Li, Deren

Wuhan University

Title: On New Era of Geo-information

Prof. Dr.-Ing Li Deren, scientist in photogrammetry and remote sensing, dual membership of both the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, member of the Euro-Asia International Academy of Sciences，Professor and PhD supervisor of Wuhan University, Vice-President of the Chinese Society of Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography, Chairman of the academic commission of Wuhan University and the National Laboratory for Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing (LIESMARS). He has concentrated on the research and education in spatial information science and technology represented by remote sensing (RS), global positioning system (GPS) and geographic information system(GIS). His majors are the analytic and digital photogrammetry, geometric remote sensing, mathematical morphology and its application in spatial databases, theories of object-oriented GIS and grid GIS as well as mobile mapping systems and its applications, etc.

Prof. Deren Li served as Comm. III and Comm. VI president of ISPRS in 1988-1992 and 1992-1996, worked for CEOS in 2002-2004 and president of Asia GIS Association in 2003-2006. He got Dr.h.c. from ETH in 2008.

Anselin, Luc

Arizona State University

Title:GeoDa and Beyond: Towards Cyberinfrastructure for Spatial Data Analysis

This paper outlines the evolution of software tools for the analysis of spatial data, with particular emphasis on GeoDa, its antecedents (such as SpaceStat) and successors. This includes an overview of open source tools included in the PySAL library and their evolution towards a collection of spatial analytical web services. These web services provide the foundation for a cyberinfrastructure for spatial data analysis. Several conceptual and practical issues related to the development of this cyberinfrastructure are considered.

Stein, Alfred

Twente University, Faculty of Geoinformation Science and Earth Observation (ITC), Hengelosestraat 99, 7514 AE Enschede.

Title: The use of machine learning procedures in image mining.

Recently, issues of machine learning have received attention in image mining. In this presentation, an overview will be provided of the role that some of those procedures can play.. The presentation will consider some topics that are important in the image mining domain and will be illustrated by several examples and illustrations. We first illustrate the implementation and application of a boosting approach in an object oriented classification of land cover for vegetation cover in a nature reserve in Ghana. Second, Bayesian networks are applied in combination with carbon sequestration models, where model output of the leaf area index can be improved by using remote sensing images. Next, we show how the graph cut algorithms can be used in different settings to classify remote sensing images in remote areas. Finally, we show how procedures based on Gestalt theory are able to detect edges in remote sensing images. Different parameters have an effect on the classification results. In an image mining context, therefore, machine learning tools can play an important role. All these methods provide (semi-) automatic tools that allow answering basic and fundamental questions posed to obtain relevant information from remotely sensed images. In addition, they provide information on the quality of the output that can in turn be used to communicate uncertainty aspects to end users.

Alfred Stein received the MSc degree in mathematics and information science, with a specialization in applied statistics from Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, and the PhD degree in agricultural and environmental sciences from Wageningen University, The Netherlands. He is currently a Professor of Mathematical and Statistical Methods for Geodata at the University of Twente, at the faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), Enschede, The Netherlands, where he heads the department of Earth Observation Science. He is also honorary professor at the Chinese Academy for Surveying and Mapping and chief editor of the International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation. His main interest is in spatial statistics and data mining, including spatial data quality. Applications emerge from a range of health, agricultural, social and environmental fields.

Shahabi, Cyrus

University of Southern California

Title: TransDec: A Data-Driven Framework for Decision-Making in Transportation SystemsTrans

The vast amounts of transportation datasets (traffic flow, incidents, etc.) collected by various federal and state agencies are extremely valuable in 1) real-time decision-making, planning, and management of the transportation systems, and 2) conducting research to develop new policies to enhance the efficacy of the transportation systems. In this talk, I will present our data-driven framework, dubbed TransDec (short for Transportation Decision-Making), which enables real-time integration, visualization, querying, and analysis of dynamic and archived transportation data. I will show that considering the large size of the transportation data, variety of the data (different modalities and resolutions), and frequent changes of the data, implementation of such a scalable system that allows for effective querying and analysis of both archived and real-time data is an intrinsically challenging data management task. Subsequently, I will focus on a route-planning problem where the weights on the road-network edges vary as a function of time due to the variability of traffic congestion. I will show that naïve approaches to address this problem are either inaccurate or slow, motivating the need for new solutions. Consequently, I will discuss our initial approach to this problem and demonstrate its implementation within the TransDec framework.

Bio of Prof. Cyrus Shahabi

Cyrus Shahabi is currently a Professor and the Director of the Information Laboratory (InfoLAB) at the Computer Science Department and also the Director of the NSF's Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC) at the University of Southern California. He is also the CTO and co-founder of a USC spin-off, Geosemble Technologies. He received his B.S. in Computer Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in 1989 and then his M.S. and Ph.D. Degrees in Computer Science from the University of Southern California in May 1993 and August 1996, respectively. He has two books and more than hundred research papers in the areas of databases, GIS and multimedia. Dr. Shahabi has received funding from several agencies such as NSF, NASA, NIH, DARPA, AFRL, and DHS as well as several industries such as Google, Microsoft, NCR and Chevron. He is currently on the editorial board of VLDB Journal, IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS), ACM Computers in Entertainment and Journal of Spatial Information Science. He is the founding chair of IEEE NetDB workshop and also the general co-chair of ACM GIS 2007, 2008 and 2009. He regularly serves on the program committee of major conferences such as VLDB, ACM SIGMOD, IEEE ICDE, ACM SIGKDD, and ACM Multimedia. Dr. Shahabi is the recipient of NSF CAREER award as well as the U.S. Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). He is a distinguished member of ACM and a senior member of IEEE.

