Disciplinary structure and development strategy of information geography in China

Journal of Geographical Sciences - The advent of the information era has resulted in exceptional advances in geographic science. The domain of geographic science has expanded from traditional...     

信息地理学学科体系与发展战略要点

信息时代的到来极大地促进了地理科学的发展,地理科学的研究已从传统的自然地理空间、人文地理空间拓展到了信息地理空间,催生了信息地理学的发展,并逐渐形成了地理遥感科学、地理信息科学和地理数据科学3个分支学科。在《中国学科及前沿领域发展战略研究（2021—2035）》地理科学的学科规划背景下,本文梳理了信息地理学的形成、定义和学科体系,重点阐述了信息地理学的学科发展战略布局、优先领域发展目标和重点方向。以期本文有助于促进遥感、地理信息科学与技术的发展和应用回归地理科学,进一步强化地理科学研究,使其更加系统化、科学化和现代化,促进地理科学的整体发展。     

Digital Data-Centric Geography: Implications for Geography's Frontier

The debate regarding geographic information systems (GIS) as tool, toolbox, or science still lingers in geography departments and among geographers. Analysis of geographic information is a vital component of decision making among business, governments, researchers, and academics. GIS users, geographers and nongeographers alike, use and benefit from problem-solving methods in numerous fields and contexts, making the use of GIS and the core competencies associated with using GIS a topic of intense debate. Complicating this ongoing discussion is the rise of data-centric approaches to research in geography that further expand the capabilities of spatial analysis and add to the expected knowledge of a GIS user and analyst. Building on a panel discussion at the 2016 American Association of Geographers (AAG) annual meeting, as well as informal dialogues on Twitter and other social media platforms that navigate this issue in academics and industry, this article explores how skills in research computing and programming operate in geography and GIS, especially given the rise of data-centric approaches to research in these realms. Some topics, like the costs and benefits of open and closed source software, are familiar from previous discussions in geography and GIS. Others, though, like the reward structures and recognition for computing skills or programming ability, have not been widely considered given the current landscape.     

地理信息科学发展与技术应用

本文回顾了中国科学院地理科学与资源研究所在地理信息科学研究与技术应用方面的历史过程,从早期的测量和制图的研究,到开创中国地理信息学科,建立资源与环境信息系统国家重点实验室的历史,是中国特色原创地理信息理论发展的历史,是中国具备自主研发世界级地理信息软件的历史,是地理信息为国家重大战略提供坚实科技支撑的历史。本文主要从地图学、地学遥感、地理信息科学、地学数据共享、重大技术突破和国家战略支撑等方面进行概述,最后从地学知识图谱、地理大数据分析、遥感人工智能、地理系统模拟和知识服务角度展望地理科学发展的新科学范式。     

A unified approach for location-allocation analysis: integrating GIS,distributed computing and spatial optimization

Location-allocation modeling is an important area of research in spatial optimization and GIScience. A large number of analytical models for location-allocation analysis have been developed in the past 50 years to meet the requirements of different planning and spatial-analytic applications, ranging from the location of emergency response units (EMS) to warehouses and transportation hubs. Despite their great number, many location-allocation models are intrinsically linked to one another. A well-known example is the theoretical link between the classic p-median problem and coverage location problems. Recently, Lei and Church showed that a large number of classic and new location models can be posed as special case problems of a new modeling construct called the vector assignment ordered median problem (VAOMP). Lei and Church also reported extremely high computational complexity in optimally solving the best integer linear programming (ILP) formulation developed for the VAOMP even for medium-sized problems in certain cases.

In this article, we develop an efficient unified solver for location-allocation analysis based on the VAOMP model without using ILP solvers. Our aim is to develop a fast heuristic algorithm based on the Tabu Search (TS) meta-heuristic, and message passing interface (MPI) suitable for obtaining optimal or near-optimal solutions for the VAOMP in a real-time environment. The unified approach is particularly interesting from the perspective of GIScience and spatial decision support systems (DSS) as it makes it possible to solve a wide variety of location models in a unified manner in a GIS environment. Computational results show that the TS method can often obtain in seconds, solutions that are better than those obtained using the ILP-based approach in hours or a day.     

A GIS data model for landmark-based pedestrian navigation

Landmarks provide the most predominant navigation cue for pedestrian navigation. Very few navigation data models in the geographical information science and transportation communities support modeling of landmarks and use of landmark-based route instructions for pedestrian navigation services. This article proposes a landmark-based pedestrian navigation data model to fill this gap. This data model can model landmarks in several pedestrian navigation scenarios (buildings, open spaces, multimodal transportation systems, and urban streets). This article implements the proposed model in the ArcGIS software environment and demonstrates two typical pedestrian navigation scenarios: (1) a multimodal pedestrian navigation environment involving bus lines, parks, and indoor spaces and (2) a subway system in a metropolitan environment. These two scenarios illustrate the feasibility of the proposed data model in real-world environments. Further improvements of this model could lead to more intuitive and user-friendly landmark-based pedestrian navigation services than the functions supported by current map-based navigation systems.     

