University Consortium for Geographic Information Science
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Our Mission

Spring 2001 Headlines
Vol. 3, No. 1



UCGIS Refines Emerging Themes in GIScience by Suzy Jampoler and Dawn Wright

The UCGIS Summer Assembly will be held at the University Inn and Conference Center in Amherst, New York, from June 20-24, 2001, and hosted by the State University of New York at Buffalo. The Assembly is one of two annual business and professional meetings of the 50+ member institutions. The Consortium's last meeting was in Washington, DC, during February 2001, when members also met with representatives of federal agencies interested in geoscience, with home state congressional delegations, and with congressional committee staff members.

A major item on the agenda of the Summer Assembly will be a discussion of geoscience areas where future research is either necessary to clarify an issue or now possible because of the advances of technology and the development of new analytical tools - or both. Consortium members have proposed and approved seven "emerging themes for research" and refinement of these topics will be the major work of the Assembly. These seven include:

In addition, there will be plenary sessions on distance education and GIScience, a GIScience model curriculum, and the NSF Research-based Graduate Education (IGERT) program.

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Model Curriculum Development Proceeding

The Model Curriculum Committee is continuing to work on the curriculum development. The Curriculum Committee will be presenting its work to date at the Summer Assembly this month. The committee recently prepared a proposal to the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop an undergraduate model curriculum in GIScience. This proposal was approved by the Board of Directors and submitted by UCGIS with Duane Marble (The Ohio State University) as principal investigator, and Aileen Buckley (University of Oregon) and Elizabeth Wentz (Arizona State University) as Co-PIs. This proposal is the first where the PIs will work directly for UCGIS rather than through sub-awards to member universities. If funded, the curriculum development will be completed by the PIs with assistance from a large advisory committee and expert evaluation group.

ESRI has provided a grant to UCGIS to fund meetings of the committee while awaiting NSF's response. The next meeting of the group will be in San Diego in August.

For more information, contact Duane Marble at marble.1@osu.edu

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Intergraph Young Scholars Program Announced

Intergraph Corporation is sponsoring a new grant opportunity with UCGIS: The Intergraph Young Scholars Program. This program is designed to give junior faculty the opportunity to participate in the UCGIS Summer Assembly and Winter Meetings. All expenses to the UCGIS meeting are paid for the selected applicants.

Three academics have been chosen for the first Intergraph Young Scholars award:

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Student Travel Grants and Presentations

One highlight of the UCGIS Summer Assembly will be the presentation of award-winning research papers by nine graduate students.

Graduate students from GIScience-related disciplines countrywide competed for a small number of travel grants to attend this summer's UCGIS membership meeting. The grant winners come from 30 universities throughout the United States. The students will present their research at a poster session. There are nine students from among the grant winners whose scholarship was judged to have exceptional merit. These nine will present a paper on their research to the full assembly. They include:

The full text of most of these student papers may be viewed from www.geog.buffalo.edu/ucgis/students2001.html.

In addition, the following students presenting posters were funded by the UCGIS to attend the meeting:

The full text of student papers upon which all student posters are based may be viewed from www.geog.buffalo.edu/ucgis/studentposter.html

See also Degrees of Freedom: Finding Work in Academia

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Dr. Barbara Buttenfield Honored as UCGIS Educator of the Year


Dr. Barbara Buttenfield will be awarded the first University Consortium for Geographic Information Science Outstanding GIScience Educator Award at the UCGIS Summer Assembly in Buffalo this month.

The criteria for selection are a) excellence in teaching GIScience courses, b) supervision of graduate students entering careers in GIScience education and research, c) authority of significant publications in GIScience education, d) leadership in GIScience curriculum development and program design, and e) leadership in the development of GIScience education policy in academic and professional organizations. 

