Scientific visualization may be defined as the transformation of numerical scientific data into informative graphical displays. The text introduces a nonverbal model to subdisciplines that until now has mostly employed mathematical or verbal-conceptual models. The focus is on how scientific visualization can help revolutionize the manner in which the tendencies for (dis)similar numerical values to cluster together in location on a map are explored and analyzed. In doing so, the concept known as spatial autocorrelation - which characterizes these tendencies - is further demystified.

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.

Since the start of hydrocarbon production in the Netherlands, measurement c- paigns have been performed to measure the resulting subsidence, to which gas and oil companies in the Netherlands are legally obliged. The majority of the gas elds in the Netherlands, including the Groningen gas eld, are operated by Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij B.V. (NAM). Different subsidence measurement techniques (leveling, GPS) have been utilized since the 1960s. Synchronously, geodetic esti- tion methodologies have been developed to estimate subsidence due to hydrocarbon production from the measurements, in which the Delft Institute of Earth Obser- tionandSpaceSystems(DEOS)hasbeencloselyinvolved.Sincethe1990s, satellite radar interferometry (InSAR) as a deformation monitoring technique has developed. However, the situation in the Groningen area is challenging (temporal decorrelation, rural areas, atmospheric disturbances, small deformation rates-several mm/year- over a large spatial extent). In 2003, the project 'Fundamenteel Onderzoek Radar - terferometrie' was approved (Regeling Technologische Samenwerking), which - abled a four year PhD research to investigate the feasibility of InSAR for monitoring subsidence due to hydrocarbon production, in cooperation between Delft University of Technology and NAM. This book describes the results of this scienti c research, that is directly coupled to the practical demand for subsidence monitoring te- niques. It covers the topic in a generic way: both precision and reliability of InSAR as a measurement technique and the estimation of earth surface deformation in the presence of multiple deformation causes are addressed.

The Association of Geographic Information Laboratories for Europe (AGILE) was established in early 1998 to promote academic teaching and research on GIS at the European level. AGILE seeks to ensure that the views of the geographic information teaching and research community are fully represented in the discussions that take place on future European - search agendas and it also provides a permanent scientific forum where geographic information researchers can meet and exchange ideas and - periences at the European level. In 2007 AGILE provided - for the first time since its existence - a book constituting a collection of scientific papers that were submitted as fu- papers to the annual AGILE conference and went through a competitive and thorough review process. Published in the Springer Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography this first edition was well received within AGILE and within the European Geoinformation Science com- nity as a whole. Thus, the decision was easily made to establish a Springer th Volume for the 11 AGILE conference held 2008 in Girona, Spain, and led to what you now hold in your hands.

This volume contains the papers presented at the International Workshop "Information Fusion and Geographic Information Systems" (IF&GIS'09) held in St. Petersburg, Russia in May 2009. The workshop was organized by the St. Petersburg Institute for Informatics and Automation of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SPIIRAS). The workshop continues a series organised biannually, and attracts academics and industrials from a wide range of disciplines including computer science, geography, statistics, mathematics, hydrography, geomorphology, and environmental sciences. The objective of this workshop is to provide a forum for innovative research oriented towards Geographic Information Science and tech- logies and Corporate Information Systems whose close association highlight novel theoretical and practical challenges. The papers selected by the International Program Committee cover a wide range of innovative areas including ontological and semantic approaches for the representation of geographical data, geographical data monitoring, situation management and forecast, to emerging applications oriented to the maritime environment, disaster management and security threats. While traditional topics of GIS conferences are well represented and still being advanced, several new domains appear and stress the need for the development of versatile monitoring systems and decision making systems. While GIS already have a de facto standard for geographical monitoring and analysis, the papers accepted in this volume also illustrate several novel directions of application whose objective is more closely oriented to process modeling and decision making, and where the nature of the objects represented is revisited using ontological and semantic approaches.

