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.

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."

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.

"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.

The ability to extract generic 3D objects from images is a crucial step towards automation of a variety of problems in cartographic database compilation, industrial inspection and assembly, and autonomous navigation. Many of these problem domains do not have strong constraints on object shape or scene content, presenting serious obstacles for the development of robust object detection and delineation techniques. Geometric Constraints for Object Detection and Delineation addresses these problems with a suite of novel methods and techniques for detecting and delineating generic objects in images of complex scenes, and applies them to the specific task of building detection and delineation from monocular aerial imagery. PIVOT, the fully automated system implementing these techniques, is quantitatively evaluated on 83 images covering 18 test scenes, and compared to three existing systems for building extraction. The results highlight the performance improvements possible with rigorous photogrammetric camera modeling, primitive-based object representations, and geometric constraints derived from their combination. PIVOT's performance illustrates the implications of a clearly articulated set of philosophical principles, taking a significant step towards automatic detection and delineation of 3D objects in real-world environments. Geometric Constraints for Object Detection and Delineation is suitable as a textbook or as a secondary text for a graduate-level course, and as a reference for researchers and practitioners in industry.

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."

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.

Major advances in the use of geographic information systems have been made in both anthropology and archaeology. Yet there are few published discussions of these new applications and their use in solving complex problems. This book explores these techniques, showing how they have been successfully deployed to pursue research previously considered too difficult - or impossible - to undertake. Among the projects described here are studies of land degradation in the Peruvian Amazon, settlement patterns in the Pacific northwest, ethnic distribution within the Los Angeles garment industry, and prehistoric sociopolitical development among the Anasazi. Following an introduction that discusses the theory of geographic information systems in relation to anthropological inquiry, the book is divided into sections demonstrating actual applications in cultural anthropology, archaeology, opaleoanthropology, and physical anthropology. The work will be of much interest within all these communities.

This bookisan outgrowthoften yearsof researchatthe Universityof Florida Computational NeuroEngineering Laboratory (CNEL) in the general area of statistical signal processing and machine learning. One of the goals of writing the book is exactly to bridge the two ?elds that share so many common problems and techniques but are not yet e?ectively collaborating. Unlikeotherbooks thatcoverthe state ofthe artinagiven?eld, this book cuts across engineering (signal processing) and statistics (machine learning) withacommontheme: learningseenfromthepointofviewofinformationt- orywithanemphasisonRenyi'sde?nitionofinformation.Thebasicapproach is to utilize the information theory descriptors of entropy and divergence as nonparametric cost functions for the design of adaptive systems in unsup- vised or supervised training modes. Hence the title: Information-Theoretic Learning (ITL). In the course of these studies, we discovered that the main idea enabling a synergistic view as well as algorithmic implementations, does not involve the conventional central moments of the data (mean and covariance). Rather, the core concept is the ?-norm of the PDF, in part- ular its expected value (? = 2), which we call the information potential. This operator and related nonparametric estimators link information theory, optimization of adaptive systems, and reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces in a simple and unconventional way.

Mining Spatio-Temporal Information Systems, an edited volume is composed of chapters from leading experts in the field of Spatial-Temporal Information Systems and addresses the many issues in support of modeling, creation, querying, visualizing and mining. Mining Spatio-Temporal Information Systems is intended to bring together a coherent body of recent knowledge relating to STIS data modeling, design, implementation and STIS in knowledge discovery. In particular, the reader is exposed to the latest techniques for the practical design of STIS, essential for complex query processing. Mining Spatio-Temporal Information Systems is structured to meet the needs of practitioners and researchers in industry and graduate-level students in Computer Science.

This book documents research conducted on the analysis of urban growth and sprawl by using remote sensing data and GIS techniques. The research was conducted between 1980-2010 in the city of Kolkata, India. The aim of the research was to use metrics that were less demanding in terms of data and computation than normal metrics. However, it has been found that most of them were inferior in capturing insights of urban sprawl. For this book, some of these metrics have therefore been modified and new ones are proposed. The research focuses on problems associated with the analysis of urban growth by using remote sensing data from a technological perspective.