The selection committee's decision was based on Dr. Buttenfield's numerous contributions to GIScience education including her:

Dr. Buttenfield is a Professor of Geography at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1984. Dr. Buttenfield's educational interests are in GIS, Computer Cartography and Scientific Visualization. Her research focuses on cartographic knowledge formalization and acquisition, spatial data delivery on the Internet, and on visualization tools for geographic modeling. She was one of the original co-principal investigators on the NSF-awarded NCGIA (National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis, and an original co-principal investigator on the Alexandria Digital Library Project. The University of Colorado at Boulder is one of the twenty-nine founding members of UCGIS.

Dr. Buttenfield has served on the UCGIS Board of Directors since 1999. She has been active on the Board in sponsoring student participation in UCGIS activities.

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UCGIS HUD Grant Update

UCGIS has awarded five sub-contracts to member institutions to complete work on the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science grant “Global Urban Quality Project: An Analysis of Urban Indictors Using Geographic Information Science (GIS)”. The universities are: A first symposium of all the participating universities was held in February. Each of the universities presented a synopsis of their research and discussed the focus of their urban indicator work.

The universities are all developing web-based training materials to assist planners in incorporating spatial analysis and urban indicators to support urban planning. Each is using different indicators. For example, the University of Iowa is working on health care indicators, University of Illinois on transportation, University of Wisconsin on housing and population. They are also taking different approaches.

Some of the universities are working with multiple partners, others with only one or two. One of Virginia Commonwealth University's partners is the Open Remote Sensing Laboratory in Shanghai. Part of their focus will be on remotely sensed information. They will be working with their other partner in Guatemala on natural hazards. West Virginia University is working with one partner in Mozambique and working on a variety of indices they have identified.

The second symposium will be held in Washington DC, September 26-28, 2001. In addition to representation from each UCGIS university, one participant from each of the partnering organizations will be invited. These partners form an advisory committee to the project to ensure that local concerns and issues are addressed in the data collection and training materials.

This year's project is a proof-of-concept. UCGIS participating universities are developing a global network to disseminate the training materials created to support this project. One of the first tasks for the members of the network will be to establish a quantitative baseline of data for the partnering cities. The project will also put into place mechanisms for the systematic collection of the data to monitor change and assist in developing and evaluating policies and programs to improve housing and living conditions.

For more information, contact Dr. Kenneth Dueker, UCGIS Project Manager at duekerk@pdx.edu.

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UCGIS at the United Nations

As a part of its Global Urban Indicators grant from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), UCGIS is working to build a stronger relationship with the United Nations HABITAT program. HABITAT is a long-standing UN program to improve the quality of life for people throughout the world. A global call to action to provide sustainable human settlements was issued at the HABITAT II Special Session in Istanbul in 1996. The goal was to provide adequate shelter, a healthy and safe environment, basic services, and productive and freely chosen employment for all the world's citizens. The adoption of the HABITAT agenda five years ago in Istanbul marked a turning point in international efforts to promote socially and environmentally sustainable cities, rather than a continued focus on rural environments.

Gerry Rushton, Bill Huxhold and Suzy Jampoler joined the HUD Office of Policy Development and Research (OPD&R) on the US State Department delegation to the United Nations Istanbul +5 meeting, June 6-8, 2001 in New York City. This Special Session of the UN General Assembly was called to review the implementation of the HABITAT agenda. Over 1500 representatives, including heads of state, attended the meeting.

HUD's OPD&R Division organized a special event discussion on "Global Urban Quality: An Analysis of Urban Indicators Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS)". Alven Lam, the HUD Program Manager for the UCGIS HUD grant moderated the session.

Bill Huxhold gave an overview presentation on the importance of micro-level urban indicators for solving local problems using spatial analysis. He discussed disaggregating data from the global to local levels. Suzy Jampoler represented the five UCGIS universities currently working on developing training materials using GI Science with urban indicators to support local decision-making. She provided an overview of UCGIS and of each university's project. The projects focus on a variety of applications -- from health care to housing to transportation. Gerry Rushton followed with a detailed application using health indicators to improve maternal health care.