Tao, Chuang (Vincent)

Strategic Advisor, Microsoft Virtual Earth; CEO, PPLive Corporation Adjunct Professor, York University

Title: Mapping for the Masses

Mapping has long been regarded as a specialized engineering profession, it now becomes a tool for consumers. From on-line mapping to virtual worlds, from location based services to local search, mapping are vastly weaved into many web applications. This wave was primarily driven by many developers, entrepreneurs and giant players like Microsoft and Google. This presentation will address the evolution of mapping technology for the masses, the interesting competition stories between Google and Microsoft, the impressive innovations developed in the past few years. The speaker will showcase some of real-world demonstrations, some of which are still under the lab experiments.

Bio: Dr. Chuang Vincent Tao, Ph.D.

Dr. Tao, who founded Microsoft Virtual Earth, is serving as Microsoft Strategic Advisor. At Microsoft Virtual Earth, Dr Tao was responsible for the strategy development in product, technology and business. He was instrumental to establishing Microsoft Virtual Earth business world-wide and contributing significantly to the Virtual Earth vision and innovations. Prior to joining Microsoft, Dr. Tao held the Canada Research Chair Professor position in Geospatial Information Technology at York University, Toronto. He is also the founder and President of GeoTango Corporation, acquired by Microsoft in 2005. Tao has pioneered the 3-D Globe visualization technology, GlobeView, and the unique 3-D modeling technology, SilverEye, using single imagery. Both systems are commercially used by U.N. agencies, governments and private enterprises. Dr Tao has published over 200 technical papers and was honored with numerous awards for his contributions in the geospatial community. Dr Tao still serves many functions in academia and industry. Currently Dr Tao is CEO of PPLive, the largest online TV site in China, with nearly 200 million user installation base.

Wang, Fahui

Fred B. Kniffen Professor, Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University

Title: GIS-Based Analysis of Accessibility: Measurement, Optimization and Impacts

Various accessibility indices have been developed in the literature to assess the relative ease by which the locations of services (supply) can be reached from a residential (demand) location. These measures need to be refined and integrated into one framework to capture actual supply-demand interactions, and to be automated in a users-friendly GIS environment for wide adoption. Optimization methods are called for to identify adjustments needed for maximizing access equality, and thus provide valuable guidance for public policy towards a more equitable service delivery system. Several case studies are used to illustrate the impacts of inequality in: unequal access to job market and crime patterns, disparity in healthcare access and health indicator, etc. The emphasis of the talk will be placed on methodological advancements and implications in public policy.

Fahui Wang is the Fred B. Kniffen Professor at the Department of Geography and Anthropology and Director of Chinese Culture and Commerce Program, Louisiana State University. He earned his B.S. in geography from Peking University, China, and his M.A. in economics and PhD in city and regional planning, both from the Ohio State University. His studies cover the spatial and economic structure of systems of cities; urban and regional development in developing countries; job access, commuting and disadvantaged population groups; crime patterns; health care access, health policy and cancer. His research methods include GIS, spatial statistics, and computational methods. His work has been supported by several federal grant agencies including the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the National Cancer Institute, and the National Science Foundation. He has published over 50 refereed articles in journals across various disciplines such as geography (e.g., Annals of AAG, Annals of GIS, Applied Geography, Professional Geographer, Urban Geography, Geographic Information Sciences, GeoJournal, J Transport Geography), planning (Environment and Planning A & B, Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Planning Practice and Research), criminology (J Quantitative Criminology), health (Cancer, Health & Place, J Medical Systems, Medical Care), and interdisciplinary (e.g., European J Operational Research, Int J of Public Policy, Urban Studies, Papers in Regional Science, Regional Science & Urban Economics, Transportation Research A). He is the editor of Geographic Information Systems and Crime Analysis (IDEA Group Publishers, 2005) and the author of Quantitative Methods and Applications in GIS (Taylor & Francis, 2006; Commercial Press in Chinese, 2009). He has been a member of both NIH and NIJ review panels, and on the editorial board of several journals (AAG Annals, International Journal of Applied Geospatial Research, Annals of GIS, and Chinese Geographical Science). He was the president of CPGIS (2001-2002).

Thill, Jean-Claude

University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Knight Distinguished Professor, Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA

Title:Clustering tendencies in flow data

Spatial analysis has a long tradition of analysis of point and areal data, whether in an exploratory or confirmatory mode. Less well developed is the analysis of multi-event entities that are in some fashion linked through space and sometime through time. Various spatial interaction situations fall in this category, for which confirmatory models have been developed, but exploratory data analysis methods compatible with such vector or flow data remain scant. The paper will discuss the specificities of these data, as well as the challenge their present for exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) aimed at detection spatial associations. Several approaches to global and local analysis of (spatial) association of vector data are presented and illustrated in this presentation. The relative merit of the various clustering tendencies techniques is assessed and future research directions are outlined.

Jean-Claude Thill holds a M.Sc. in Spatial Planning from the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium, and a Doctorate in Geography from the same institution. He is the Knight Distinguished Professor of Public Policy in the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Professor Thill’s research focuses on the spatial dimensions of socio-economic organizations, particularly the interfacing between transportation and mobility systems, and urban land use, urban forms and functions. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, Associate Editor of Geographical Analysis, and GIScience Area Editor of Networks and Spatial Economics. He has served as Executive Director of the North American Regional Science Council, a branch of the Regional Science Association International, since 2005. He is on the editorial of a number of regional, national, and international journals in the fields of geography, GIScience, regional science, and spatial planning.

Zhou, Chenghu

Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, CAS