This book is intended to provide a text on statistical methods for detecting clus ters and/or clustering of health events that is of interest to ?nal year undergraduate and graduate level statistics, biostatistics, epidemiology, and geography students but will also be of relevance to public health practitioners, statisticians, biostatisticians, epidemiologists, medical geographers, human geographers, environmental scien tists, and ecologists. Prerequisites are introductory biostatistics and epidemiology courses. With increasing public health concerns about environmental risks, the need for sophisticated methods for analyzing spatial health events is immediate. Further more, the research area of statistical tests for disease clustering now attracts a wide audience due to the perceived need to implement wide ranging monitoring systems to detect possible health related bioterrorism activity. With this background and the development of the geographical information system (GIS), the analysis of disease clustering of health events has seen considerable development over the last decade. Therefore, several excellent books on spatial epidemiology and statistics have re cently been published. However, it seems to me that there is no other book solely focusing on statistical methods for disease clustering. I hope that readers will ?nd this book useful and interesting as an introduction to the subject.

This book is devoted to some of the problems encountered in the theory of sophisticated signals used in radar. The term sophisticated signal is under stood to mean a signal for which the product of the signal duration by the spectrum width substantially exceeds unity. Although it is impossible to draw an exact borderline between simple and sophisticated signals, the term "sophisticated signal" is sufficient to define one of the principal characteristics of modern radar. Recently, various sophisticated signals (frequency-modulated pulses, coded groups, phase-modulated signals, etc.) have found use in radar. This makes it possible to improve the resolution, to ensure simultaneous measurements of the range and range rate of a target, to elecrically scan over finite angular dimensions, etc. Although the realization of such potentialities is associated with substantial difficulties, one can say with certainty that "classical" radar technology, which uses simple signals at constant frequency and duty cycle, yields to more complex methods based on the use of wide-band signals of the sophisticated structure. The properties of radar signals, which characterize the measurement of a target's range and range rate, are described by the Woodward ambiguity function. The role of this function is similar to that of the antenna pattern, i.e., the ambiguity function defines the accuracy and resolution of the range and range rate measurements to the same extent as the antenna pattern de fines the accuracy and resolution of the azimuth and elevation measurements."

For the fourth consecutive year, the Association of Geographic Infor- tion Laboratories for Europe (AGILE) promoted the edition of a book with the collection of the scientific papers that were submitted as full-papers to the AGILE annual international conference. Those papers went through a th competitive review process. The 13 AGILE conference call for fu- papers of original and unpublished fundamental scientific research resulted in 54 submissions, of which 21 were accepted for publication in this - lume (acceptance rate of 39%). Published in the Springer Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Car- th graphy, this book is associated to the 13 AGILE Conference on G- graphic Information Science, held in 2010 in Guimaraes, Portugal, under the title "Geospatial Thinking." The efficient use of geospatial information and related technologies assumes the knowledge of concepts that are fundamental components of Geospatial Thinking, which is built on reasoning processes, spatial conc- tualizations, and representation methods. Geospatial Thinking is associated with a set of cognitive skills consisting of several forms of knowledge and cognitive operators used to transform, combine or, in any other way, act on that same knowledge. The scientific papers published in this volume cover an important set of topics within Geoinformation Science, including: Representation and Visualisation of Geographic Phenomena; Spatiotemporal Data Analysis; Geo-Collaboration, Participation, and Decision Support; Semantics of Geoinformation and Knowledge Discovery; Spatiotemporal Modelling and Reasoning; and Web Services, Geospatial Systems and Real-time Appli- tions."

Geographic Information Systems: A Guide to cessing, spreadsheets, and data base the Technology was born of need-the need management. Recently, geographic infor for a comprehensive work on the emerg mation management technology came to ing field of geographic information man the desktop, signaling a new era of in agement technology. creasing use and popularity. Enthusiastic We encountered the need often in our users have long been the main source of work at PlanGraphics, Inc. , a leading com grassroots support and growth. We perceive at least three broad audi puter consulting firm that specializes in ences for this book: 1) executives, man the design and implementation of geo agers, professionals, and other lay people; graphic information systems (GIS) and as 2) practitioners and technicians; and 3) stu sists organizations in using the technology to solve problems and perform work more dents and academicians. We recognize efficiently. We needed it, our clients that Geographic Information Systems cannot needed it, and it didn't exist. completely satisfy the disparate needs of Geographic information management any of these groups, but we have tried to give each of these audiences a foundation technology-using computers to map, draw, store, and manipulate spatial data upon which to build. Our purpose is two fold. We hope to aid those considering, evolved independently in many places with many variations.

