A Research Agenda for Geographic Information Science at the United States Geological Survey (2007) / Chapter Skim
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3 Research Priorities
3 Research Priorities
Pages 43-98
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From page 43... ...
Although other research topics such as visualization, cognition, and land use or land cover change are very important, the committee feels that enhancing The National Map will optimize initial efforts while leaving open the possibility of expanding to other topics mentioned by McMahon et al.
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Consequently, the criteria are used again later in this chapter. The committee's eight prioritization criteria for CEGIS research follow: Prioritization Criteria for CEGIS Research 1.
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3. Developing Data Models and Knowledge Organization Systems.
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integration of data from multiple sources, and (3) data models and knowledge organization systems.
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The blue boxes and arrows indicate research topics covered in the section on Integration of Data from Multiple Sources. Research topics in the yellow boxes and arrows are covered in the section on Data Models and Knowledge Organization Systems.
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CSW = Catalog Service for Web; EPA = Environmental Protection Agency; NASA = National Aeronautics and Space Administration; NOAA = National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; OGC = Open Geospatial Consortium; WCS = Web Coverage Services; WFS = Web Feature Services; WMS = Web Map Services.
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From page 49... ...
based on current capabilities and trends, but in the long term The National Map system design team within USGS would feed requirements-based research challenges to CEGIS that would undoubtedly result in adjustments to the set of priorities listed in this chapter. The National Map of the future is envisioned to be a highly dynamic and flexible transactional information system.
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From page 50... ...
. In the command center, the new three-dimensional topographic maps overlaid with near-real-time airborne color-infrared thermal imagery, real-time GPS wireless sensor data, and National Weather Service maps of wind direction, precipitation potential, and temperature displayed on the computers allow the command center team to tell the firefighters where the wildfire boundaries are and help them estimate the likely fire spread directions and speed in the next two hours The operators at the command center find it intuitive to toggle between the various layers of data to analyze the situation and can select different combinations to produce PDF files for fast printing to distribute to the crews.
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RECOMMENDATION 3: The two priority research topics within the area of information access and dissemination should be to reinvent topographic maps in an electronic environment and to investigate user-centered design for The National Map web services. Priority CEGIS Research Topic: Innovative Formats and Designs to Reinvent Topographic Maps in an Electronic Environment Topographic maps are the one of the most important products of the USGS and The National Map.
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From page 52... ...
These two foci arise because the available methods for creating online topographic maps using The National Map viewers are fairly complicated for public use -- users must often select layers and symbols from among hundreds of choices; alternatively, they are confronted with a map made with all themes as strong high-contrast symbols -- sometimes with confusing color choices (Figure 3.2)
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From page 53... ...
(short term) Advanced use of the PDF to deliver topographic maps could make use of Optional Content Groups (OCG)
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CEGIS's goal could be to automate these adjustments so that map users are not faced with many symbol options for every device and scale at which they request topographic maps. CEGIS does not have any research in this area at this time, but it could call on USGS's long experience in paper map design as a starting point.
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Contemporary examples of symbolization schemes for roads include those from Google Maps (established earlier in print in the National Geographic Road Atlas [previously GeoSystems Road Atlas] and European topographic mapping)
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User profiles could also be included in procedures for setting symbolization hierarchies. Research Question: How should USGS select a subset of automated and manual approaches to visual hierarchies to provide a tool that effectively serves the largest number and variety of National Map users seeking to an swer geographical questions that are not served by commercial point-to point navigation tools (e.g., Google Maps, MapQuest, and Yahoo!
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Priority CEGIS Research Topic: User-Centered Design for Implementation of The National Map Web Services User-centered design of The National Map web services and viewers will improve usability by accommodating different needs for display and functionality. UCD is an interactive process of system development with user participation and evaluation (Box 3.2)
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There are three major UCD-related tasks for the implementation of National Map web services: (1) user interface design for map viewers, (2)
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Research Priorities 59 BOX 3.2 International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Standard 13407: Human-Centered Design for Interactive Systems The ISO 13407 standard includes five steps for the implementation of UCD applications: 1.
