National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis

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The National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) was founded in 1988 and hosted at three member campuses: The University of California, Santa Barbara; the State University of New York at Buffalo; and the University of Maine.

Contents

The center was founded after receiving a $5 million grant from the National Science Foundation. Ron Abler—then at NSF—described the rationale for the NCGIA and compared it to corresponding efforts in the UK. [1]

Notable faculty involved with the NCGIA include Michael Goodchild, Michael Batty, David Mark, A. Stewart Fotheringham, Andrew Frank, Helen Couclelis, Keith Clarke, Luc Anselin, Waldo R. Tobler amongst others. David William Rhind and Mike Goodchild compare later US and the UK approach. [2]

The research plan [3] was organized along so-called Research Initiatives, which generally started and ended with "specialist meetings", where interdisciplinary teams discussed pressing research issues. Often a publication followed:

In 1992 the list of publications resulting from these research initiatives and other efforts of the NCGIA were published in the International Journal of Geographical Information Systems . [8]

The NCGIA produces a Core Curriculum for teaching Geographic Information Systems [9]

See also

Related Research Articles

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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">Waldo R. Tobler</span> American geographer

Waldo Rudolph Tobler was an American-Swiss geographer and cartographer. Tobler is regarded as one of the most influential geographers and cartographers of the late 20th century and early 21st century. Tobler is most well known for his proposed idea that "Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things," which has come to be referred to as the "first law of geography." The first law of geography is widely cited, and continues to be relevant today. He proposed a second law as well: "The phenomenon external to an area of interest affects what goes on inside."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Frank Goodchild</span> British-American geographer

Michael Frank Goodchild is a British-American geographer. He is an Emeritus Professor of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara. After nineteen years at the University of Western Ontario, including three years as chair, he moved to Santa Barbara in 1988, as part of the establishment of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis, which he directed for over 20 years. In 2008, he founded the UCSB Center for Spatial Studies.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Keith C. Clarke</span>

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References

  1. Abler, Ronald F. "The national science foundation national center for geographic information and analysis." International Journal of Geographical Information System 1.4 (1987): 303–326.
  2. Goodchild, Michael F., and David W. Rhind. "The US National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis: some comparisons with the Regional Research Laboratories." The Association for Geographic Information Yearbook (1990): 226–32.
  3. National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (1989) The research plan of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis. International Journal of Geographical Information Systems 3: 117–36. [109]
  4. Goodchild, Michael F. NCGIA Research Initiative 1: Accuracy of spatial databases. NCGIA (National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis), 1992.
  5. Goodchild, Michael F. "Accuracy of Spatial Databases—NCGIA Research Initiative 1, Closing Report." (1992).
  6. Mark, David M.; Frank, Andrew U. (August 1992). "Languages of Spatial Relations—NCGIA Research Initiative 2, Closing Report".
  7. "NCGIA Research Initiatives".
  8. National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis, International Journal of Geographical Information Systems, Vol. 6, Iss. 1, 1992
  9. Goodchild, M.F., and K.K. Kemp, eds. 1990. NCGIA Core Curriculum in GIS. National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis, University of California, Santa Barbara CA http://ibis.geog.ubc.ca/courses/klink/gis.notes/ncgia/toc.html