Just as in the era of great achievements by scientists such as Newton and Gauss, the mathematical theory of geodesy is continuing the tradition of producing exciting theoretical results, but today the advances are due to the great technological push in the era of satellites for earth observations and large computers for calculations. Every four years a symposium on methodological matters documents this ongoing development in many related underlying areas such as estimation theory, stochastic modelling, inverse problems, and satellite-positioning global-reference systems. This book presents developments in geodesy and related sciences, including applied mathematics, among which are many new results of high intellectual value to help readers stay on top of the latest happenings in the field.

This volume is the result of an invited symposium titled "Integrated Land-Use and Environmental Models: A Survey of Current Applications and Research" that was held in October 2000 at Arizona State University. The idea for the symposium arose from a belief held by many academics that we are at the watershed of a new generation of models that are more dynamic, more pragmatic, more interdiscipli nary, and more amenable to collaborative decision making. Several academics and professionals engaged in urban research had long realized that domain-specific knowledge was inadequate for understanding and managing urban growth. While interdisciplinary approaches have become critical in most social research, one general area of knowledge that stands out as having the most wide-ranging impact on current urban modeling efforts is the field comprised of environmental sciences and ecology. The symposium offered a forum for academics and professionals engaged in urban and ecological modeling to exchange ideas and experiences, specifically in areas that overlapped urban and environmental issues. The contri butions to this volume highlight the progress made in the various efforts to build integrated urban and environmental models. More importantly, each chapter shows how ideas have diffused across disciplinary boundaries to create better policy-relevant models. In addition, this book outlines some promising areas of research that could make important contributions to the field of urban and envi ronmental modeling. Integrated thinking about urban and environmental issues has been fundamental to the concept of sustainability."

Signi?cant technological advances have been few and far between in the past approximately one hundred years of soil survey activities. Perhaps one of the most innovative techniques in the history of soil survey was the introduction of aerial photographs as base maps for ?eld mapping, which replaced the conventional base map laboriously prepared by planetable and alidade. Such a relatively simple idea by today's standards revolutionized soil surveys by vastly increasing the accuracy and ef?ciently. Yet, even this innovative approach did not gain universal acceptance immediately and was hampered by a lack of aerial coverage of the world, funds to cover the costs, and in some cases a reluctance by some soil mappers and cartog- phers to change. Digital Soil Mapping (DSM), which is already being used and tested by groups of dedicated and innovative pedologists, is perhaps the next great advancement in delivering soil survey information. However, like many new technologies, it too has yet to gain universal acceptance and is hampered by ignorance on the part of some pedologists and other scientists. DSM is a spatial soil information system created by numerical models that - count for the spatial and temporal variations of soil properties based on soil - formation and related environmental variables (Lagacheric and McBratney, 2007).

Clouds and cloud systems and their interactions with larger scales of motion, radiation, and the Earth's surface are extremely important parts of weather and climate systems. Their treatment in weather forecast and climate models is a significant source of errors and uncertainty. As computer power increases, it is beginning to be possible to explicitly resolve cloud and precipitation processes in these models, presenting opportunities for improving precipitation forecasts and larger-scale phenomena such as tropical cyclones which depend critically on cloud and precipitation physics.

This book by Professor Shouting Gao of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics in Beijing and Xiaofan Li of NOAA's National Environmental Satellite Data and Information Services (NESDIS) presents an update and review of results of high-resolution, mostly two-dimensional models of clouds and precipitation and their interactions with larger scales of motion and the Earth's surface. It provides a thorough description of cloud and precipitation physics, including basic governing equations and related physics, such as phase changes of water, radiation and mixing. Model results are compared with observations from the 1992-93 Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere Coupled Ocean Atmosphere Response Experiment (TOGA COARE) experiment. The importance of the ocean to tropical convective systems is clearly shown here in the numerical results of simulations with their air-sea coupled modeling system. While the focus is on tropical convection, the methodology and applicability can be extended to cloud and precipitation processes elsewhere.

The results described in this well-written book form a solid foundation for future high-resolution model weather forecasts and climate simulations that resolve clouds explicitly in three dimensions-a future that has great promise for the understanding and prediction of weather and climate for the great benefit of society.

