page 3 Awards

The 2006 UCGIS Research Award has been given to Dr. Frederico Fonseca, Assistant Professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology at The Pennsylvania State University, for his highly influential work on ontology-driven geographic information systems.

Dr. Fonseca is the lead author on a series of articles that introduced the role of ontologies in next-generation geographic information systems. At a time when the term ontology was terra incognita in geographic information science, Fred worked as a pioneer designing a novel way in which semantics can be addressed in geographic information systems. This was a fundamental departure from the traditional focus in GISs on geometric representations and paved the way for research in the geospatial semantic Web. Stephan Winter, chair of the 2000 EuroConference on Ontology and Epistemology for Spatial Data Standards and editor of the IJGIS Special Issue on Ontology in the Geographic Domain, has stated how important Fred’s early papers on ontology-based GIS were for him and that they had triggered his decision to organize that entire conference. The new challenges and opportunities brought by geo-ontologies were fundamental to the formulation of the UCGIS Emerging Research Theme on Ontological Foundations for Geographic Information Science and the UCGIS Research Priority on the Geospatial Semantic Web. Fred’s lead-authored article “Using Ontologies for Integrated Geographic Information Systems” [1], published in 2002 in Transactions in GIS, is explicit testimony of the impact of his work on ontology-based GISs. According to Google Scholar, this paper has collected 96 citations in four years (an impressive 24 citations per year), which puts it just a few hits shy of the most frequently cited Transactions in GIS paper (which has a much longer lead time and slower growth rate and, therefore, is likely to be surpassed by the ontology paper in the near future).

Similarly influential is his 1999 paper “Ontology-Driven Geographic Information Systems” [2], which he published as at the competitive ACM GIS. It presented the original concepts of a GIS architecture based on ontologies. According to Google Scholar this paper has 78 citations, which makes it the second most frequently cited paper of all ACM GIS papers published annually since its inception in 1993. In recent years Fred has further expanded on his earlier work with such journal articles as “Bridging Ontologies and Conceptual Schemas in Geographic Information Integration,” “Semantic Granularity in Ontology-Driven Geographic Information Systems,” “Space and Time in Eco-Ontologies,”
“Ontologies and Knowledge Sharing in Urban GIS,” and “Toward an Alternative Notion of Information Systems Ontologies: Information Engineering as a Hermeneutic Enterprise.”

The success of Dr. Fonseca’s key publications on ontology-driven GISs measures favorably with past UCGIS Research awardees and the consortium is very pleased to honor him as the recipient of the 2006 UCGIS Research Award.

UCGIS 2006 Education Award

Dr. David Unwin of The University of London (emeritus)

The Award Subcommittee of the UCGIS Education Committee is pleased to announce the winner of the 2006 UCGIS Education Award: David Unwin of The University of London (emeritus).

One of the founding fathers of GIS education, David retired in 2004 after a distinguished 40-year career marked by many contributions to the scholarship of teaching and learning, of service to the profession, and of educational innovation.
With colleagues, David initiated and developed an early face-to-face Masters degree program in GIScience at the University of Leicester, together with The University of London Birkbeck College’s GIScOnline, the first fully Internet-delivered GIScience Masters-level degree program.

For many years David co-directed the UK’s centrally-funded Computers in Teaching Centre for Geography, Geology and Meteorology and, with colleagues such as Maguire, Fisher, Dykes, Wood and Raper, developed pioneering software for teaching GIS, for highly interactive visualization, and for using virtual reality in field work.

Also for many years, David served what is now the Quantitative Methods Research Group of the Royal Geographic Society (with IBG) as its secretary, treasurer and chair, as well as an early editor of its Concepts and Techniques in Modern Geography teaching monograph series.

David was one of the team that started and developed the Journal of Geography in Higher Education, which he edited for several years and which led to the team-written text Teaching Geography in Higher Education: a Manual of Good Practice.

In addition to over a hundred papers in quantitative geography and GISc, David has authored, co-authored, or edited a number of texts including Computing for Geographers (1976), Introductory Spatial Analysis (1981), Computer Programming for Geographers (1985), Visualization in GIS (1994), Spatial Analysis (1996), Virtual Reality in Geography (2000), Geographic Information Analysis (2003) and, most recently, Re-presenting GIS (2005).

In USA, David has provided inputs from ‘over the pond’ into a forthcoming National Academies of Science report called Beyond Mapping and as a member of Advisory Board for the UCGIS GI S&T Body of Knowledge.

Members of the 2005 Award Subcommittee include past award winners David DiBiase (Penn State), Karen Kemp, (independent scholar), Keith Clarke (UCSB), Michael Goodchild (UCSB), Barbara Buttenfield (UC Boulder), and UCGIS President John Wilson (USC).

Young Scholar Awards – UCGIS 2006 Summer Assembly

ESRI – UCGIS Young Scholar Award Winners

Dr. Nicholas P. Kohler, University of Oregon
Dr. Etien Luc Koua, Pennsylvania State University

Intergraph – UCGIS Young Scholar Award Winners

Dr. Jiyeong Lee, University of North Carolina-Charlotte
Dr. Changshan Wu, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Student Paper Awards – UCGIS 2006 Summer Assembly

Winning Paper & Oral Presentation: Ryan Kirk, University of Minnesota
Winning Paper & Oral Presentation – First Runner-Up: Jeffrey Bergamini, California Polytechnic State University
Winning Paper & Oral Presentation – Second Runner-Up: Li Li, University at Buffalo, SUNY
Cartography and Geographic Information Science Award: Ryan Kirk, University of Minnesota
Transactions in GIS Award: Ke Liao, University of South Carolina

2006 Intergraph Research Award, submitted by Tom Cova, Chair, UCGIS Research Projects Committee, University of Utah.

The winner of the 2006 Intergraph Research Award is Lan Mu from the Department of Geography at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for her proposal entitled, "Mining for spatial components in the relationship of conscientiousness and health." Conscientiousness is one of the key traits included in the Big Five Model of personality, a well-accepted taxonomy in behavioral science. It has been positively related with risk avoidance, good health, and longevity. The objective of this project is to explore the geographic dimensions of this relationship in a comparison of the U.S. and China with a particular focus on scale. The award is for $5000 and $50,000 in Intergraph software which will be used in the analysis. Thank you to Shanthi Lindsey from Intergraph for her continued support of the UCGIS and congratulations Lan Mu!