CyberGIS

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CyberGIS, or cyber geographic information science and systems, is a term used to describe the use of cyberinfrastructure, to perform GIS tasks with storage and processing resources of multiple institutions through the World Wide Web. [1] CyberGIS focuses on computational and data-intensive geospatial problem-solving within various research and education domains by leveraging the power of distributed computation. CyberGIS has been described as "GIS detached from the desktop and deployed on the web, with the associated issues of hardware, software, data storage, digital networks, people, training and education" categorizing it as either Internet or Web GIS. [2] The term CyberGIS first entered the literature in 2010, and is predominantly used by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and collaborators to describe their software and research developed to use big data and high-performance computing approaches to collaborative problem-solving. [1] [3]

Contents

History

In 2004, early research on middleware that integrates GIS with high-performance and distributed computing technologies laid the foundation for the subsequent research and development of cyberGIS. This middleware was called geo-middleware [4] because it was tailored to solving geographic problems. Geo-middleware was aimed at enabling collaborative problem-solving and decision-making by taking advantage of massive computational resources provided by high-performance computing infrastructure. Data-intensive spatiotemporal analytics and simulation require substantial computing power [5] while geographic analysis often needs to address the effects of scale and spatial relationships have on various complex phenomena. This means that cyberGIS is focused on GIS advances that are dependent on cyberinfrastructure and high-performance computing instead of conventional sequential computing and GIS approaches. By exploiting cyber resources, it is possible for cyberGIS to resolve broader scientific challenges through data-intensive spatiotemporal knowledge discovery. [6]

The scientific cyberinfrastructure, geospatial, and GIS communities have been working extensively to advance the field of cyberGIS. [7] [8] A key community event was the National Science Foundation TeraGrid Workshop on cyberGIS that took place in conjunction with the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science Winter Meeting of February 2010. This workshop report laid out a compelling cyberGIS roadmap that articulates fundamental issues of cyberGIS for innovating cyberinfrastructure; at the same time, the report contributes to the advancement of the next-generation GIS, which integrates high performance computing, distributed computing, and Internet-enabled collaborative capabilities for geospatial discovery and innovation. [9] [10]

In 2010, Dr. Shaowen Wang described the first cyberGIS framework for the synthesis of cyberinfrastructure, GIS, and spatial analysis. [1] Since then, it has been recognized as an important area for advanced cyberinfrastructure and GIS research. A multi-institution and multidisciplinary initiative, funded by the National Science Foundation in 2010, began a six-year $4.8 million project on “CyberGIS Software Integration for Sustained Geospatial Innovation.” [11] This major initiative has established three interrelated pillars of a cutting-edge cyberGIS software environment: the CyberGIS Gateway, CyberGIS Toolkit, and GISolve middleware.

The ROGER supercomputer Cybergis-roger.jpg
The ROGER supercomputer

CyberGIS Supercomputer

In 2014, the CyberGIS Center for Advanced Digital and Spatial Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign received a National Science Foundation major research instrumentation grant to establish ROGER as the first cyberGIS supercomputer. ROGER, hosted by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, is optimized to deal with geospatial data and computation and is equipped with:

CyberGIS software and tools integrate these system components to support a large number of users who are investigating scientific problems in areas spanning biosciences, engineering, geosciences, and social sciences.

International Conferences

Scientific Organizations

See also

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spatial analysis</span> Formal techniques which study entities using their topological, geometric, or geographic properties

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References

  1. 1 2 3 Wang, Shaowen (2010). "A CyberGIS Framework for the Synthesis of Cyberinfrastructure, GIS, and Spatial Analysis". Annals of the Association of American Geographers. 100 (3): 535–557. doi:10.1080/00045601003791243. ISSN   0004-5608. S2CID   140538292.
  2. ↑ "What is CyberGIS? | ArcGIS Blog". blogs.esri.com. Retrieved 2016-06-11.
  3. ↑ "CyberGIS Center for Advanced Digital and Spatial Studies". University of Illinois. Retrieved 25 April 2023.
  4. ↑ Wang, Shaowen. 2004. Grid-based Geo-Middleware for Geographic Analysis: Theory, Method, Implementation, and Evaluation. Ph.D. Thesis. The University of Iowa.
  5. ↑ Hager, Georg; Wellein, Gerhard (2010). Introduction to High-Performance Computing for Scientists and Engineers. Chapman & Hall/CRC Computational Science. Vol. 20102232. doi:10.1201/EBK1439811924. ISBN   978-1-4398-1192-4. ISSN   2154-4492.
  6. ↑ Anselin, Luc; Rey, Serge (2012). "Spatial Econometrics in an Age of CyberGIScience". International Journal of Geographical Information Science. 26 (12): 2211–2226. doi:10.1080/13658816.2012.664276. S2CID   942116.
  7. ↑ Wright, Dawn J.; Wang, Shaowen (2011-04-05). "The emergence of spatial cyberinfrastructure". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 108 (14): 5488–5491. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1103051108 . ISSN   0027-8424. PMC   3078415 . PMID   21467227.
  8. ↑ Yang, Chaowei; Raskin, Robert; Goodchild, Michael; Gahegan, Mark (2010). "Geospatial Cyberinfrastructure: Past, present and future". Computers, Environment and Urban Systems. 34 (4): 264–277. doi:10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2010.04.001. ISSN   0198-9715.
  9. ↑ Wang, Shaowen; Wilkins-Diehr, Nancy R.; Nyerges, Timothy L. (2012). "CyberGIS - Toward synergistic advancement of cyberinfrastructure and GIScience: A workshop summary". Journal of Spatial Information Science (4). doi: 10.5311/JOSIS.2012.4.83 . ISSN   1948-660X.
  10. ↑ Anselin, Luc (April 2012). "From SpaceStat to CyberGIS: Twenty Years of Spatial Data Analysis Software". International Regional Science Review. 35 (2): 131–157. doi:10.1177/0160017612438615. S2CID   154282385.
  11. ↑ "home [CyberGIS ]". www.cybergis.org. Retrieved 2016-06-12.
  12. ↑ "CyberGIS '12". www.cigi.illinois.edu. Archived from the original on 2016-06-05. Retrieved 2016-06-12.
  13. ↑ "CyberGIS'14 | CyberGIS Center for Advanced Digital and Spatial Studies | University of Illinois". cybergis.illinois.edu. Archived from the original on 2016-06-14. Retrieved 2016-06-12.
  14. ↑ "CyberGIS'16 | CyberGIS Center for Advanced Digital and Spatial Studies | University of Illinois". cybergis.illinois.edu. Archived from the original on 2016-06-04. Retrieved 2016-06-12.
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