- Email: [email protected]
EM)
Journal of Environmental Management (2000) 59, 229–233 doi:10.1006/jema.2000.0375, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on
Integrating geographic information systems (GIS) and environmental models Selected Papers from the 4th International Conference (GIS/EM4) Guest Editors: Keith Clarke, Bradley Parks and Michael Crane
Preface: A perspective on GIS-environmental model integration (GIS/EM) Introduction This special issue of the Journal of Environmental Management forms a part of the permanent record of the 4th International Conference on Integrating Geographic Information Systems and Environmental Modeling (GIS/EM4) held in Banff, Canada in September, 2000. This meeting is the latest among several periodic conferences that focus not solely on specific methods of modeling and spatio-temporal analysis, but on the integration of these methods and the resulting benefits of interdisciplinary ‘cross-fertilization’ to those that use them for integrated science. Interested participants at these meetings come from the GIS and environmental modeling communities (GIS/EM), from the natural and social sciences, from management and policy-making ranks, and from wherever spatial modeling has promise or impact. With the fourth international meeting, particular effort has been made to reach out to those scientists willing to bridge the social and natural/physical sciences. Such cross-disciplinary integration is essential if 0301–4797/00/080229C05 $35.00/0
we are to come to grips with the complexity of contemporary environmental problems (global climate change, human impacts on environment, intergenerational equity, and mitigation of environmental hazards, to name but a few) using the substantial powers of computation for data analysis, process simulation, and decision aide. Enough has been accomplished after 10 years of progress, and enough remains to be done, to warrant our adoption of the acronym GIS/EM to refer collectively to the needs, ideas, and challenges described below.
Origin and evolution of GIS/EM The origin of GIS/EM lies in the dual recognition of environmental problems with compelling spatial properties, but also with a complexity that cannot be adequately explored through interrogation and recombination of geographic data alone. Problems involving higher degrees of uncertainty, self-modifying systems, potential or future states, and multiple outcomes are not tractable using only 2000 Academic Press
230
K. Clarke et al.
data reduction and analysis techniques, even if they are robust ones. Greater analytic and synthetic depth was needed to provide anticipatory scientific assessments and to build and test theory in new scientific sub-fields like landscape ecology, adaptive management, biological systems behavior, and others. By the late 1980s GIS technologies had become reliable and models of environmental processes had become plentiful. Computing technology suitable to support these tools had become small and affordable. But these spatial and predictive tools themselves were often not compatible or even sympathetic with one another much less with other kinds of scientific tools. Opportunities for integration needed to be examined that would consider all phases in the process of model conception, construction, and use and that process needed to engage equally fresh and fundamental thinking about the assumptions that guide or confound thinking about spatial and temporal relations. This motive for these meetings was formed by Researchers in Landscape Ecology, Pest Management, Forestry, Resources Development and tributary pursuits at Michigan State University and it was later realized through (expansion of) US government efforts to implement scientific capabilities at research and management facilities, incorporating GIS-based competencies. Initial needs to be met by a goal-oriented scientific conference were identified by Parks (1993) for what was too have been a one-time event and they remain the central, but evolving thread for those conferences that have followed in response to continuing demand. Better integration of GIS and other useful technologies with quantitative modeling methods and tools has been determined to be critical to improve environmental problem solving (Parks, 1993).
