Preface to SeCoGIS 2009

Recent advances in information technologies have increased the production, collection, and diffusion of geographical data, thus favoring the design and development of geographic information systems (GIS). Nowadays, GIS are emerging as a common information infrastructure, which penetrate into more and more aspects of our society. This has given rise to new methodological and data engineering challenges in order to accommodate new users' requirements for new applications. Conceptual and semantic modeling are ideal candidates to contribute to the development of the next generation of GIS solutions. They allow to elicitate and capture user requirements as well as the semantics of a wide range of applications. The SeCoGIS workshop brings together researchers, developers, users, and practitioners carrying out research and development in geographic information systems. It aims at stimulate discussions on the integration of conceptual modeling and semantics into current geographic information systems, and how this will benefit end users. The workshop provides a forum for original research contributions and practical experiences of conceptual modeling and semantic web technologies for GIS, fostering interdisciplinary discussions in all aspects of these two fields, and highlights future trends in this area. The workshop is organized in a way to highly stimulate interaction amongst the participants. The co-location with the Entity-Relationship Conference allows cross-fertilization and mutual interactions between the ER and GIS research communities. The call for papers attracted 18 papers, which were submitted by authors from 12 countries and 3 continents, clearly illustrating the international nature of the domain. The program committee, consisting of 42 researchers, conducted three to four reviews of each paper and selected 6 papers for presentation and discussion at the workshop. The workshop was organised in two sessions of 3 papers each, devoted, respectively, to foundational issues and semantical issues. Additionally, Stefano Spaccapietra, from EPFL, Switzerland, presented a keynote talk concerning practical and theoretical issues on trajectories. Many people helped in putting together this workshop. First of all the Steering Committee was in charge of the initial conception and reality of the workshop. The Program Committee carefully reviewed the papers under a very tight schedule. We thank Philippe Rigaux for providing the MyReview program, used during the reviewing process. We hope that you find the program and presentations beneficial and enjoyable and that during the workshop you had many opportunities to meet colleagues and practitioners.