Enhancing the Vision of CyberGIS
Michael F. Goodchild
University of California
Santa Barbara
Three years in
• How has our vision changed since the
proposal?
• What will be the next phase and how will it be
different?
• Are we measuring success appropriately?
Five areas
•
•
•
•
•
The problem set
Analysis and modeling
Broadening the base
The science of CyberGIS
Education
The story so far
• CyberGIS
– a subset of cyberinfrastructure
– specific to geospatial activities
• The components of CI:
– high-performance computing
• applied to geospatial analysis, modeling
• because such problems are often compute-intensive
– distributed, collaborative systems
• using geospatial data and tools
• strong emphasis on visualization
– community building
No shortage of large problems
• Global DEM at 30m resolution
– 5x1011 data elements
– computing intervisibility
• Longitudinal change in land cover at 1
hectare resolution
– 5x1010 data elements per time sample
– 20 visits per year (Landsat) for 40 years
• 4x1013 data elements
• Fixes of the entire US vehicle fleet every
second
Measuring success
• What new scientific discoveries could not
have been made without CyberGIS?
• What new problems could not have been
solved?
• What new decisions could not have been
made?
• What new predictions could not have been
made?
• …without x
– where x = GIS and t ~ 1990
Traditional approaches
• Divide and conquer
– familiar geospatial analyses can be partitioned
geographically
• intervisibility on 1 degree squares
– 107 data elements
• one Landsat scene at a time
– 107 data elements
• tracking of a subset of vehicles in one metropolitan area
– 107 data elements per second
• Over what set of problems does divide and
conquer work?
– and is that the complete set?
Elements of a vision (1)
• In the set of geospatial problems only some
are amenable to divide and conquer
• Because of our reliance on divide and
conquer we do not give such problems
serious consideration; we are not even able
to enumerate such problems
• CyberGIS invites us to rethink our problem
set; CyberGIS will be measured not by the
existing problems it solves but by the new
problems it makes solvable
What makes divide and conquer
acceptable?
• Short-distance social interactions
– geography’s distance decay
• Long-distance interactions are problematic
– and increasingly common in a virtual world
• A world partitioned into places
– cities as discrete objects vs population density as
a field
• Short-distance physical interactions
– versus long-distance air and water transport
The New Yorker, 12/10/01
http://gigaom.com/2010/12/14/facebook-draws-a-map-of-the-connected-world/
www.esquire.com July 21, 2008
The Butterfly Effect, Part 2*
How 9/11 pissed off the Saudi high
rollers, boosted Al Qaeda
recruitment ,and got us all to put
eggplant on our pizza.
Analysis and modeling
• CyberGIS as integrated functionality
– serving an interoperable data environment
• Interoperable data
– self-descriptive
• embedded metadata
– hiding details of implementation
• projection, datum
• alternative field representations
– user should engage only with those details that
affect the science
• uncertainty
Where are we now?
• Fragmented, Balkanized tools
• User must engage with a myriad details
– steep learning curve
• Models not interoperable
– not plug-and-play
– no common language
• Even in the limited domain of geospatial
analysis and modeling
• Must each effort to integrate result in another
alternative?
Elements of a vision (2)
• An environment for analysis and modeling
• Backed by powerful, distributed computation
• Hiding as many implementation details as
possible
– a new generation of the GIS user interface
– allowing the UI to focus on science
• The original but much neglected goal of GIS:
to integrate knowledge
– in a framework of space and time
Broadening the base
• Who are the users of CyberGIS?
– a subset of GIS experts?
• a subset of the “GIS community”
– the next generation of GIS experts?
• a redefined “GIS community”
– the next five million users of GIS?
– the average citizen?
• Business as usual?
– an inaccessible interface
– motivating only the technologically adventurous
• or those who have a genuine problem to solve?
Elements of a vision (3)
• A technology that is adopted because the
benefits of doing so outweigh the costs of
learning how
• A technology that reaches beyond the “GIS
community”
• A technology that has something to offer the
average citizen
The science of CyberGIS
• The principles of GIScience
–
–
–
–
spatial dependence
spatial heterogeneity
extended to spacetime
relative accuracy always better than absolute
accuracy
– a polyline representation of a curve is always
shorter than the curve
• But what additional principles?
– any geographical system can be modeled as a
set of semi-independent parallel systems
Partitioning a geographical system
• Into a set of semi-indepenent parallel
systems
• Should the partitioning be static or dynamic?
• Can there be a hierarchy of partitions?
• Can there be multiple overlapping partitions?
– social and environmental?
• Is partitioning the best approach?
– or fuzzy partitions?
– or proximity to nodes?
Elements of a vision (4)
• A new science of CyberGIS
– with a set of distinct principles
– foundations for teaching
– still true in 20 years
• independent of today’s technology
– CyberGIScience?
– a place in the academy
– compare GIS in 1990
• “GIS is just a tool”
• “non-intellectual expertise”
Education
• The field of CyberGIS is advancing rapidly
– what place does it deserve in the curriculum?
• Is it just a flash in the technological pan?
– or a truly new addition to scientific knowledge?
• How should we prepare students
– for a world of CyberGIS?
– for a world in which today’s hot new tools are
tomorrow’s cyberjunk?
Can education keep up?
• Higher education is the second-most
conservative industry known to humanity
– curriculum advance is slow
• and perhaps for good reason
Elements of a vision (5)
• The curriculum needs constant revision
– in a field advancing as rapidly as GIS/CyberGIS
• Textbooks on a 3 to 4 year cycle
– courses on a 1-year cycle
– BoK?
• What mechanisms will ensure a continuously
evolving curriculum?
– and how do we ensure that what is new is worth
teaching?
– textbooks, teaching materials, online resources,
MOOCs, …
Concluding points
• The vision of CyberGIS has advanced since
the original proposal
– and needs to advance continuously
• We need to think about the next phase
• Many other related activities are under way
– among industrial partners
– in the open-source community
• We continue to attract attention from the
HPC community
http://www.cra.org/ccc/files/docs/S
patial_Computing_Report2013.pdf
What is the intersection
between this report and
CyberGIS?