A decade of progress (GIS/EM1,2,3) The first meeting was formulated just over a decade ago by a team of research scientists then affiliated with the US Environmental Protection Agency and the US Geological Survey. That team established an independent,
multi-disciplinary, and multi-agency consortium lead by leading scientists with a collaborative link to the then newly formed National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA-an NSF research center). This consortium funded and convened a conference/workshop in Boulder, CO in 1991 that exceeded expectations by attracting nearly twice the anticipated number of participating scientists. The resulting book of invited and contributed papers formulated the first agenda for research in this area (Goodchild et al., 1993) and became a cornerstone publication used widely by academia in advanced spatial analysis and modeling courses. A second meeting was organized nearly 3 years later at the request of many scientists who endorsed its integrative approach, and who strongly expressed continuing need for such a focal meeting. It was planned carefully to innovate and to sustain leadership; preconditions carried forward from the first meeting. Convened in Breckenridge, CO in 1993, the second International meeting was characterized by both greater depth and breadth and by a limited but explicit inclusion of human dimensions of environmental change (Goodchild et al., 1996a,b). The first organized evidence of GIS/EM expressed in a peer-reviewed journal came after Breckenridge in a special issue of the International Journal of Geographical Information Systems composed of papers selected competitively from the second meeting (Wilson, 1995). A subsequent, third international conference/workshop was convened by a still broader consortium of scientists, scientific agencies, and technology partners. This consortium retained continuity under the leadership of a core group of scientists who designed and convened the meeting jointly with NCGIA. This meeting was held in Santa Fe, NM in January 1996 and was strongly influenced by the Santa Fe Institute in areas such as individual-based modeling and evolutionary computing. Special sessions on land use and anthropology modeling were also incorporated in the first extensive inclusion of human dimensions within the domain of GIS/EM. Because each was conceived as if it would be the last, the first three conferences stood alone, responded to demand, and were not distinguished by order. In this sense, there was no GIS/EM1, 2 or 3.
Preface
Impacts of GIS/EM Involvement in the first three GIS/EM conferences exceeded 1700 persons. Some of the impacts felt from these meetings include: establishing ‘other-disciplinary’ awareness and idea exchange, creating sustainable cross-disciplinary networks of cooperation, triggering secondary meetings and follow-up symposia on issues like hydrological modeling and land-use change, revitalizing work in under-appreciated fields such as land-use modeling, stimulating tool development and entrepreneurial partnerships with commercial entities, encouraging modeling curricula and course work in programs not previously attuned, and provoking an echo of modeling emphases within GIS-aware professional societies. Papers from the first two meetings were published as edited books. But the third conference employed the internet in conjunction with Compact Disc (CD) publishing (Goodchild et al., 1996a,b). CD media offered reduced production time between conference and publication and the web gave broader distribution of information and easier access prior to and after the conference (http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu). Each of these publishing options are being used to different advantage for the Banff meeting, with the purpose of leaving both a more effective permanent record and a persistent digital infrastructure for the next decade of research collaboration.
GIS/EM4 The purpose of the Fourth International meeting at Banff, like its predecessors, is to provide a scientific and technical forum for improving spatio-temporal predictive modeling of processes, events, and phenomena for environmental problem solving. But new to our approach, a revised meeting structure, an emphasis on human dimensions of global change; systematic and analytic treatment of constituent GIS/EM themes; coverage of the next generation data types of the EOS era, and an extended commitment to disseminating findings to a broader audience, including advanced university students around the world. The specific changes planned for Banff include better representation of human
dimensions, stronger treatment of major research and development themes, direct involvement of other communities of modelers, expanded consideration of diverse data issues and an greater involvement and interaction among participants. Improved capture and dissemination of GIS/EM4 conference findings will enhance predictive methods and techniques including process, simulation, stochastic, numerical and other quantitative models for environmental problem solving and will improve our understanding of integrative approaches to their use. GIS/EM4 involved approximately 500 scientists and technologists in two parallel and interrelated program tracks, one a continuing forum for discussion of progress, applications, and methods by the whole research community, the other with more specialized intent-to-derive an agenda for future research. Components of both of these tracks are represented in the papers of this issue. Oversight of this special issue has been by a core group represented by the editors, and a broader group drawn from international scholars and experts in the field. We feel that the themes of GIS/EM4 are well represented by the research contributions presented here.
GIS/EM information and education Since their origin in 1991, these conferences have drawn very strong interest and have had significant influence on thought and practice in many contributing fields. The first three conferences produced two major books, a GIS journal special issue, and compact disc and web-based proceedings. The panel-reviewed research papers contained in those publications are cited often but science exhorts us to ensure a legacy of ‘tested’ work, in part, through the rigor of the peerreview process. As a result, instead of inviting papers for this special issue, the 450 abstracts submitted for the meeting were analyzed and a small number of their authors were competitively selected and invited to submit extended papers for peer review by Journal of Environmental Management standards. Papers were evaluated in blind review by the Science Advisory Committee for the Banff meeting, with assistance from other
