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/Spatial_Computing_Report-2013.pdf

What is the intersection between this report and CyberGIS?