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The user interface designs of Google Earth and MapQuest provide good examples for CEGIS on how to improve The National Map viewer. However, this viewer will also have unique characteristics and will need to establish and promote the USGS topographic map brand and provide access to the full depth of USGS geospatial data.
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. Research Question: Will new web mapping technologies, such as vector compression algorithms, AJAX, and Adobe Flex, improve the usability and system performance of The National Map servers and general web mapping applications?
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(short term) Open Geospatial Consortium Standard Profiles for Mapping Interoperable web mapping services allow map users to combine multiple web-based map layers from different map servers in a single map viewer.
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There are many OGC standards associated with Web mapping applications, including Web Map Services (WMS) , Web Feature Services (WFS)
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It is unlikely that online map users will want to download the spatial data files for an area of interest and combine them with labels in high-end graphics software. CEGIS research on automatic label placement could offer the advantage of USGS design skills for the reference labels over dynamic selections of spatial data instead of the limited WMS SLD labels that plague current viewers.
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USGS has already established the brand and look of U.S. topographic maps and can build on this background to adjust and update the look for current display media.
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SOURCE: USGS National Atlas. http://www.nationalatlas.gov/printable/images/pdf/fedlands/co.pdf (B)
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However, there is still the unexplained spread to the east. The crew accesses the National Weather Service wind forecast, which is provided at a scale of 1:125,000 compared to the topographic map at 1:24,000.
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Geographical features are often scale-dependent, and appear differently depending on the scale at which they are portrayed. For example, Figure 3.7 shows same section of a stream taken from topographic maps at four different scales (1:24,000, 1:50,000, 1:100,000, and 1:250,000)
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For example, when reducing a 1:24,000 topographic map (large scale) to 1:125,000 (small scale)
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Priority CEGIS Research Topic: Generalization Generalization research has progressed over the last 20 years, including on algorithmic design (Regnauld and McMaster, 2007) , database requirements (Mustiere
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has worked in many areas of cartographic generalization, including data modeling to support generalization, algorithmic design and testing, and the application of agent-based methods to enable intelligent generalization. The latter project involved a collaboration among the IGN, University of Edinburgh, University of Zurich, and Laser-Scan (now called 1Spatial)
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72 A Research Agenda for GIScience at the USGS FIGURE 3.8 County boundaries along the Florida Gulf Coast drawn at 1:2,000,000: (a) base data from the Census TIGER files, with inland water extensions clipped, (b)
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. BOX 3.4 Types of Generalization Operations Five possible generalization operators that CEGIS would need are discussed below.
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Work on The National Map will require CEGIS researchers to develop unique generalization operations that can be automated for the many possible data types and map scales. The research questions in this area vary, with shortand long-term time lines.
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Since the generation of digital spatial data is extremely expensive and time consuming, one master version of the database is often created and smaller-scale versions are generated from this master scale. USGS will need to carefully consider multiscale multiresolution databases in the context of The National Map and their relationship to geospatial data and processes.
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Each could be at a slightly or significantly different scale, of different quality, and in different data models that must be converted. Harmonizing such disparate data sets, through the application of map conflation and edge matching, will need to be an early and high priority for CEGIS.
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First and foremost, a much larger and more versatile set of tests is needed to demonstrate the efficacy of these new techniques and whether or not they can be used to integrate multiple data themes and feature types across a variety of land surfaces and cover types. These are important subtleties, and early test results (Chen et al., 2003, 2004)
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In that program, academic researchers are looking at topics such as Multi-Sensor Data Fusion, Analysis, and Visualization, Seamless Integration of Geospatial Data from Water to Land, Conflation Research in Support of Gazetteers, Spatial Uncertainty Models to Automatic and Enhance Fusion, and Spatiotemporal Data Fusion (NGA, 2006)
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The upcoming section on data models includes a related discussion on research on spatiotemporal models. Fusing Spatial and Aspatial Data.