Cartography and geographic information (GI) are remarkably appropriate for the requirements of early warning (EW) and crisis management (CM). The use of geospatial technology has increased tremendously in the last years. ICT has changed from just using maps created in advance, to new approaches, allowing individuals (decision-makers) to use cartography interactively, on the basis of individual user's requirements. The new generation of cartographic visualizations based on standardisation, formal modelling, use of sensors, semantics and ontology, allows for the better adaptation of information to the needs of the users. In order to design a new framework in pre-disaster and disaster management safety/security/privacy aspects of institutions and citizens need to be considered. All this can only be achieved by demonstrating new research achievements, sharing best practices (e.g. in the health area) and working towards the wider acceptance of geospatial technology in society, with the help of education and media.

This book will outline research frontiers and applications of cartography and GI in EW and CM and document their roles and potentials in wider processes going on in information/knowledge-based societies.

Landforms constitute boundary surfaces between different components of the earth system (atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, pedosphere, lithosphere). At these locations most of the human activity on earth takes place. This central position evokes a bi-directional interaction with the other spheres of the earth system. S- tial landform structures strongly affect processes of other earth system components. At the same time, the land-surface is shaped by the in uence of these processes impacting geomorphologic processes and landform morphometry. These interactions are the focus in the Research Training Group 437 "Landform - a structured and variable boundary layer" at the University of Bonn in Germany. Funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) the Research Training Group is a multidisciplinary research programme for postgraduate studies. Disciplines involved in this programme include: biology, c- matology, computer sciences, geodynamics, geology, geomorphology, geophysics, hydrology, mathematics, meteorology, pedology, and remote sensing. These diff- ent disciplines offer various scienti c approaches, theories, methods and data for the study of landforms within their speci c paradigms. Over a period of ten years (1998-2008) more than 25 PhD projects have been completed. Dedicated to ongoing and completed research activities of the Research Training Group an international symposium titled "Landform - structure, evolution, process control" was held at the Department of Geography, University of Bonn, in 2007.

This book examines how Geographic Information Technologies (GIT) are being implemented to improve our understanding of a variety of hazard and disaster situations. The volume is a compilation of recent research using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Remote Sensing (RS) and other technologies such as Global Positioning Systems (GPS) to examine urban hazard and disaster issues. The goal is to improve and advance the use of such technologies during four classic phases of hazard and disaster research: response, recovery, preparation and mitigation. The focus is on urban areas, broadly defined in order to encompass rapidly growing and densely populated areas.

The material presented is multidisciplinary, with contributions from scholars in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America, and is presented in five key sections:

• sea level rise and flood analysis
• earthquakes and tsunamis and international applications
• hurricane response/recovery
• metropolitan case studies
• evacuation studies

This volume contributes to our understanding of extreme events in urban environments with the use of GIT and expanding its role at the local, regional, state and federal levels. The book is a valuable reference for academic researchers and professionals and practitioners working in hazard management and mitigation.

In 2005 the CoastGIS symposium and exhibition was once again held in Aberdeen, Scotland, in the UK, the second time that we have had the privilege host this international event in the city of Aberdeen. This was the 6th International S- posium Computer Mapping and GIS for Coastal Zone Management, a collabo- tion between the International Cartographic Association's (ICA) Commission on Marine Cartography, and the International Geographical Union's (IGU) Comm- sion on Coastal Systems. The theme for 2005 was: De ning and Building a Marine and Coastal Spatial Data Infrastructure. As a major coastal event, the CoastGIS series of conferences always attracts an international audience of coastal researchers, managers, and pr- titioners who use one or more of the geospatial technologies (e. g. GIS, GPS, digital mapping, remote sensing, databases, and the Internet) in their work. The CoastGIS series is fundamentally an international event which over the years has gained a strong following attracting delegates from around the globe. Hosted by the University of Aberdeen - at the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre (AECC) - once again CoastGIS 2005 provided an opportunity to communicate the results of a wide range of innovative scienti c research into coastal and marine applications of the geospatial technologies, including remote sensing, Geograp- cal Information Systems (GIS), Global Positioning Systems (GPS), databases, data models, the Internet and online mapping systems.