Red Rock Eater Digest - First International Conference on Geographic Informationwriting

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``` [Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are interesting for many reasons. They're likely to be useful for science and commerce, of course. They also raise significant social issues such as privacy whenever they are used to represent information about people and their lives. (See Michael Curry, Digital Places: Living with Geographic Information Technologies, London: Routledge, 1998.) The aspect I find most interesting concerns the interrelation between technical architecture and social process. Computer science is largely a matter of abstraction: identifying a wide range of applications that include some overlapping functionality, and then working to abstract out that shared functionality into a distinct service layer (or module, or language, or whatever). That new service layer then becomes a platform on top of which many other functionalities can be built that had previously been impractical or even unimagined. How does this activity of abstraction work as a practical matter? It's technical work, of course, but it's also social work. It is unlikely that any one computer scientist will be an expert in every one of the important applications areas that may benefit from the abstract service. So collaboration will be required. How is this collaboration organized? In the case of Internet2 research (e.g., ), the research organization makes a point of developing the network services alongside the applications. That way the applications developers can complain about reliability, request new features, build consensus about how the services should work, and so on. This is presumably not always a harmonious process, but it's a necessary one. In other cases, you'll see an entrepreneur build a social network among likely user communities; this network can be a significant barrier to entry by others. In the case of GIS, the degree of abstraction and the diversity of potential applications are both very great. This situation has presented major challenges of social engineering to the GIS people. If they were to develop GIS standards based on a sloppy or biased understanding of the needs of potential user groups, then serious turmoil could result as the disenfranchised user communities started to understand that GIS was not going to serve them. This turmoil might, for example, take the form of an uncontrolled flood of feature requests that would lead to Microsoft- like elephantiasis. The National Science Foundation, whose management is generally very intelligent, understood the nature of the problem and has spent a tremendous amount of money funding the development of a huge network of GIS institutions. I think it would be most useful to conduct best-practices research on the social work of simultaneously developing both the social and technical architecture of a new service layer, and GIS would make a good case study. I've reformatted this message to 70 columns.]

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Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2000 15:41:20 -0500 (EST) From: David Mark Subject: Call for Papers: GIScience 2000

Hello! Please excuse me if you receive this notice more than once.

I would like to draw your attention to the Call for Papers for the First International Conference on Geographic Information Science (GIScience 2000). Your name appeared on an email list compiled for the GISOC conference last year, and personally I would very much like to see a strong participation in GIScience 2000 of researchers working on Geographic Information and Society topics. Please circulate this notice to people who may be interested in participating, and please also give strong consideration to submitting an extended abstract to the Program Committee.

David M. Mark Co-Chair, GIScience 2000 dmark@geog.buffalo.edu

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Announcement and Call for Papers

GIScience 2000 (http://www.giscience.org)

First International Conference on Geographic Information Science

Savannah Marriott River Front, Savannah, Georgia, USA October 28-31, 2000

Hosted by the following U.S. organizations- National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis- University Consortium for Geographic Information Science- Association of American Geographers

The maturing field of geographic information science (GIScience) needs a unifying research conference series, which brings together scientists from academia, industry, and government to analyze progress and to explore new research directions. GIScience 2000, the First International Conference on Geographic Information Science, will focus on emerging topics and basic research findings across all sectors of geographic information science. The conference program aims to attract leading GIScience researchers from all fields to reflect the interdisciplinary breadth of GIScience, including cognitive science, computer science, engineering, geography, information science, mathematics, philosophy, psychology, social science, and statistics.

The conference will be held in the beautiful city of Savannah. Georgia. Savannah has been called "The most beautiful city in North America," by LeMonde; "one of the top 10 walking cities in the U.S.," by Walking Magazine; and "one of the top 10 U.S. Cities to Visit" by Conde Nast Traveler.

The conference program will include an opening reception with a keynote address, plenary and parallel paper sessions, and an industry track. Confirmed invited speakers are Brian Berry, Social Sciences, University of Texas, Dallas; Tiziana Catarci, Computer and Systems Science, Universita' di Roma La Sapienza; Nicholas Chrisman, Geography, University of Washington; William Jepson, Urban Simulation Laboratory, University of California Los Angeles; and Stephen Smyth, Microsoft.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

We solicit research papers in all areas of geographic information science. Prospective authors may consult the Research Challenges of the U.S. University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (http://www.ucgis.org/research98.html), the Research Themes of the Association of Geographic Information Laboratories in Europe (http://castafiore.uni-muenster.de/agile/Themes_Topics/Themes_main.html), and the Varenius topics of the U.S. National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu/varenius/vmtgs.html) for a set of possible topics. Since GIScience 2000 focuses on advances in the fundamentals of Geographic Information Science, submission of GIS application papers is discouraged. Accepted papers will be posted on the World Wide Web, and authors will be free to publish extended versions after the conference in journals.

Authors are invited to submit extended abstracts of a maximum length of 500 words. Abstracts must be written in English, in 12 point type, and double-spaced. All submissions will be reviewed by three members of the international program committee, and high-quality submissions will be accepted for presentation at the conference. All abstracts must be sent electronically to abstracts@giscience.org. Material can be submitted as PDF files, Microsoft Word files, or ASCII text.

IMPORTANT DATES

June 1, 2000: Deadline for receiving extended abstracts (500 words) June 27, 2000: Notification of acceptances August 28, 2000: Early registration deadline October 28-31, 2000: Conference

GENERAL CHAIR- Michael Goodchild, University of California, Santa Barbara

PROGRAM CO-CHAIRS- Max Egenhofer, University of Maine- David Mark, University at Buffalo

PUBLICITY CHAIR- William Huxhold, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

INDUSTRY TRACK CO-CHAIRS- Vanessa Lawrence, AutoDesk- David Maguire, ESRI

TREASURER- Ron Abler, Association of American Geographers

LOCAL ORGANIZATION- Angie Jackson, Association of American Geographers- LaNell Lucius, University of California, Santa Barbara

PROGRAM COMMITTEE- David Abel, CSIRO, Australia- Claudia Bauzer Medeiros, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil- Barbara Buttenfield, University of Colorado at Boulder, US- Nick Chrisman, University of Washington, US- Tony Cohn, University of Leeds, UK- Helen Couclelis, University of California, Santa Barbara, US- Noel Cressie, The Ohio State University, US- Peter Fisher, University of Leicester, UK- Leila de Floriani, Universita' degli Studi di Genova, Italy- Stewart Fotheringham, University of Newcastle, UK- Andrew Frank, Technische Universitaet Wien, Austria- Christian Freksa, Universitaet Hamburg, Germany- Art Getis, San Diego State University, US- Ralf Gueting, FernUniversitaet Hagen, Germany- John Herring, Oracle Corporation, US- Stephen Hirtle, University of Pittsburgh, US- Werner Kuhn, Universitaet Muenster, Germany- Harvey Miller, University of Utah, US- Atsu Okabe, The University of Tokyo, Japan- Harlan Onsrud, University of Maine, US- Donna Peuquet, The Pennsylvania State University, US- Hanan Samet, University of Maryland, US- Timos Sellis, Technical University Athens, Greece- Eric Sheppard, University of Minnesota, US- Barry Smith, University at Buffalo, US- Barbara Tversky, Stanford University, US- Stephen Ventura, University of Wisconsin-Madison, US- Rob Weibel, Universitaet Zuerich, Switzerland- Mike Worboys, University of Keele, UK

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If you do not want to receive further mailings about GIScience 2000, send an email to GIScience2000@giscience.org with the subject "remove".

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