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2. Geographic feature data models based on these ontologies, and an associ ated gazetteer as an extension of the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS)
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Geographic feature ontologies are important because they provide standardized definitions for use within the community, a basis for operational definitions of features that can support automated feature extraction, and a semantic reference framework for matching and exchanging information across communities. Geographic feature ontologies that formally specify topographic features, their parts and structures, and their relationships to other features additionally provide the conceptual foundation for enhanced data models organized around features rather than map layers and around the semantic structure of features as opposed to abstract geometric and topological structures.
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From page 82... ...
Priority CEGIS Research Topic: Geographic Feature Ontologies Information not made explicit by a data model and knowledge sources is information not directly and easily accessible to users. While the current National Map contains much geographic information, it is not able to respond to many types of requests for geographic information because of the lack of explicit representation of certain features, part of features, and feature-feature relationships.
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Just as the topographic map served the central role for integrating map information, an ontology that specifies the semantics of geographic features can provide a new and critical integration framework at the semantic level. The United Kingdom (U.K.)
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Priority CEGIS Research Topic: Ontology Driven Data Models and Gazetteers Ontologies provide a framework for structuring information system content and clarify the things one wishes to model. An ontology can synthesize collective knowledge of things that exist, their properties, and relationships among them.
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From page 85... ...
A three-way integrated model construct that includes geographic feature ontology, gazetteer, and geographic feature database could form the basis for a comprehensive geographic information integration framework. To illustrate the potential, consider a case in which a USGS researcher wants to investigate the relationship of fire damage and landslide incidence.
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The fire event database (upper box) has only a place name location representation, while the landslide scar database (lower box)
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From page 87... ...
This is a short-term research initiative that could make a substantial contribution to enhancing the spatial and semantic integration role for The National Map. Development of feature ontologies, ontology driven data models, and the gazetteer has to be coordinated since the hard work of defining feature classes (e.g., canyons, mountains, bays)
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From page 88... ...
An internally managed approach in which the database has built-in redundancy and benchmarks to assess quality offers some promise. A feature database that supports multiple spatial versions of the same features at different levels of detail or different temporal states creates the opportunity for such a quality-aware data model.
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From page 89... ...
, but it can bring to bear ongoing work on least squares, geostatistics and high-dimensional statistics, indexing, and dimension reduction. Data Models for Time and Change The National Map data model does not now support explicit representation of temporal states, change, and dynamic relationships among geographic features.
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From page 90... ...
This is particularly the case in USGS where hydrologists, ecologists, and geographers are adopting more quantitative modeling tools and considering using geospatial data to calibrate models or vice versa. Therefore, research in this area could have great benefits to other USGS disciplines and other scientific agencies in developing new techniques for combining and analyzing spatiotemporal data.
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Several long-term questions arise on what the transaction processing logic is for updating National Map or other USGS databases. The firefighters are not expected to be database experts and so need support for simply uploading the data.
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Transaction processing generally is a mature field, but spatial and temporal transaction processing and transaction processing in distributed database contexts are still new. The OGC Transaction Web Feature Server is addressing the ability to create, update, and delete geographic features in a distributed computing environment and CEGIS may consider some collaborations with OGC in developing distributed National Map transaction processing.
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Research Priorities 93 also suggested as potential starting points. Table 3.1 summarizes this research structure and is organized to show the broad research areas, the recommended research topics within those areas, and the committee's suggested initial research questions.
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6. What is the optimal combination of types and number of symbols Short term for an inexperienced user to create an effective topographic map and accommodate a data overlay on a topic of interest using web tools?
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what types of user interfaces are for implementation of appropriate for The National Map viewers, (b) does The National The National Map Map need different viewers for different users and map contents or web services is a single one appropriate, and (c)
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Data Models and 1. What are the key sets of topographic features portrayed within The Short term Geographic feature Knowledge National Map layers that should be explicitly represented in ontologies Organization ontologies (these might align with the set of features already Systems identified within the Spatial Data Transfer Standard; USGS, 1994)
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? Data models for time 1.
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