Sixteen years ago, Franklin estimated that about 80% of data contain geo-referenced information. To date, the availability of geographic data and information is growing, together with the capacity of users to operate with IT tools and instruments. Spatial data infrastructures are growing and allow a wide number of users to rely on them. This growth has not been fully coupled to an increase of knowledge to support spatial decisions. Spatial analytical techniques, geographical analysis and modelling methods are therefore required to analyse data and to facilitate the decision process at all levels. Old geographical issues can find an answer thanks to new methods and instruments, while new issues are developing, challenging researchers towards new solutions. This volume aims to contribute to the development of new techniques and methods to improve the process of knowledge acquisition. The Geocomputational expression is related to the development and the application of new theories, methods and tools in order to provide better solutions to complex geographical problems. The geocomputational analysis discussed in this volume, could be classified according to three main domains of applications; the first one related to spatial decision support system and to spatial uncertainty, the second connected to artificial intelligence, the third based on all spatial statistics techniques.

As coastal environments around the world face unprecedented natural and anthropogenic threats, advancements in the technologies that support geospatial data acquisition, imaging, and computing have profoundly enhanced monitoring capabilities in coastal studies. Providing systematic treatment of the key developments, Remote Sensing of Coastal Environments brings together renowned scholars to supply a clear presentation of the state-of-the-art in this technically complex arena. Edited by a recipient of the prestigious PECASE award, this book provides unrivaled coverage of the issues unique to coastal environments. It presents the best available data for measuring and monitoring coastal zones and explains how decision makers and resource managers can use this data to address contemporary issues in coastal zone management. The text illustrates the latest developments in active remote sensing, hyperspectral remote sensing, high spatial resolution remote sensing, the integration of remote sensing and in situ data, and covers the effects of land-cover and land-use change on coastal environments. Complete with representative case studies, this authoritative resource provides a timely snapshot of the wide range of remote sensing applications in coastal issues to enhance the understanding of how increasing disturbances to our coastal regions are affecting the ecological dynamics, biological diversity, and ecosystem health of our coastal environments.

The chapters in this volume were presented at the July-August 2008 NATO Advanced Study Institute on Unexploded Ordnance Detection and Mitigation. The conference was held at the beautiful Il Ciocco resort near Lucca, in the glorious Tuscany region of northern Italy. For the ninth time we gathered at this idyllic spot to explore and extend the reciprocity between mathematics and engineering. The dynamic interaction between world-renowned scientists from the usually disparate communities of pure mathematicians and applied scientists which occurred at our eight previous ASI's continued at this meeting. The detection and neutralization of unexploded ordnance (UXO) has been of major concern for very many decades; at least since the First World war. UXO continues to be the subject of intensive research in many ?elds of science, incl- ing mathematics, signal processing (mainly radar and sonar) and chemistry. While today's headlines emphasize the mayhem resulting from the placement of imp- vised explosive devices (IEDs), humanitarian landmine clearing continues to draw signi?cant global attention as well. In many countries of the world, landmines threaten the population and hinder reconstruction and fast, ef?cient utilization of large areas of the mined land in the aftermath of military con?icts.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory, COSIT 2007, held in Melbourne, Australia, in September 2007.

The 27 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 102 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on cultural studies, semantics, similarity, mapping and representation, perception and cognition, reasoning and algorithms, navigation and landmarks, as well as uncertainty and imperfection.

This book provides an essential appraisal of the recent advances in technologies, mathematical models and computational software used by those working with geodetic data. It explains the latest methods in processing and analyzing geodetic time series data from various space missions (i.e. GNSS, GRACE) and other technologies (i.e. tide gauges), using the most recent mathematical models. The book provides practical examples of how to apply these models to estimate seal level rise as well as rapid and evolving land motion changes due to gravity (ice sheet loss) and earthquakes respectively. It also provides a necessary overview of geodetic software and where to obtain them.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Web and Wireless Geographical Information Systems, W2GIS 2006, held in Hong Kong, China in December 2006.

