Geoinformatics

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Leaflet library is often used in geoinformatics for the development of web map applications Leaflet example.png
Leaflet library is often used in geoinformatics for the development of web map applications

Geoinformatics is a scientific field primarily within the domains of Computer Science and technical geography. [1] [2] It focuses on the programming of applications, spatial data structures, and the analysis of objects and space-time phenomena related to the surface and underneath of Earth and other celestial bodies. The field develops software and web services to model and analyse spatial data, serving the needs of geosciences and related scientific and engineering disciplines. The term is often used interchangeably with Geomatics, although the two have distinct focuses; Geomatics emphasizes acquiring spatial knowledge and leveraging information systems, not their development. [2] At least one publication has claimed the discipline is pure computer science outside the realm of geography. [2]

Contents

Overview

In a general sense, geoinformatics can be understood as "a variety of efforts to promote collaboration between computer scientists and geoscientists to solve complex scientific questions". [3] More technically, geoinformatics has been described as "the science and technology dealing with the structure and character of spatial information, its capture, its classification and qualification, its storage, processing, portrayal and dissemination, including the infrastructure necessary to secure optimal use of this information" [4] or "the art, science or technology dealing with the acquisition, storage, processing production, presentation and dissemination of geoinformation". [5] Along with the thriving of data science and artificial intelligence since the 2010s, the field of geoinformatics has also incorporated the latest methodology and technical progress from the cyberinfrastructure ecosystem. [6] [7]

Geoinformatics has at its core the technologies supporting the processes of acquisition, analysis and visualization of spatial data. Both geomatics and geoinformatics include and rely heavily upon the theory and practical implications of geodesy and cartography. Geography and earth science increasingly rely on digital spatial data acquired from remotely sensed images analyzed by geographical information systems (GIS), [8] photo interpretation of aerial photographs, and Web mining. [9] Geoinformatics combines geospatial analysis and modeling, development of geospatial databases, information systems design, human-computer interaction and both wired and wireless networking technologies. Geoinformatics uses geocomputation and geovisualization for analyzing geoinformation.

Areas related to geoinformatics include:

Research

Research in this field is used to support global and local environmental, energy and security programs. The Geographic Information Science and Technology group of Oak Ridge National Laboratory is supported by various government departments and agencies including the United States Department of Energy. It is currently the only group in the United States Department of Energy National Laboratory System to focus on advanced theory and application research in this field. A lot of interdisciplinary research exists that involves geoinformatics fields including computer science, information technology, software engineering, biogeography, geography, conservation, architecture, spatial analysis and reinforcement learning.

Applications

Many fields benefit from geoinformatics, including urban planning and land use management, in-car navigation systems, virtual globes, land surveying, public health, local and national gazetteer management, environmental modeling and analysis, military, transport network planning and management, agriculture, meteorology and climate change, oceanography and coupled ocean and atmosphere modelling, business location planning, architecture and archeological reconstruction, telecommunications, criminology and crime simulation, aviation, biodiversity conservation and maritime transport. The importance of the spatial dimension in assessing, monitoring and modelling various issues and problems related to sustainable management of natural resources is recognized all over the world.

Geoinformatics becomes very important technology to decision-makers across a wide range of disciplines, industries, commercial sector, environmental agencies, local and national government, research, and academia, national survey and mapping organisations, International organisations, United Nations, emergency services, public health and epidemiology, crime mapping, transportation and infrastructure, information technology industries, GIS consulting firms, environmental management agencies), tourist industry, utility companies, market analysis and e-commerce, mineral exploration, Seismology etc. Many government and non government agencies started to use spatial data for managing their day-to-day activities.

See also

Organizations

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Geographic information system</span> System to capture, manage, and present geographic data

A geographic information system (GIS) consists of integrated computer hardware and software that store, manage, analyze, edit, output, and visualize geographic data. Much of this often happens within a spatial database; however, this is not essential to meet the definition of a GIS. In a broader sense, one may consider such a system also to include human users and support staff, procedures and workflows, the body of knowledge of relevant concepts and methods, and institutional organizations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Geomatics</span> Geographic data discipline

Geomatics is defined in the ISO/TC 211 series of standards as the "discipline concerned with the collection, distribution, storage, analysis, processing, presentation of geographic data or geographic information". Under another definition, it consists of products, services and tools involved in the collection, integration and management of geographic (geospatial) data. Surveying engineering was the widely used name for geomatic(s) engineering in the past. Geomatics was placed by the UNESCO Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems under the branch of technical geography.