231
232
K. Clarke et al.
reviewers selected by the editors. Peer review and editing was conducted according to a demanding schedule, for the reviewers and the authors, and especially for the editors. We thank all who contributed to the result which we feel is both an enduring statement of the scientific pursuits of the GIS/EM meetings, and a demonstration of the high level of commitment and support by its authors. Close and careful timing has allowed the papers to be available at the conference, and to provoke discussion about the needs and priorities that these meetings seek to identify. Three other publishing efforts will complement the papers presented in this issue of the Journal of Environmental Management. A companion special issue has been targeted at the Geographic Information Sciences, via the journal Transactions in Geographic Information Systems. In addition, the conference proceedings is being published in compact disc/web book format and contains the nearly 300 papers and abstracts written for its paper sessions, workshops, and other venues. The proceedings are also backed by a web publishing enterprise via the conference’s web site at http://www.colorado.edu/research/cires/ banff. Unique among these publications, however, will be a new book Geographic Information Systems and Environmental Modeling, hopefully to become available shortly after the meeting and before the end of 2000. Organized by key GIS/EM research themes, it is written collectively by members of the Scientific Advisory group and other invited authors. Among these publishing ventures, it is expected that the publication of Geographic Information Systems and Environmental Modeling will best advance the strong educational goals of the meeting, as are evidenced by the high degree and quality of student participation at Banff. The creation of a graduate student competition for NSFfunded fellowships to encourage student participation at Banff, and the presence of one such student fellow among the authors of this special issue, both underscore the importance of teaching in GIS/EM-relevant fields, especially graduate programs in ecology, resources management, geography, and others concerned with the environmental
sciences. However, the necessity of crossdisciplinary working, thinking and teaching, while it is accepted and expected by GIS/EM participants, remains a priority that is hard to defend to universities already formally structured by disciplines and to funding agencies that lack mechanisms for cross-discipline evaluations and rewards. The reduction and elimination of these barriers is close to the heart of the GIS/EM agenda.
The future of GIS/EM Will there be, at some point in the future, a GIS/EM5, or a GIS/EM20? We expect the former, but not the latter. Successful elimination of most barriers to model-GIS integration is likely to be achieved before the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. For now, GIS continues to serve both as an important tool set and an integrating technological framework, and themes of interoperability and interchangeability continue to pervade thinking about GIS, models, and common frameworks. But improved tools in better frameworks will languish and perhaps be malformed or misapplied without the conscious and creative involvement of those whose task it is to apply the methods and products of modeling. For this reason, the Journal of Environmental Management provides an excellent means to reinforce research to strengthen the already close links between GIS and environmental models and to demonstrate that computational modeling is very much the inexpensive and safe alternative for discovering and evaluating environmental management options and futures.
References Goodchild, M. F., Parks, B. O. and Steyaert, L. T. (eds) (1993). Environmental Modeling with GIS. Compiled papers and proceedings of the 1st International Conference/Workshop on Integrating GIS and Environmental Modeling. New York: Oxford University Press. Goodchild, M. F., Parks, B. O., Steyaert, L. T. et al. (eds) (1996a). The Third International Conference/Workshop on Integrating GIS and Environmental Modeling. Santa Fe, NM. January 21–26, 1996. National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis. University of California, Santa Barbara. CD. (http://www. ncgia.ucsb.edu/conf/SANTA FE CD-ROM/main. html).
Preface Goodchild, M. F., Steyaert, L. T. and Parks, B. O. (eds) (1996b). Environmental Modeling with GIS. Compiled papers and proceedings of the 2nd International Conference/Workshop on Integrating GIS and Environmental Modeling. Fort Collins, CO: GIS World Books. Parks, B. O. (1993). The need for integration. Environmental Modeling with GIS. Compiled
papers and proceedings of the 1st International Conference/Workshop on Integrating GIS and Environmental Modeling (M. F. Goodchild, B. O. Parks and L. T. Steyaert, eds). New York: Oxford University Press. Wilson, J. P. (ed.) (1995). Special issue: integrating GIS and environmental modeling. International Journal of Geographical Information Systems 9.