A data model for moving regions of fixed shape in databases

Moving object databases are designed to store and process spatial and temporal object data. An especially useful moving object type is a moving region, which consists of one or more moving polygons suitable for modeling the spread of forest fires, the movement of clouds, spread of diseases and many other real-world phenomena. Previous implementations usually allow a changing shape of the region during the movement; however, the necessary restrictions on this model result in an inaccurate interpolation of rotating objects. In this paper, we present an alternative approach for moving and rotating regions of fixed shape, called Fixed Moving Regions, which provide a significantly better model for a wide range of applications like modeling the movement of oil tankers, icebergs and other rigid structures. Furthermore, we describe and implement several useful operations on this new object type to enable a database system to solve many real-world problems, as for example collision tests, projections and intersections, much more accurate than with other models. Based on this research, we also implemented a library for easy integration into moving objects database systems, as for example the DBMS Secondo (1) (2) developed at the FernUniversität in Hagen.     

城市暴雨内涝综述：特征、机理、数据与方法

建成环境的高空间异质性与致灾过程的复杂性给城市暴雨内涝研究带来巨大的挑战,具体表现为模型代表性不够、计算效率低、基础数据和验证数据匮乏。以机器学习为代表的人工智能技术、高分遥感和互联网大数据的快速发展则为城市暴雨内涝研究提供了新的契机。论文结合人工智能、高分遥感和互联网大数据等新技术发展,从特征、机理、数据与方法4个维度对暴雨内涝的研究现状和发展趋势进行了系统总结,主要结论包括：① 暴雨内涝具有短历时性、空间散布性、连锁性和突变性,其热点呈现空间上的动态迁移特征。② 降雨时空特征和城市化程度决定暴雨内涝灾害的量级,地形条件尤其是微地形则决定发生位置和内涝频率。地形控制作用指数(topographic control index, TCI)对暴雨内涝发生位置具有良好的指示能力。③ 排水管网、高精度地形和不透水面分布是暴雨内涝模拟的关键基础数据;降雨过程的高时空变异性是暴雨内涝近实时预报预警的主要瓶颈,需要充分利用天气雷达观测提高其精准度;互联网众包大数据是获取高空间覆盖度暴雨内涝灾情信息的新途径,但也面临不同类型信息融合、提炼和质量控制的挑战。④ 结合水动力模拟与机器学习可建立兼具物理基础和计算效率的暴雨内涝模拟方法,是实现近实时模拟与快速预报预警的有效途径。     

Mark on the globe: a quest for scientific bases of geographic information and its international influence

David M. Mark published his first journal article in 1970. Since then, he has written or coauthored more than 220 publications over a period of 40 years as of 28 May 2012. Based on data from Web of Science (WoS) and Google Scholar, Mark’s publications have been cited over 7410 times by researchers in more than 80 countries or regions as of 28 May 2012, when this paper was first prepared. The geographic extent of Mark’s scholarly influence is truly global. An examination of his 20 most cited articles reveals that his work in diverse areas as digital elevation models, geomorphology, geographic cognition, and ontology of the geospatial domain enjoyed a lasting impact worldwide.     

A spatially adaptive decomposition approach for parallel vector data visualization of polylines and polygons

With the wide adoption of big spatial data and the emergence of CyberGIS, the nontrivial computational intensity introduced by massive amount of data poses great challenges to the performance of vector map visualization. The parallel computing technologies provide promising solutions to such problems. Evenly decomposing the visualization task into multiple subtasks is one of the key issues in parallel visualization of vector data. This study focuses on the decomposition of polyline and polygon data for parallel visualization. Two key factors impacting the computational intensity were identified: the number of features and the number of vertices of each feature. The computational intensity transform functions (CITFs) were constructed based on the linear relationships between the factors and the computing time. The computational intensity grid (CIG) can then be constructed using the CITFs to represent the spatial distribution of computational intensity. A noninterlaced continuous space-filling curve is used to group the lattices of CIG into multiple sub-domains such that each sub-domain entails the same amount of computational intensity as others. The experiments demonstrated that the approach proposed in this paper was able to effectively estimate and spatially represent the computational intensity of visualizing polylines and polygons. Compared with the regular domain decomposition methods, the new approach generated much more balanced decomposition of computational intensity for parallel visualization and achieved near-linear speedups, especially when the data is greatly heterogeneously distributed in space.     

GEO-Environmental Suitability Evaluation of Land for Urban Construction Based on A Back-Propagation Neural Network and GIS: A Case Study of Hangzhou

Evaluating the geo-environmental suitability of land for urban construction is an important step in the analysis of urban land use potential. Using geo-environmental factors and the land use status of Hangzhou, China, a back-propagation (BP) neural network model for the evaluation of the geo-environmental suitability of land for urban construction was established with a geographic information system (GIS) and techniques of grid, geospatial, and BP neural network analysis. Four factor groups, comprising nine separate subfactors of geo-environmental features, were selected for the model: geomorphic type, slope, site soil type, stratum steadiness, Holocene saturated soft soil depth, groundwater abundance, groundwater salinization, geologic hazard type, and geologic hazard degree. With the support of the model, the geo-environmental suitability of Hangzhou land for urban construction was divided into four suitability zones: zone I, suitable for super high-rise and high-rise buildings; zone II, suitable for multi-story buildings; zone III, suitable for low-rise buildings; and zone IV, not suitable for buildings. The results showed that a BP neural network can capture the complex non-linear relationships between the evaluation factors and the suitability level, and these results will support scientific decision-making for urban-construction land planning, management, and rational land use in Hangzhou.