Meetings were also held with representatives from HABITAT, including Guenter Karl, Coordinator of the Global Urban Observatory, Christine Auclair, indicator specialist, and Nefise Bazoglu, of the UN Secretariat HABITAT office. The purpose was to find additional partners for on-going research through the Global Urban Observatory members, discuss how GIS when integrated with reliable urban indicators is a useful planning tool, and identify additional funding sources to continue and expand the current research. The delegation also met HUD Deputy Assistant Secretary Shannon Sorzano.

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UCGIS/USGS Colloquia on GIScience and Vector-Borne Diseases

UCGIS has completed a series of colloquium sponsored by a grant from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) on GI Science and Vector-Borne Diseases. A major goal of the meetings was to facilitate the development of a network among researchers interested in the integration of geographic analysis to understand vector-borne diseases, such as malaria, dengue, and West Nile virus. GIScientists from UCGIS member institutions, researchers working on vector-borne disease and participants from USGS we invited to both meetings.

The first meeting, organized by Art Getis, was held in San Diego in January 2001. Because the participant base was so multidisciplinary, the first portion of the meeting included extensive discussions of individual research concerns, and identifying a common vocabulary. For example, "vector" has a very different meaning to GIScientists than to epidemiologists. Participants than examined a variety of relevant research topics. Topics identified included data types, acquisition, integration, and management.

Scale and resolution were identified as major research areas. Participants discussed whether scientists could agree on a mutually acceptable definition of scale/resolution/level/hierarchy and appropriate scale ranges for analysis and interpretation. Incorporation of epidemiological spatial and temporal models was also discussed. Models can—among other things—identify a major disease process, forecast the future course of a disease outbreak, determine intervention courses, or measure risk.

The second meeting, organized by Uriel Kitron, was held in Virginia in May 2001. The colloquium included presentations, interactive demonstrations, and significant time for individual discussions on future research and collaboration. Presentation topics included GIS techniques, application of remote sensing and GIS to vector-borne-disease analysis, and user requirements. The agenda can be found www.ucgis2.org. Dr. Nancy Maynard from NASA Goddard was the welcoming dinner speaker.

Two data sets, one on West Nile virus from Steve Guptill and Lee DeCola at USGS and one on Lyme disease from Uriel Kitron were provided. Participants spent time exploring a variety of analytical strategies using these data during the interactive sessions. A CD-ROM containing these data sets is available. Contact Suzy Jampoler for more information.

The coordinating committee for the two meetings was Art Getis, Uriel Kitron, Gerry Rushton, Steve Guptill, Lee DeCola and Suzy Jampoler. UCGIS appreciates the support from USGS to offer these two meetings. These meetings enhance the multidisciplinary nature of UCGIS, and provide a significant benefit to its members.

The final report on these meetings will be available soon on the UCGIS web site. A notice to the ALL list will be sent out at that time. If you are not a member of the ALL list go to www.ucgis.org/f2acontac.html to subscribe.

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Transportation and GIS Meetings Proposed

The Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) is the newest UCGIS federal affiliate member. Each federal member brings a unique and focused research interest to UCGIS. UCGIS is working on a proposal to host three symposia on GIScience and Transportation in the next year. These meetings are expected to focus on all aspects of transportation, and bring together transportation professionals from the federal, state and local levels, academics interested in research topics in GIScience and transportation and network analysis, and private industry. Planning for these meetings is in the preliminary stages. For more information, contact Suzy Jampoler.

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Avoiding Listserv Lunacy
by Dawn Wright

Over the past year UCGIS has had good success with a new listserv software called Lyris which features automatic error mail handling, multiple level security, and failsafe unsubscribing that prevents those annoying "get me off this list!" messages. It also has an easier, web-based interface for subscribers and adminstrators. Below are a few listserv reminders and/or tips to ensure a pleasant UCGIS emailing experience:

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The University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) is a non-profit association of universities and other research institutions. The mission of UCGIS is: Last updated: June 18, 2001.

Challenges is an occasional publication of the UCGIS.
For submissions, corrections, comments or questions, please contact Dawn Wright, dawn@dusk.geo.orst.edu.