2008 Summer Institute Programme overview

 

Week 1 Vespucci Institute. “THE GEO-SENSOR WEB”


Leaders include Dr. Mike Botts (OGC Sensor specification editor), Dr. Alexandre Robin (SPOT Image), Dr. Gilberto Camara (director Brazil Space Agency-INPE), Dr. Antonio Camara (Ydreams.com)

 

Geospatial information increasingly is being produced not only by central mapping agencies but by diverse and dispersed collections of sensors. Europe’s Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) programme aims at the integration of data from spaceborne sensors, other aerial sensors (such as Lidar), and in situ sensors on or near the ground. Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and other organisations have defined languages for describing sensors, interfaces for connecting to sensors, and software frameworks to support the so-called geo-sensor web. Humans themselves have become sensor platforms, as they walk the streets photographing, geocoding and uploading volunteered geographic information (VGI) to myriad mashup web sites.

How does this new data collection and dissemination paradigm affect the geospatial community, and vice versa? Attendees to week 1 should already have opinions on these topics, and be prepared to further develop, and to debate them. They will be guided (not lectured to) by some of the maximum experts in the field of geo-sensors. Attendees may come from private sector start-ups, looking to hone the business plan; from academia, looking to solidify their research agenda for the coming decade; researchers or decision-makers from the public sector, planning for the provision of public e-services, or from fields and background that we have not even considered.

Preliminary programme (the kind of questions will we ask ourselves):

  • Sensor Web and citizen participatioon: what happens when citizens are able to deploy and exploit their own sensors?
  • Sensor Web and Micro-Geography: what about indoor location and sensing applications?
  • The drivers, visions, and implementations of OGC SWE. What's right about them, what's wrong, what can be improved?
  •  If the Sensor Web becomes as ubiquitous and successful (within its realm of influence) as the WWW, in what ways might it change the way we do things? What areas of high-inertia might be reduced? What as-of-yet unforeseen applications might emerge?
  • Which are the big application areas for geo-sensor web?
  • military, defense, intelligence
  • crime and law enforcement
  • weather & the environment
  • disaster management
  • SCADA (facilities management)
  •  factories
  • transportation
  • households and everyday stuff for the everyday man
  • construction
  • remote exploration
  • robotics
  • commercial and marketing
  • cell phone and portable devices
  • porn and questionable applications
  • How should the Sensor Web move into the Semantic Web?  What ways might a semantic Sensor Web change the way we do things?
  • What ethical challenges might we face, if and when the Sensor Web becomes successful and ubiquitous? Is it our job as information technicians to care? If we care, what can we do about it?
  • What tools are needed to make Sensor Web reality and simple? What "killer applications" could trigger an explosive success like the WWW?
  • How will cell phones and mobile devices and the Sensor Web play together? What specific applications and changes might result from that interaction?

Vespucci Specialist Meeting (invitation only):

“Virtual globes: A Challenge for GI Science, or Game-Over?”

Earth Observation (EO) specialists, cartographic authorities, Earth scientists, GIS specialists, and many others have spent considerable time and effort building and using tools to help conduct science and support policy making on matters related to our common focus: the Earth. Can the sum of all this good work perhaps be put to even better use, by focusing it on the concept of Virtual Globes?

A small group of senior specialists from all areas of geosciences and technology will gather on June 15-16, to debate the need for a confluence of effort from all related fields of interest, in the creation and exploitation of Virtual Globes, also called geobrowsers, as a means to facilitate global science and problem-solving. Google Earth, Microsoft’s Virtual Earth and other geobrowsers have revolutionised the way in which ordinary people (and scientists) view their world, and attach their volunteered data to it. But is that all? Has the Digital Earth vision proposed by Al Gore a decade ago been implemented? Game over? What, if any, are the new challenges ahead for the GI Science field? How do GEOSS, INSPIRE, GMES, Digital Earth, and the myriad commercial applications fit into the puzzle?

This Specialist Meeting will produce a publication outlining the key opinions and decisions from the expert participants. It will also directly feed into the following Vespucci Summer Institute session (see below).

 
 

 

Week 2 Vespucci Institute: “GI Science supporting Virtual Globes”


Join some of the specialists from the previous meeting, including Mike Goodchild (University California Santa Barbara), Ed Parsons (Google), Gilberto Camara (Brazil Space Agency-INPE) and the other Vespucci facilitators, in the search for answers (and questions) on how GI Science can contribute to making geobrowsers even more powerful as a tool for bringing together and integrating the ideas coming from citizen scientist and professional scientist alike. What lies ahead in our desire to move from map-based to solid-Earth-based analysis? How will ordinary people contribute? How will businesses make money exploiting and supporting Virtual Globes?

In the Specialist Meeting experts will declare needs, goals, constraints, etc. Now, what will the young (and not so young) turks do about it? Attendees will openly debate the possibilities, and will work in small groups in a competitive manner, to propose concrete projects, collaborations, even paradigm shifts.

Preliminary programme (the type of questions we will ask ourselves):

  • Applications of virtual globes: what are the use cases for this kind of technology? what kind of analysis and modeling do or should they enable? what is new or unique when compared to traditional GIS?

  • Social implications: how do virtual globes change societies ways of dealing with GI? and with geospatial questions? what issues need legal measures? how does the economics of GI change? do we witness a democratization of GI and even of policy-making?
  •  Technical implications: what do virtual globes mean for GIS? what user interface challenges do they pose or solve? how do they change data and interoperability issues? Looking back at the use cases and social implications, what technology needs do they suggest?

The first three days will be devoted to one of these sets of questions each, with presentations and debates in the morning, and group work preparing specific actions in the afternoons (propose a project, set up an experiment, define a technology or science challenge).

The final day will be spent on presenting and discussing the group work results in depth and with a closing panel on where GIScience might go with virtual globes.