The 24 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from over 130 submissions and cover a wide range of topics from the semantic Web, Web personalization, contextual representation and mapping to querying in mobile environments, mobile networks and recent developments in location-based services and applications. The papers are organized in topical sections on location-based services, W2GIS applications and prototypes, wayfinding, mobile and wireless GIS, W2GIS personalization and agents, data management and data retrieval methods, as well as semantic geo-spatial Web and ubiquitous W2GIS.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Geographic Information Science, GIScience 2006. The book presents 26 revised full papers. Among traditional topics addressed are spatial representations and data structures, spatial and temporal reasoning, computational geometry, spatial analysis, and databases. Many papers deal with navigation, interoperability, dynamic modeling, ontology, and semantics. Geosensors, location privacy, social issues and GI research networks rank among the new directions covered.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Conference on GeoSpatial Semantics, GeoS 2007, held in Mexico City, Mexico, in November 2007. The papers are organized in topical sections on models and languages for geo-ontologies, alignment and integration of geo-ontologies, ontology-based spatial information retrieval, formal representation for geospatial data, and integration of semantics into spatial query processing.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on Web and Wireless Geographical Information Systems, W2GIS 2007, held in Cardiff, UK, in November 2007.

The 21 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 45 submissions. The papers provide an up-to-date review of advances in recent development of Web and wireless geographical information systems and address issues like conceptual and logical models for W2GIS, data management and data retrieval methods, geographical search engines and Web services, W2GIS query languages and interfaces, 2D and 3D information visualization, exploratory cartography and interfaces, W2GIS data mining, W2GIS security, W2GIS applications and prototypes, location-based services, semantic geo-spatial Web, mobile and wireless GIS, as well as ubiquitous W2GIS.

Archaeology has been transformed by technology that allows one to see below the surface of the earth. This work illustrates the uses of advanced technology in archaeological investigation. It deals with hand-held instruments that probe the subsurface of the earth to unveil layering and associated sites; underwater exploration and photography of submerged sites and artifacts; and the utilization of imaging from aircraft and spacecraft to reveal the regional setting of archaeological sites and to assist in cultural resource management.

The first part of the proceedings describes the current capabilities of various satellite experiments which are performing measurements of the Earth's atmosphere, as for example some of the results obtained recently by three experiments onboard the ENVISAT Environment Satellite (ENVISAT), namely, the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME), the SCanning Imaging Absorption for Atmospheric CHartographY (SCIAMACHY) and the Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding (MIPAS). For the analysis of spectra recorded by these instruments it is necessary to make good use of efficient radiative transfer codes. These computer codes need as input, a dataset of high quality spectroscopic parameters which can be generated only through a careful analysis of high quality laboratory measurements. In addition some of the future satellite missions which are under preparation at the European Space Agency (ESA) are briefly described.

GNSS - GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and more is the extension of the scientific bestseller GPS - Theory and Practice to Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) and includes the Russian GLONASS, the European system Galileo, and additional systems.

The book refers to GNSS in the generic sense to describe the various existing reference systems for coordinates and time, the satellite orbits, the satellite signals, observables, mathematical models for positioning, data processing, and data transformation.

With respect to the individual systems GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and more, primarily the specific reference systems, services, the space and the control segment, as well as satellite signals are described. Furthermore, augmentations by space- and ground-based systems are discussed.

This book is a university-level introductory textbook and is intended to serve as a reference for students as well as for professionals and scientists in the fields of geodesy, surveying engineering, navigation, and related disciplines."

Geographic information systems (GIS) have become increasingly important in helping us understand complex social, economic, and natural dynamics where spatial components play a key role. The critical algorithms used in GIS, however, are notoriously difficult to both teach and understand, in part due to the lack of a coherent representation. GIS Algorithms attempts to address this problem by combining rigorous formal language with example case studies and student exercises. Using Python code throughout, Xiao breaks the subject down into three fundamental areas: Geometric Algorithms Spatial Indexing Spatial Analysis and Modelling With its comprehensive coverage of the many algorithms involved, GIS Algorithms is a key new textbook in this complex and critical area of geography.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.tandfebooks.com/doi/view/10.1201/9781315146638, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. GIS is used today to better understand and solve urban problems. GIS in Sustainable Urban Planning and Management: A Global Perspective, explores and illustrates the capacity that geo-information and GIS have to inform practitioners and other participants in the processes of the planning and management of urban regions. The first part of the book addresses the concept of sustainable urban development, its different frameworks, the many ways of measuring sustainability, and its value in the urban policy arena. The second part discusses how urban planning can shape our cities, examines various spatial configurations of cities, the spread of activities, and the demands placed on different functions to achieve strategic objective. It further focuses on the recognition that urban dwellers are increasingly under threat from natural hazards and climate change. Written by authors with expertise on the applications of geo-information in urban management, this book showcases the importance of GIS in better understanding current urban challenges and provides new insights on how to apply GIS in urban planning. It illustrates through real world cases the use of GIS in analyzing and evaluating the position of disadvantaged groups and areas in cities and provides clear examples of applied GIS in urban sustainability and urban resilience. The idea of sustainable development is still very much central in the new development agenda of the United Nations, and in that sense, it is of particular importance for students from both the Global South and Global North. Professionals, researchers, and students alike will find this book to be an invaluable resource for understanding and solving problems relating to sustainable urban planning and management.

