University Consortium for
Geographic Information Science
www.ucgis.org

The University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) held a three-day workshop on geospatial visualization and knowledge discovery research November 17-20, 2003, at the National Conference Center in Landsdowne, Virginia. The workshop was sponsored through a grant from the Advanced Research and Development Activity (ARDA) and the United States Geological Survey (USGS). The purpose of the Workshop, organized by Dr. Barbara Buttenfield (University of Colorado), Dr. Harvey Miller (University of Utah), and Dr. E. Lynn Usery (University of Georgia) was to bring together academic researchers and Federal government personnel to explore the state-of-the-art and science of visualization and knowledge discovery of geospatial data. Each of the 25 invited academic representatives was required to provide a white paper that will form the basis of a future publication from the Workshop. The Workshop was organized as a series of four plenary presentations on the first day followed by breakout discussions for the remainder of the meeting.

The plenary presentations are available from the UCGIS website and included the following:

“Geospatial and Spatio-temporal Knowledge Discovery: Overview and Agenda,” by Dr. Harvey Miller, University of Utah.

“GIS Representation for Visualizing and Mining Geographic Dynamics,” by Dr. May Yuan, University of Oklahoma.

“The Integration Of Dynamic Data Within The Georgia Tech Virtual Geographic Information System (GTVGIS) Global Framework,” by Dr. Nicolas Faust, Georgia Institute of Technology.

“Wearable GIS for Homeland Security Applications: Accomplishments, Prospects and Research Issues,” by Dr. Keith Clarke, University of California at Santa Barbara.

Breakout sessions examined four major topics in detail. Each of the breakouts had four independent groups examining the topic with summary reporting to the entire Workshop assembly on conclusion. The breakout topical areas included: 1. Spatiotemporal data modeling and algorithms in large GIS databases, 2. Graphical user interfaces for geographic knowledge discovery software environments, 3. Potential biases (computational and assumption) related to outcomes of DM/KD software, and 4.Visualization techniques to support 'meta-mining' (mining the results of conventional data mining techniques).

The Workshop allowed many new ideas to be exchanged and explored and provided both an educational forum and a venue for research initiation in visualization and knowledge discovery. A final report on the Workshop and plans for moving forward with publications are forthcoming from the organizers.
A special treat for the Workshop participants was provided by Suzy Jampoler, UCGIS Executive Director. Suzy provided dessert for all participants at her home on Wednesday evening of the Workshop.

next page