This, the second edition of the hugely practical reference and handbook describes kinematic, static and dynamic Global Positioning System theory and applications. It is primarily based upon source-code descriptions of the KSGSoft program developed by the author and his colleagues and used in the AGMASCO project of the EU. This is the first book to report the unified GPS data processing method and algorithm that uses equations for selectively eliminated equivalent observations.

Here is a review of the current potential of Earth Observations that devotes particular attention to the challenges posed by the European Seas. The assessment of surface parameters by means of passive techniques - which measure reflected visible and near-infrared sunlight, or surface emissions in the thermal infrared or microwave spectral regions - is addressed. Active techniques - which use transmitted impulses of visible or microwave radiation - are covered as well.

This book expands the current frame of reference of remote sensing and geographic information specialists to include an array of socio-economic and related planning issues. Using remotely sensed data, the project explores the efficacy and policy implications of new approaches toward analyzing data, integrates approaches from human geography and explores the utility of employing geo-technologies to further the politics of local growth and smart growth coalitions, as in green space programs.

This book presents decade-long advances in atmospheric research in the Mackenzie River Basin in northern Canada, which encompasses environments representative of the coldest areas on Earth. Collaborative efforts by a team of about 100 scientists and engineers have yielded knowledge entirely transferable to other high latitude regions in America, Europe and Asia.

This book describes the interdisciplinary work of USAID's Famine Early Warning System (FEWS NET) and its influence on methodological and development policies in the US. This book describes FEWS NET's systems, methods and presents several illustrative case studies that will demonstrate the integration of both physical and social science disciplines in its work. The aim of this book is to bring the work of USAID's Famine Early warning System Network into the public domain.

Due to their unique geophysical and geodynamic environment, both the Arctic and Antarctic polar regions are often utilized for geodetic and geophysical observations. This book is a collection of papers on various aspects of the scientific investigation and observation techniques of the polar regions at both temporary and permanent observatories. Most papers focus on regional models based on data acquired in polar regions. Geodetic satellite positions systems (GNSS: GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO) will also be discussed as well as other space techniques (DORIS, VLBI). Gravimetry, absolute gravimetry, and tidal gravimetry are also discussed, as well as seismology and meteorology. The book also touches on data analysis and geodynamic interpretation and discusses methods of constructing autonomous observatories.

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).

The book addresses scientists and technical experts who have already some background knowledge in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and who want to know more about standardisation in GIS, in particular, the role of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). In addition, the monograph meets the needs of programmers who are involved in implementing ISO 19100 standards and who need a better understanding of the overall structure of the standards. Last, but not least, this richly illustrated book helps readers to better understand the rather abstract ISO documents.

This volume contains selected papers by Torben Krarup, one of the most important geodesists of the 20th century. The collection includes the famous booklet "A Contribution to the Mathematical Foundation of Physical Geodesy" from 1969, the unpublished "Molodenskij letters" from 1973, the final version of "Integrated Geodesy" from 1978, "Foundation of a Theory of Elasticity for Geodetic Networks" from 1974, as well as trend-setting papers on the theory of adjustment.

This book reports the newest research and technical achievements on the following theme blocks: Design of mobile map services and its constraints, typology and usability of mobile map services, visualization solutions on small displays for time-critical tasks, mobile map users, interaction and adaptation in mobile environments and applications of map-based mobile services.

Land in the tropics and sub tropics occupy approximately 40 percent of the Earth's surface and is currently home to a a large portion of the world's population. This book provides a detail ed scientific account of the current state and condition of land change in the Tropics. The main themes of tropical land change science include not only extensification and intensifi cation, butal so diversification and co mpetition for land; resilience of land systems; the multiple roles of institutions, markets, societies, and individu als; andth e effects of decisions made at manifold spatial, temporal, and organizational scales in influencing land change. These themes together with issues such as frontier settleme nt, dynamics of plant invasions and other changes in environmental qualitya ssociated with alternate land uses clearly demonstrate the importanceof an integrateda nd interdisciplinary understanding of socio economic and human systems aswell as environ mental systems. This book takes such a coupled approach to human and natural systems and investigates land change as anexe mplar oft he funda mental interdependence of society, economy, and environment. Development of methodologies required for achieving a more integrated and interdisciplinary understanding of land change in coupled natural and human systems are an important effort in the international land change sci ence community. This book addresses and explores manyof t hese meth odologies, provi ding detailed case studies that demonstrate the importance of strong methodologies.