The applications of image-based measurement are many and various: image-guided surgery, mobile-robot navigation, component alignment, part inspection and photogrammetry, among others. In all these applications, landmarks are detected and located in images, and measurements made from those locations.Precision Landmark Location for Machine Vision and Photogrammetry addresses the ubiquitous problem of measurement error associated with determining the location of landmarks in images. With a detailed model of the image formation process and landmark location estimation, the Cramer-Rao Lower Bound (CRLB) theory of statistics is applied to determine the least possible measurement uncertainty in a given situation.This monograph provides the reader with: the most complete treatment to date of precision landmark location and the engineering aspects of image capture and processing; detailed theoretical treatment of the CRLB; a software tool for analyzing the potential performance-specific camera/lens/algorithm configurations; two novel algorithms which achieve precision very close to the CRLB; an experimental method for determining the accuracy of landmark location; and, downloadable MATLAB registered] package to assist the reader with applying theoretically-derived results to practical engineering configurations. All of this adds up to a treatment that is at once theoretically sound and eminently practical.Precision Landmark Location for Machine Vision and Photogrammetry will be of great interest to computer scientists and engineers working with and/or studying image processing and measurement. It includes cutting-edge theoretical developments and practical tools so it will appeal to research investigators and system designers.

This volume contains the papers presented at the Conference on Spatial Inf- mationTheory, heldinEllicottville, NewYorkinSeptember 2005.COSIT2005 was the 7th International Conference held under the COSIT name. When - drewFrankandhiscolleaguesorganizedthe?rstCOSITconferenceontheisland of Elba, Italy, in 1993, it represented the maturing of an international research community that had already met four or ?ve times in the United States, Spain, and Italy. Of course, cognitive and computational approaches to space and s- tial phenomena werenot themselves new topics, but a contextof providingth- retical underpinning for geographicinformation systems refocused some of these researchers and brought them up against practical and conceptual challenges. A second international symposium under the COSIT name, held in Semmering, Austria in 1995, established COSIT as a biennial conference series that cont- ued at Laurel Highlands, Pennsylvania, USA (1997), Stade, Germany (1999), Morro Bay, California, USA (2001) and Ittingen, Switzerland (2003). A prod- tive partnership with Springer s Lecture Notes in Computer Science has ensured that the papers from every COSIT meeting have been widely disseminated, and the COSIT community has contributed signi?cantly to the development of G- graphic Information Science, Geoinformatics and Spatial Information Theory in general."

