Geoscience Reference
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and computer science. Indeed, a social network theory diagram of the key participants in the history
of the disciplines in the last 60 years would produce a tight set of personal linkages. These links
would play out in joint publication, study, dissertation advising, sabbatical visits and other ways.
There are also more formal links, such as the establishment of GIS sections and conferences under
the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Association for Computing
Machinery (ACM).
In spite of this strong linkage, the pace of computing science is increasing rapidly. New develop-
ments in computer science, new theories and technological changes, will have profound impacts on
GC. As science becomes increasingly specialised, the environments and circumstances that force
cross-cutting and interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary study are increasingly rare. In spite of the
years of research, there remains a gap between cutting-edge research in computing and in GISci. In
our speculation on the future of GC, we assume that this gap will narrow or perhaps disappear. One
wonders what could be done today to make this a certainty for the future.
19.5 FUTURE OF GEOCOMPUTATION
Daniel Hudson Burnham, architect of New York's Flatiron Building and Washington's Union
Station, is known for having stated in 1921: 'Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir
men's blood and probably will not themselves be realized'. Using this logic, for the sake of dis-
cussing the future of GC, the target year of 2061, 50 years hence, will be chosen. Having been
raised on the wild future technology of the Jetsons, a cartoon which featured elaborate robotic
contraptions, aliens, holograms and whimsical inventions, and it being set in 2062, this seems
appropriate. At the risk of losing focus, the discussion will centre on six trends in computing and
their implications for GC. These are (1) data fusion, sometimes also called integration or interop-
erability, (2) mobility, (3) ubiquity, (4) the evolving GeoWeb, (5) interactive multimedia and (6)
biocomputation. In each case, the situation in 2011 will be used as a jumping-off point for some
ideas about 2061.
19.5.1 f
uture
f
uSion
Contemporary issues surrounding the theme of geospatial data fusion largely surround the long-
standing themes of formats, standards and data integration based on the GIS layer model. Major
remaining unsolved problems are how to remove the effects of data collection, such as image and
map tiling, how to integrate across scales and the role of standards. Current research is centred on
the role of open source software within GIS, reflecting movement away from proprietary turnkey
style software systems (Steiniger and Bocher, 2009); on the need to make data accessible and dis-
coverable, not just in searches but by search engines; and on the nature of data ownership, includ-
ing issues of privacy, secrecy, encryption and watermarking (Lopez, 2002). Key elements include
what is usually termed spatial data infrastructures, global or national, including clearing houses,
web portals, user-contributed or volunteered geographic databases and the GeoWeb (Giuliani et al.,
2011). The digital earth is probably the grandest vision for the future, a vision only partly realised
at present (Grossner and Clarke, 2007; Goodchild et al., 2012) (Figure 19.6). The early US lead in
creating the vision was passed up in 2001, only to be taken up in China.
Data fusion also means dealing with new and more available data sources, such as high-resolution
overhead and oblique imagery, lidar, webcams, sensor webs and autonomous vehicles (e.g. Elaksher,
2008; Conover et al., 2010; Bradley and Clarke, 2011). Also present and highly influential is the
NSF-driven vision of the cyberinfrastructure, widely known as grid computing. Current research
focuses on grid architectures for geospatial data handling and analysis systems, web services and
open standards, such as those of the Open Geospatial Consortium (Yang et al., 2010).
Reflecting on current trends that are likely to extend into the future, one trend has been the
cost of memory. Computer science teaches us that memory reflects a paradox of efficiency versus