A GIS software program is a computer program to support the use of a geographic information system, providing the ability to create, store, manage, query, analyze, and visualize geographic data, that is, data representing phenomena for which location is important. The GIS software industry encompasses a broad range of commercial and open-source products that provide some or all of these capabilities within various information technology architectures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Geographic information science</span>

Geographic information science or geoinformation science is a scientific discipline at the crossroads of computational science, social science, and natural science that studies geographic information, including how it represents phenomena in the real world, how it represents the way humans understand the world, and how it can be captured, organized, and analyzed. It is a sub-field of geography, specifically part of technical geography. It has applications to both physical geography and human geography, although its techniques can be applied to many other fields of study as well as many different industries.

Geovisualization or geovisualisation, also known as cartographic visualization, refers to a set of tools and techniques supporting the analysis of geospatial data through the use of interactive visualization.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International Cartographic Association</span> International organization

The International Cartographic Association (ICA) is an organization formed of national member organizations, to provide a forum for issues and techniques in cartography and geographic information science (GIScience). ICA was founded on June 9, 1959, in Bern, Switzerland. The first General Assembly was held in Paris in 1961. The mission of the International Cartographic Association is to promote the disciplines and professions of cartography and GIScience in an international context. To achieve these aims, the ICA works with national and international governmental and commercial bodies, and with other international scientific societies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Faculty of Geodesy, University of Zagreb</span>

The Faculty of Geodesy at the University of Zagreb is the only Croatian institution providing high education in Geomatics engineering and the largest faculty in this domain in southeastern Europe.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are an increasingly important component of business, healthcare, security, government, trade, media, transportation and tourism industries and operations in China. GIS software is playing an increasing role in the way Chinese companies analyze and manage business operations.

The Finnish Geospatial Research Institute, formerly Finnish Geodetic Institute is a research institute in Finland specializing in geodesy and geospatial information science and technology. It merged into the National Land Survey of Finland in 2015, when its name was changed. It is located in Masala, Kirkkonummi.

The Faculty of Geodesy and Land Management is one of the sixteen faculties of University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn.

Systems geology emphasizes the nature of geology as a system – that is, as a set of interacting parts that function as a whole. The systems approach involves study of the linkages or interfaces between the component objects and processes at all levels of detail in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the solid Earth. A long-term objective is to provide computational support throughout the cycles of investigation, integrating observation and experiment with modeling and theory, each reinforcing the other. The overall complexity suggests that systems geology must be based on the wider emerging cyberinfrastructure, and should aim to harmonize geological information with Earth system science within the context of the e-science vision of a comprehensive global knowledge system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Institute of Geomatics</span>

The Institute of Geomatics (IG) was a public consortium made up of the Autonomous Government of Catalonia and the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, created by Decree Law 256/1997 of the Autonomous Government of Catalonia, on September 30, 1997. It was a founding member of the Associació Catalana d'Entitats de Recerca (ACER).

Andrew U. Frank was a Swiss-Austrian professor for geoinformation at Vienna University of Technology from 1992 until 2016. Previously he was Professor at the University of Maine at Orono. Frank was recognized for his achievements in the fields of spatial information theory, spatial database theory, and ontology in GIS in a special section in his honor in IJGIS.

Geographic data and information is defined in the ISO/TC 211 series of standards as data and information having an implicit or explicit association with a location relative to Earth. It is also called geospatial data and information, georeferenced data and information, as well as geodata and geoinformation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ed Parsons</span> Geospatial Technologist & Tech Evangelist

Ed Parsons is a London-based Geospatial Technologist and tech evangelist at Google. He is working to evangelise geospatial data for commercial application and consequently, to improve the usability and efficiency of location based tools at Google. He is credited as being one of the core proponents of Google Street View.