233
Integrating geographic information systems (GIS) and environmental models Selected Papers from the 4th International Conference (GIS/EM4) Guest Editors: Keith Clarke, Bradley Parks and Michael Crane
Preface: A perspective on GIS-environmental model integration (GIS/EM) Introduction This special issue of the Journal of Environmental Management forms a part of the permanent record of the 4th International Conference on Integrating Geographic Information Systems and Environmental Modeling (GIS/EM4) held in Banff, Canada in September, 2000. This meeting is the latest among several periodic conferences that focus not solely on specific methods of modeling and spatio-temporal analysis, but on the integration of these methods and the resulting benefits of interdisciplinary ‘cross-fertilization’ to those that use them for integrated science. Interested participants at these meetings come from the GIS and environmental modeling communities (GIS/EM), from the natural and social sciences, from management and policy-making ranks, and from wherever spatial modeling has promise or impact. With the fourth international meeting, particular effort has been made to reach out to those scientists willing to bridge the social and natural/physical sciences. Such cross-disciplinary integration is essential if 0301–4797/00/080229C05 $35.00/0
we are to come to grips with the complexity of contemporary environmental problems (global climate change, human impacts on environment, intergenerational equity, and mitigation of environmental hazards, to name but a few) using the substantial powers of computation for data analysis, process simulation, and decision aide. Enough has been accomplished after 10 years of progress, and enough remains to be done, to warrant our adoption of the acronym GIS/EM to refer collectively to the needs, ideas, and challenges described below.
Origin and evolution of GIS/EM The origin of GIS/EM lies in the dual recognition of environmental problems with compelling spatial properties, but also with a complexity that cannot be adequately explored through interrogation and recombination of geographic data alone. Problems involving higher degrees of uncertainty, self-modifying systems, potential or future states, and multiple outcomes are not tractable using only 2000 Academic Press
230
K. Clarke et al.
data reduction and analysis techniques, even if they are robust ones. Greater analytic and synthetic depth was needed to provide anticipatory scientific assessments and to build and test theory in new scientific sub-fields like landscape ecology, adaptive management, biological systems behavior, and others. By the late 1980s GIS technologies had become reliable and models of environmental processes had become plentiful. Computing technology suitable to support these tools had become small and affordable. But these spatial and predictive tools themselves were often not compatible or even sympathetic with one another much less with other kinds of scientific tools. Opportunities for integration needed to be examined that would consider all phases in the process of model conception, construction, and use and that process needed to engage equally fresh and fundamental thinking about the assumptions that guide or confound thinking about spatial and temporal relations. This motive for these meetings was formed by Researchers in Landscape Ecology, Pest Management, Forestry, Resources Development and tributary pursuits at Michigan State University and it was later realized through (expansion of) US government efforts to implement scientific capabilities at research and management facilities, incorporating GIS-based competencies. Initial needs to be met by a goal-oriented scientific conference were identified by Parks (1993) for what was too have been a one-time event and they remain the central, but evolving thread for those conferences that have followed in response to continuing demand. Better integration of GIS and other useful technologies with quantitative modeling methods and tools has been determined to be critical to improve environmental problem solving (Parks, 1993).
A decade of progress (GIS/EM1,2,3) The first meeting was formulated just over a decade ago by a team of research scientists then affiliated with the US Environmental Protection Agency and the US Geological Survey. That team established an independent,
multi-disciplinary, and multi-agency consortium lead by leading scientists with a collaborative link to the then newly formed National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA-an NSF research center). This consortium funded and convened a conference/workshop in Boulder, CO in 1991 that exceeded expectations by attracting nearly twice the anticipated number of participating scientists. The resulting book of invited and contributed papers formulated the first agenda for research in this area (Goodchild et al., 1993) and became a cornerstone publication used widely by academia in advanced spatial analysis and modeling courses. A second meeting was organized nearly 3 years later at the request of many scientists who endorsed its integrative approach, and who strongly expressed continuing need for such a focal meeting. It was planned carefully to innovate and to sustain leadership; preconditions carried forward from the first meeting. Convened in Breckenridge, CO in 1993, the second International meeting was characterized by both greater depth and breadth and by a limited but explicit inclusion of human dimensions of environmental change (Goodchild et al., 1996a,b). The first organized evidence of GIS/EM expressed in a peer-reviewed journal came after Breckenridge in a special issue of the International Journal of Geographical Information Systems composed of papers selected competitively from the second meeting (Wilson, 1995). A subsequent, third international conference/workshop was convened by a still broader consortium of scientists, scientific agencies, and technology partners. This consortium retained continuity under the leadership of a core group of scientists who designed and convened the meeting jointly with NCGIA. This meeting was held in Santa Fe, NM in January 1996 and was strongly influenced by the Santa Fe Institute in areas such as individual-based modeling and evolutionary computing. Special sessions on land use and anthropology modeling were also incorporated in the first extensive inclusion of human dimensions within the domain of GIS/EM. Because each was conceived as if it would be the last, the first three conferences stood alone, responded to demand, and were not distinguished by order. In this sense, there was no GIS/EM1, 2 or 3.