As editors of this volume we would like to express our gratitude to the contributing authors who have delivered these highly relevant and inspiring chapters and to the international scientific committee for their help in the review and editing. Special thanks go to our colleagues Mandy van de Sande, Marlyn Aretz, and Leo van Veghel, who were great in organising the conference and took care of everything that made it a pleasant and comfortable event. Eindhoven, July 2004 Jos van Leeuwen and Harry Timmermans Conference Chairs x DDSS 2004 INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE Alan Bridges, UK Kees Dorst, NL Aleksander Asanowicz, PL Luca Caneparo, IT Aloys Borgers, NL Mark Clayton, USA Anders Ekholm, SE Mark Gross, USA Andy Brown, UK Michael Batty, UK Anthony Yeh, HK Milton Tan, SG Ardeshir Mahdavi, AT Mitsuo Morozumi, JP Atsuyuki Okabe, JP Nancy Cheng, USA Bauke de Vries, NL Omer Akin, USA Bob Martens, AT Philip Steadman, UK Dirk Donath, DE Pierre Leclercq, BE Frances Brazier, NL Ray Wyatt, AU Gilles Halin, FR Richard Klosterman, USA Guilermo Vasquez de Velasco, USA Rivka Oxman, IL Hannu Penttila, FI Robert Woodbury, CA Henri Achten, NL Sevil Sariyildiz, NL Jin-Yeu Tsou, HK Sheng-Fen Chien, TW Joachim Kieferle, DE Stefania Bandini, IT Johan Verbeke, BE Tay-Sheng Jeng, TW John Stillwell, UK Theo Arentze, NL Jose Duarte, PT Thomas Kvan, HK Jose Kos, BR Wassim Jabi, USA INTRODUCTION The International Conference on Design & Decision Support Systems in Architecture and Urban Planning is organised bi-annually by the Eindhoven"

This book presents decade-long advances in atmospheric research in the Mackenzie River Basin in northern Canada, which encompasses environments representative of most cold areas on Earth. Collaborative efforts have yielded knowledge entirely transferable to other high latitude regions in America, Europe and Asia. This book complements the first volume coming from the GEWEX project, dealing with the region's atmospheric dynamics.

1 2 Michel M. VERSTRAETE and Martin BENISTON 1 Space Applications Institute, EC Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy 2 Department of Geography, University of Fribourg, Switzerland This volume contains the proceedings ofthe workshop entitled "Satellite Remote Sensing and Climate Simulations: Synergies and Limitations" that took place in Les Diablerets, Switzerland, September 20-24, 1999. This international scientific conference aimed at addressing the current and pot- tial role of satellite remote sensing in climate modeling, with a particular focus on land surface processes and atmospheric aerosol characterization. Global and regional circulation models incorporate our knowledge ofthe dynamics ofthe Earth's atmosphere. They are used to predict the evolution of the weather and climate. Mathematically, this system is represented by a set ofpartial differential equations whose solution requires initial and bo- dary conditions. Limitations in the accuracy and geographical distribution of these constraints, and intrinsic mathematical sensitivity to these conditions do not allow the identification of a unique solution (prediction). Additional observations on the climate system are thus used to constrain the forecasts of the mathematical model to remain close to the observed state ofthe system.

This handbook presents the foundations of modern rural analysis. The first part of the book presents a comprehensive description of the elements of rural analysis, providing the basis for a synthetic view of rural landscapes in the second part. Included is a comprehensive description and explanation of the rural landscapes from throughout the world, which leads to a complete management scheme for rural landscapes.

This book approaches the realisation of digital terrain and landscape data through clear and practical examples. From data provision and the creation of revealing analyses to realistic depictions for presentation purposes, the reader is led through the world of digital 3-D graphics. The authors deep knowledge of the scientific fundamentals and many years of experience in 3-D visualization enable them to lead the reader through a complex subject and shed light on previously murky virtual landscapes.