From: Deepsea Dawn Date: July 2, 2008 5:26:13 PM PDT To: ucgis Cc: Deepsea Dawn , gisci@lists.oregonstate.edu, forgis Subject: News from the 2008 UCGIS Summer Assembly Greetings colleagues, Below is a brief report on activities of the recent UCGIS Summer Assembly at Yellowstone National Park that you may find useful for forwarding to Chairs, Deans, administrators, and other members of OSU. Please note the URLs below which link to downloadable PPT or PDF files that you can use.... ------------------- News from the 2008 UCGIS Summer Assembly The Summer Assembly took place at the Hubert H. Humphrey Center for Public Policy on the campus of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. The meeting attracted delegates from member institutions from across the United States, representing academia, industry, and government to learn about, and participate in setting future directions for, cutting-edge GIScience research and education. http://ucgis.org/summer2008/ Dawn Wright of OSU Geosciences participated as lead delegate for OSU and chair of Research, and Daniel Lopez-Cevallos of OSU Public Health won a UCGIS student travel award to the meeting to present his research. See below from information and useful downloads about the.... - Research Plenaries - Education Plenaries - UCGIS Knowledge Web - UCGIS Workshops - Ethics Project - Ongoing Research Efforts - Awards ---------------------- Research Plenaries: The theme of the research component of the assembly was "Health and Population" and UCGIS was pleased to welcome three distinguished speakers to deliver plenary addresses: (1) Dr. Kurt Reed addressed the assembly on the topic "GIS and Emerging Infectious Diseases" Dr. Reed is Professor of Pathology and Director of Medical Microbiology at the Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University in Chicago and holds a medical degree from the University of Wisconsin Medical School and a Master of GIS from Penn State. (2) Dr. Ann Marie Kimball addressed the assembly on the topic "A Grand Challenge to Information Systems: Success in Infectious Disease Control in the Asia Pacific" (http://dusk.geo.orst.edu/UCGIS/kimball_UCGIS08.ppt , http://dusk.geo.orst.edu/UCGIS/kimball_video.mov ) Dr. Kimball is a professor in the University of Washington's School of Public Health and Community Medicine, and director of the Asia Pacific Economic Corporation (APEC) Emerging Infections Network (EINet), based also at the University of Washington. (http://depts.washington.edu/einet). She is also a medical doctor, having obtained her medical degree from the University of Washington, as well as her Master of Public Health. (3) Tom Gillaspy, the State Demographer of Minnesota, delivered a talk entitled "Demography and Space." More information about the activities of his agency can be found at http://www.demography.state.mn.us/ Common needs identified by the plenary speakers regarding GIScience included: ¥ Data needed at various scales, especially fine scale (e.g., high resolution soils data) Ð data often collected in different ways by different groups ¥ Privacy issues of data in the U.S. (very different from China where their CDC has collected data down to the household level and with first and last names) ¥ GIScientists are needed to engage with and work on projects with health teams ¥ Continued need for spatial analysis (algorithms and best practices). Spatial analysis is currently NOT a part of epidemiology training (e.g., difficulties with ecological fallacy). ¥ Temporal issues of the process itself and the resulting data (e.g., some infectious diseases, such as the E. coli outbreak from lettuce grown in Salinas Valley, spread immediately through trans-national travel. Disease may not break out at source but is immediately transmitted via trade and travel routes and knowing timescales is critical). Education Plenaries: The following education plenaries are available for download "Considering the UCGIS Role in Accreditation and Certification" http://dusk.geo.orst.edu/UCGIS/CertificationLicensure-UCGISSummerMtg2008.pdf *** OREGON is apparently the next state that will consider required licensing for GIS work *** "Teaching GIScience: A Computational Perspective" http://dusk.geo.orst.edu/UCGIS/Teaching_GIScience_UCGIS_2008_Armstrong.pdf UCGIS Knowledge Web: The Executive Committee of the UCGIS (President-Elect Tim Nyerges, President Bob McMaster, Past-President Sean Ahearn, and Executive Director Jack Sanders) introduced an important new initiative called the UCGIS Knowledge Web, a vision is to create a virtual environment for knowledge building, problem solving and intellectual discourse in the field of geographic information science and technology (GIS&T). The Knowledge