Dr. John P. Wilson
Department of Geography
College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA 90089-0255
(213) 740-1908 (voice)
(213) 740-9687 (fax)
jpwilson@usc.edu (e-mail)
Most of the work on information integration has focused on the dynamic integration of structured data sources, such as databases or XML data. With more complex geospatial data types, such as imagery, maps, and vector data, researchers have focused on the integration of specific types of information, such as placing points on maps. With the huge quantity of geospatial data now available and large amount of data available on the Web, there is a terrific opportunity to exploit the integration of these two types of information sources. The challenge is that the dynamic integration of online data and geospatial data is beyond the state of the art of existing integration systems. We are currently working on a project that aims to develop a general framework for integrating online and geospatial data sources.
The proposed dynamic integration of online and geospatial data sources will help to transform the nation’s ability to respond to unexpected events. Consider, for example, the information needs of emergency personnel that respond to the crash of a large aircraft in a heavily populated area. Today, these needs are addressed in ad hoc fashion, with lack of information often hampering emergency response efforts. In the recent crash of an aircraft on Long Island, the news media reported that despite knowing the precise location where the plane went down, emergency workers did not know what the plane had hit until they arrived at the scene. This information is directly available on the New York State property tax assessment website, but today there is no way to dynamically query this source by geographic coordinates or to place this information on a map. In practice, there is a great deal of information that emergency response crews need to immediately access in order to properly respond to such an event. They would like to know what was hit. Are they businesses or residences? If they are businesses, what type and do they have any toxic substances on site? They would want to know the locations and distances to hospitals, fire stations, police stations, schools or other structures that could be used to set up first aid stations if large numbers of people are hurt. They might want to find out if there are any train or bus lines that run through the crash site and if so, they would want schedules to facilitate rerouting them. These are just a few examples of the types of information that might be required.
The results of four recent research projects integrating online sources with geospatial data – one linking mediators, wrappers, and geospatial data; another integrating vector data and imagery; a third integrating online schedules (moving objects) with vectors; and a fourth project integrating documents with maps – are reviewed here to illustrate the types of applications we plan to support in the proposed framework for integrating geospatial and online data. A general integration framework that supports the rapid, dynamic integration of a wide variety of sources will greatly improve our ability to respond to unexpected events.
This work is funded by the National Science Foundation’s Information Technology Research Program in a project entitled "ITR: Framework for Integrating Geospatial and Online Data to Respond to Unexpected Events" (NSF Award #0324955). The Co-Principal Investigators for this project are Dr. Craig A. Knoblock, Information Sciences Institute, College of Engineering, University of Southern California, Dr. Cyrus Shahabi, Department of Computer Science, College of Engineering, University of Southern California, and Dr. John P. Wilson, Department of Geography, College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, University of Southern California. Other senior collaborators include Drs. José Luis Ambite and Robert M. MacGregor from the Information Sciences Institute in the College of Engineering at the University of Southern California.