The goal of How to Make Maps is to equip readers with the foundational knowledge of concepts they need to conceive, design, and produce maps in a legible, clear, and coherent manner, drawing from both classical and modern theory in cartography. This book is appropriate for graduate and undergraduate students who are beginning a course of study in geospatial sciences or who wish to begin producing their own maps. While the book assumes no a priori knowledge or experience with geospatial software, it may also serve GIS analysts and technicians who wish to explore the principles of cartographic design. The first part of the book explores the key decisions behind every map, with the aim of providing the reader with a solid foundation in fundamental cartography concepts. Chapters 1 through 3 review foundational mapping concepts and some of the decisions that are a part of every map. This is followed by a discussion of the guiding principles of cartographic design in Chapter 4-how to start thinking about putting a map together in an effective and legible form. Chapter 5 covers map projections, the process of converting the curved earth's surface into a flat representation appropriate for mapping. Chapters 6 and 7 discuss the use of text and color, respectively. Chapter 8 reviews trends in modern cartography to summarize some of the ways the discipline is changing due to new forms of cartographic media that include 3D representations, animated cartography, and mobile cartography. Chapter 9 provides a literature review of the scholarship in cartography. The final component of the book shifts to applied, technical concepts important to cartographic production, covering data quality concepts and the acquisition of geospatial data sources (Chapter 10), and an overview of software applications particularly relevant to modern cartography production: GIS and graphics software (Chapter 11). Chapter 12 concludes the book with examples of real-world cartography projects, discussing the planning, data collection, and design process that lead to the final map products. This book aspires to introduce readers to the foundational concepts-both theoretical and applied-they need to start the actual work of making maps. The accompanying website offers hands-on exercises to guide readers through the production of a map-from conception through to the final version-as well as PowerPoint slides that accompany the text.

This section gives a description of notions used throughout this study. Current achievements in developing action-centered ontologies are also discussed. 2.1 Ontologies In the context of information extraction and retrieval, different kinds of ontologies can be distinguished [15]: * Top-level ontologies describe very general concepts like space and time, not depending on a particular domain, * Domain ontologies and task ontologies describe the vocabulary related to a generic domain or kind of task, detailing the terms used in the top-level ontology, * Application ontologies describe the concepts that depend on the particular domain and task within a specific activity. Several investigations have been conducted to bring actions (tasks) to bear on - tologies. Among them are Chandrasekaran et al. [6] and Mizoguchi et al. [23] in the fields of AI and Knowledge Engineering. For the geospatial domain, Kuhn [21] and Raubal and Kuhn [26] have attempted to support human actions in ontologies for transportation. Acknowledging the importance of human actions in the geographic domain, a research workshop was held in 2002, bringing together experts from diff- ent disciplines to share the knowledge and work on this issue [1]. Camara [5], one of the workshop participants, has proposed that action-driven spatial ontologies are formed via category theory, for the case of emergency action plans.

These proceedings contain the papers selected for presentation at the 5th edition of the International Workshop on Web and Wireless Geographical Information Systems, held in December 2005, in Lausanne, Switzerland. The aim of the series of annual W2GIS workshops is to provide an up-to-date review of advances on recent devel- ment and research results in the field of web and wireless geographical information systems. It follows the successful 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 editions, held in Kyoto, Singapore, Rome and Seoul, respectively. It now represents a young but rapidly - turing research community. In its 5th year, W2GIS reached new heights of recognition as a quality workshop for the dissemination and discussion on latest research and development achievements in the domain. The number of papers received for this workshop demonstrates the growing interest of the research community. There were 70 submissions from 17 countries, many of them of excellent quality and most of them very related to the t- ics of the workshop. Each paper receives three reviews. Based on these reviews, 25 papers were selected for presentation and inclusion in the proceedings. The accepted papers cover a wide range of topics from the Semantic Web, Web personalization, contextual representation and mapping to querying in mobile environments, to mobile networks and location-based services. We had the privilege of having a distinguished invited talk "The next revolution: Peer-to-Peer discovery on mobile devices" by Ouri Wolfson, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA.

A critical issue which is fundamentally affecting the development of the Earth Observation sector is not so much the technology but the data policy. The conditions which govern access to the data, distribution of the data and the price of the data are now vital to the exploitation of this important environmental data resource. This book examines and analyses these data policy issues and recommends how the Earth observation sector can best develop appropriate and useful policies so that the scientific, operational and commercial value of the data can be maximised. This book provides a summary of the influences on Earth observation data policy and a review of the main organisations which develop Earth observation data policy including the United States, the committee on Earth Observation Satellites, the International Earth Observing System and space agencies such as the European Space Agency. The book analyses four key parts to Earth observation data policy: access to Earth observation data, data protection, pricing policy and data preservation. Details of the satellite Earth observation systems of the United States, Europe, Japan, Canada and other nations are included throughout the book. In preparing the book the author has interviewed over 70 experts in Earth observation data policy in Europe, the United States and Canada.