Web aims to bring more synergy to the activities of the UCGIS, connecting research more effectively to education and to policy/legislation activities, while also providing a pathway toward a 2nd edition of the GIS&T Body of Knowledge, transforming the current BoK from a static book to a dynamic, web-bsed Wiki 2.0 environment. It is anticipated that the Knowledge Web will also be a portal to data sets, algorithms, curricula and other forms of digital information from all aspects of UCGIS activity in research, education, and policy. The Knowledge Web builds on earlier ideas to work with the Open Source Consortium, to build a Geospatial Security.net (GS.net), and is a cyberinfrastructure initiative following on the theme of the UCGIS Winter Assembly. Information about the Knowledge Web initiative presented at the assembly may be downloaded from http://dusk.geo.orst.edu/UCGIS/UCGIS_Knowledge_Web.pdf UCGIS Workshops: UCGIS continues its successful initiative in designing and offering workshops on cutting edge topics in GIScience. The Research Committee acknowledges the recent publication of two new books based on the 2006 UCGIS workshop to discuss next-generation computation and visualization models needed for the understanding of dynamics in geographic domains: - Yuan, M. and K. Stewart. 2007. Computation and Visualization for the Understanding of Dynamics in Geographic Domains: A Research Agenda. CRC/Taylor and Francis. http://dusk.geo.orst.edu/UCGIS/domains1.jpg - Stewart K. and M. Yuan (eds.). 2008. Understanding Dynamics in Geographic Domains. CRC/Taylor and Francis. http://dusk.geo.orst.edu/UCGIS/domains2.jpg Many thanks to May Yuan of the U. of Oklahoma, Kathleen Stewart of the U. of Iowa and the many authors who contributed to these efforts. Please consider adding these books to your university library or research lab collections. UCGIS will be sponsoring two workshops at the GIScience 2008 conference (http://www.giscience.org ) in Park City, Utah, September 23: (1) Temporal GIS: The Past 20 Years and the Next 20 Years, (http://www.giscience.org/inc/temporal%20gis%20workshop%20call%20for%20participation.pdf) which follows on from the work accomplished at the 2006 workshop and resulting books on "Computation and Visualization for the Understanding of Dynamics in Geographic Domains" and; (2) Cyberinfrastructure for GIScience, http://dusk.geo.orst.edu/gisci08.html , which will include development of concrete implementation plans for the UCGIS Knowledge Web. Ethics Project: Assembly delegates heard also about results thus far of the NSF-funded research project "Ethics Education for Future Geospatial Technology Professionals" which follows on from the UCGIS/World Universities Network Virtual Seminar on ethics for GIS professional held in 2005. Co-PIs David DiBiase of Penn State, Francis Harvey of the U. of Minnesota, Dawn Wright of Oregon State explained the project background and goals, presented several of the nine ethical case studies developed thus far for use in GIScience courses, and distributed case study handouts. Open educational resources are being designed and produced by the research team in consultation with a team of professional ethicists and GIS&T educators. Products are now available for download from http://gisprofessionalethics.org and many more will be forthcoming. DiBiase presentation: http://dusk.geo.orst.edu/UCGIS/UCGIS_ethics_panel_DiBiase_Sum08.pdf Wright presentation: http://dusk.geo.orst.edu/UCGIS/UCGIS_ethics_panel_djw_Sum08.pdf Harvey presentation: http://dusk.geo.orst.edu/UCGIS/UCGIS_ethics_panel_Harvey_Sum08.pdf Ongoing Research Efforts: The Research Committee looks forward to joining with the Policy and Legislation Committee on a transportation GIS focus for the UCGIS Winter Assembly, February 5-6, 2009, as Congress considers the re-authorization of a large transportation bill. Work will also continue on Digital Earth as a UCGIS grand challenge, an effort that could engage the participation of many, if not most, of the UCGIS member institutions. Further announcements will be posted to the UCGIS listserv. UCGIS Research Award: Dr. Mike Worboys of the Department of Spatial Information Engineering at the University of Maine is the recipient of the 2008 UCGIS Research Award for the tremendous impact of his pioneering work on object-oriented modeling for GIS. Please see the full award citation at http://dusk.geo.orst.edu/ucgis/research_award08.html . UCGIS Education Award: Mike Phoenix of ESRI is the recipient of the 2008 UCGIS Educator of the Year Award! ----------- Dawn Wright | Professor | Department of Geosciences Oregon State University | Corvallis, OR 97331-5506 http://dusk.geo.orst.edu | 541-737-1229 phone | 541-737-1200 fax