Sisi Zlatanova is a Bulgarian/Dutch researcher in geospatial data, geographic information systems, and 3D modeling. She works as a professor in the faculty of the Built Environment, at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), and is president of Technical Commission IV (Spatial Information Science) of the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">TUM School of Engineering and Design</span> School at the Technical University of Munich

The TUM School of Engineering and Design is a school of the Technical University of Munich, established in 2021 by the merger of four departments. As of 2022, it is structured into the Department of Aerospace & Geodesy, the Department of Architecture, the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, the Department of Energy & Process Engineering, the Department of Engineering Physics & Computation, the Department of Materials Engineering, the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and the Department of Mobility Systems Engineering.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Biswajeet Pradhan</span> Spatial scientist, modeler, and author

Biswajeet Pradhan is a spatial scientist, modeller, author and who is now working as a Distinguished Professor and the founding Director of the Centre for Advanced Modelling and Geo-spatial Information Systems (CAMGIS), Faculty of Engineering and IT at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. He is working primarily in the fields of remote sensing, geographic information systems (GIS), complex modelling, machine learning and Artificial intelligence (AI) based algorithms and their application to natural hazards, natural resources and environmental problems. Many of his research outputs were put into practice. His research platform is mainly Asia and Australia, and he has been sharing his findings worldwide. He is also a permanent resident of Australia and Malaysia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Xiaogang Ma</span> Chinese computer scientist

Xiaogang Ma or Marshall Ma is a data science and geoinformatics researcher at the University of Idaho (UI), United States. He is an associate professor in the department of computer science at UI, and also affiliates with the department of earth and spatial sciences and several research institutes and centers at the university.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Technical geography</span> Study of using and creating tools to manage spatial information

Technical geography is the branch of geography that involves using, studying, and creating tools to obtain, analyze, interpret, understand, and communicate spatial information.

References

  1. ↑ Bello, Innocent E. (October 2023). "Critical Issues in the Methods of Data Collection in Geoinformatics and Environmental Sciences". International Journal of Social Sciences and Management Research. 9 (8): 18–28. doi: 10.56201/ijssmr.v9.no8.2023.pg18.28 .
  2. 1 2 3 Krawczyk, Artur (9 November 2022). "Proposal of Redefinition of the Terms Geomatics and Geoinformatics on the Basis of Terminological Postulates". ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information. 11 (11): Krawczyk. Bibcode:2022IJGI...11..557K. doi: 10.3390/ijgi11110557 .
  3. ↑ G.R. Keller, C. Baru, eds. (2011) Geoinformatics: Cyberinfrastructure for the Solid Earth Sciences, Cambridge University Press, 1st edition, 593pp.
  4. ↑ P.L.N. Raju, Fundamentals of Geographic Information Systems
  5. ↑ Ehlers, M. (2008). "Geoinformatics and digital earth initiatives: A German perspective". International Journal of Digital Earth. 1 (1): 17–30. Bibcode:2008IJDE....1...17E. doi: 10.1080/17538940701781975 .
  6. ↑ Ma, Xiaogang; Mookerjee, Matty; Hsu, Leslie; Hills, Denise, eds. (2023). Recent Advancement in Geoinformatics and Data Science. doi:10.1130/SPE558. ISBN   978-0-8137-2558-1.
  7. ↑ Z. Sun, N. Cristea, P. Rivas, eds. (2023) Artificial Intelligence in Earth Science, Elsevier, ISBN   9780323917377
  8. ↑ Bouloucos and Brown, ITC Courses in Remote Sensing, GIS and Photogrammetry
  9. ↑ Annamoradnejad, R.; Annamoradnejad, I.; Safarrad, T.; Habibi, J. (2019-04-20). "Using Web Mining in the Analysis of Housing Prices: A Case study of Tehran". 2019 5th International Conference on Web Research (ICWR). pp. 55–60. doi:10.1109/ICWR.2019.8765250. ISBN   978-1-7281-1431-6. S2CID   198146435.
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