Continuous global time series of vegetation indices, which are available since early 1980s, are of great value to detect changes in vegetation status at large spatial scales. Most change detection methods, however, assume a fixed change trajectory – defined by the start and end of the time series – and a linear or monotonic trend. Here, we apply a change detection method which detects abrupt ch...

Several aspects of spatiotemporal databases have been explored in past decades, ranging from basic data structure to query processing and indexing. But today, operational temporal GIS does not exist. The key impediments have been the complexity of integrating space and time and the lack of standards. OpenGIS standards for simple feature access (spatial type) do exist, but unlike the spatial typ...

The concept of the GIS as a centralized enterprise asset rather than a cartographic tool is gaining acceptance. Enterprise GIS takes an organizational approach for sharing and managing spatial information. At Otay Water District, we are integrating the departmental projects and data into a centralized GIS. A series of interviews was conducted within the District to make sure the new GIS system ...

 Traditional GIS (Geographical Information System) data models are focused on the description of the data organizational structure and constraints from single aspect, which are the absence or little relevance of the hierarchy and connotation of data objects. These data models do not match the natural concept of humans about geographical spatial data and also failed to fully consider the spatia...

Usefulness of Geo-Information technology to address various issues on sustainable development has been well realized. However, the real applications of the technology are hindered due to lack of proper data sharing mechanisms, giving rise to lot of duplication of efforts. Many countries are working on developing National Spatial Data Infrastructures (NSDI) to look after various components neces...

In traditional database use it is often desirable to extract a particular “view” or subset of the data in order to work on a particular problem. After the work on the view is completed, the problem becomes how to replace this view, and the modifications made, back in the original main database. The same problem arises in the field of spatio-temporal data in a GIS, where not only do we have desi...

Infrastructures like transportation, power, and pipeline networks which are characterized by a spatial embedding are known as spatial networks. Spatial networks are ubiquitous in our everyday life and used in transport, navigation, and city planning as well as in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and other geo-spatial applications. The largely increasing amount of generated data about spat...

This paper discusses applications of a revolutionary information technology, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), in the field of the history of cartography by examples, including assessing accuracy of early maps, establishing a database of places and historical administrative units in history, integrating early maps in GIS or digital images, and analyzing social, political, and economic infor...

Africa is generally held to be in crisis, and the quality of life for the majority of the continent's inhabitants has been declining in both relative and absolute terms. In addition, the majority of the world's disease burden is realised in Africa. Geographical information systems (GIS) technology, therefore, is a tool of great inherent potential for health research and management in Africa. Th...

The field of GIS (S for Systems, Sciences, Services, and Studies) is at a cross-road in the early 2010s. Aiming to link the multiple visions for the next phase of GIS development, this article suggests that the emerging open GIS should serve as a guiding concept. Contextualized in the broader literature of open science, this article proposes open GIS should include eight dimensions related to d...