2 TheaimoftheannualW GIS workshop is to provide an up-to-date review of advances on recent development of Web and wireless geographical information systems, and new challenges and opportunities for researchers, developers and 2 users in the GIS community. The main topic of the W GIS workshop is theor- ical and technical issues of Web and wireless geographical information systems. This workshop followed the successful 2001, 2002 and 2003 editions, held in - oto, Singapore and Rome, respectively. The 2004 edition was held in Goyang, Korea. 2 In its 4th year, W GIS reached new heights of recognition as a quality wo- shopforthedisseminationanddiscussionofnewwaysofaccessingandanalyzing geospatial information. This year, 39 papers were submitted from 15 countries, and 20 papers were accepted from 11 countries. Similarly, the Program C- mittee consisted of 39 members from 16 countries. We had the privilege of having three distinguished invited talks: "Eliciting User Preferences in Web Urban Spaces," Yanwu Yang and Christophe Cla- munt, Naval Academy Research Institute, France; "Discovering Regional Inf- mation from Web: Localness and Landmark Computation," Katsumi Tanaka, Department of Social Informatics, Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto U- versity, Japan; and "Towards Knowing, Always and Everywhere, Where - erything Is, Precisely," Christian S. Jensen, Department of Computer Science, Aalborg University, Denmark.

COSIT,theseriesofConferencesonSpatialInformationTheory,hasbeenaround for more than ten years. Its hallmarks are a fruitful interdisciplinary dialogue between computational and human perspectives on spatio-temporal information and a thorough review process that selects the best papers while giving all - thors detailed feedback on how to develop their work. A clear pro?le of the COSIT community has emerged from the series of conference proceedings, all published as Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science, and from the per- nent web site at http://www. cosit. info, containing links to the conference web sites and proceedings, a history and program of the series, an impact study, interviews with participants, and pictures. The proceedings of this sixth conference provide ample evidence that COSIT is healthy and maturing, while retaining its youth. Out of the 61 submissions, the program committee selected 26 papers for presentation, in discussions based on at least three double-blind reviews and one or more meta-review from PC members for each paper. Classical COSIT themes, such as spatial reasoning (about distances and directions, regions and shapes) or vagueness are being f- ther re?ned; topics like way?nding and landmarks are boosted by new synergies betweencognitiveandcomputationalapproaches;andthestudyofontologiesfor space and time, a subject since the ?rst COSIT, is gaining more depth.

Technology can be more than just practicalit can also be fun. And fun is exactly what youll have when you try geocaching. It's a high-tech treasure-seeking game that uses the Global Positioning System (GPS).

Because geocaching combines the outdoors, puzzles, and adventure, everyonefrom kids to kayakers, and retirees to rock climberscan easily become involved. You'll join a rapidly expanding worldwide network of people who hide containers of prizes in the wilderness, suburbs, and even in the middle of cities, then provide clues for others to discover them.

Borrowing from the classic pursuits of orienteering and letterboxing, geocaching can be as easy as a walk in the park or as challenging as scuba diving to a hundred feet. You don't need to be an expert in electronics, navigation, or even hiking to start. With this book, youll soon understand GPS technology, know how to find your way about, and be able to prepare for your next hike-and-seek adventure!

Many disciplines are concerned with manipulating geometric (or spatial) objects in the computer - such as geology, cartography, computer aided design (CAD), etc. - and each of these have developed their own data structures and techniques, often independently. Nevertheless, in many cases the object types and the spatial queries are similar, and this book attempts to find a common theme.

This open access book provides insights into the novel Locally Refined B-spline (LR B-spline) surface format, which is suited for representing terrain and seabed data in a compact way. It provides an alternative to the well know raster and triangulated surface representations. An LR B-spline surface has an overall smooth behavior and allows the modeling of local details with only a limited growth in data volume. In regions where many data points belong to the same smooth area, LR B-splines allow a very lean representation of the shape by locally adapting the resolution of the spline space to the size and local shape variations of the region. The iterative method can be modified to improve the accuracy in particular domains of a point cloud. The use of statistical information criterion can help determining the optimal threshold, the number of iterations to perform as well as some parameters of the underlying mathematical functions (degree of the splines, parameter representation). The resulting surfaces are well suited for analysis and computing secondary information such as contour curves and minimum and maximum points. Also deformation analysis are potential applications of fitting point clouds with LR B-splines.