. The 26 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 57 submissions. While the traditional research topics are well reflected in the papers, emerging topics that involve new research hot-spots such as cyber infrastructure, big data, web-based computing also occupy a significant portion of the volume.

The thesis is an original and novel contribution to land use/land cover change analysis using methods of geosimulation and agent-based modeling. The author implements several traditional methodologies of land use change by means of remote sensing and GIS techniques. An Agent-Based Model was developed in order to simulate land use change in the Tehran metropolitan area, comparing the outcomes of each particular methodology. All methods are compared, and advantages and disadvantages discussed.