Preface
Impacts of GIS/EM Involvement in the first three GIS/EM conferences exceeded 1700 persons. Some of the impacts felt from these meetings include: establishing ‘other-disciplinary’ awareness and idea exchange, creating sustainable cross-disciplinary networks of cooperation, triggering secondary meetings and follow-up symposia on issues like hydrological modeling and land-use change, revitalizing work in under-appreciated fields such as land-use modeling, stimulating tool development and entrepreneurial partnerships with commercial entities, encouraging modeling curricula and course work in programs not previously attuned, and provoking an echo of modeling emphases within GIS-aware professional societies. Papers from the first two meetings were published as edited books. But the third conference employed the internet in conjunction with Compact Disc (CD) publishing (Goodchild et al., 1996a,b). CD media offered reduced production time between conference and publication and the web gave broader distribution of information and easier access prior to and after the conference (http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu). Each of these publishing options are being used to different advantage for the Banff meeting, with the purpose of leaving both a more effective permanent record and a persistent digital infrastructure for the next decade of research collaboration.
GIS/EM4 The purpose of the Fourth International meeting at Banff, like its predecessors, is to provide a scientific and technical forum for improving spatio-temporal predictive modeling of processes, events, and phenomena for environmental problem solving. But new to our approach, a revised meeting structure, an emphasis on human dimensions of global change; systematic and analytic treatment of constituent GIS/EM themes; coverage of the next generation data types of the EOS era, and an extended commitment to disseminating findings to a broader audience, including advanced university students around the world. The specific changes planned for Banff include better representation of human
dimensions, stronger treatment of major research and development themes, direct involvement of other communities of modelers, expanded consideration of diverse data issues and an greater involvement and interaction among participants. Improved capture and dissemination of GIS/EM4 conference findings will enhance predictive methods and techniques including process, simulation, stochastic, numerical and other quantitative models for environmental problem solving and will improve our understanding of integrative approaches to their use. GIS/EM4 involved approximately 500 scientists and technologists in two parallel and interrelated program tracks, one a continuing forum for discussion of progress, applications, and methods by the whole research community, the other with more specialized intent-to-derive an agenda for future research. Components of both of these tracks are represented in the papers of this issue. Oversight of this special issue has been by a core group represented by the editors, and a broader group drawn from international scholars and experts in the field. We feel that the themes of GIS/EM4 are well represented by the research contributions presented here.
GIS/EM information and education Since their origin in 1991, these conferences have drawn very strong interest and have had significant influence on thought and practice in many contributing fields. The first three conferences produced two major books, a GIS journal special issue, and compact disc and web-based proceedings. The panel-reviewed research papers contained in those publications are cited often but science exhorts us to ensure a legacy of ‘tested’ work, in part, through the rigor of the peerreview process. As a result, instead of inviting papers for this special issue, the 450 abstracts submitted for the meeting were analyzed and a small number of their authors were competitively selected and invited to submit extended papers for peer review by Journal of Environmental Management standards. Papers were evaluated in blind review by the Science Advisory Committee for the Banff meeting, with assistance from other
231
232
K. Clarke et al.
reviewers selected by the editors. Peer review and editing was conducted according to a demanding schedule, for the reviewers and the authors, and especially for the editors. We thank all who contributed to the result which we feel is both an enduring statement of the scientific pursuits of the GIS/EM meetings, and a demonstration of the high level of commitment and support by its authors. Close and careful timing has allowed the papers to be available at the conference, and to provoke discussion about the needs and priorities that these meetings seek to identify. Three other publishing efforts will complement the papers presented in this issue of the Journal of Environmental Management. A companion special issue has been targeted at the Geographic Information Sciences, via the journal Transactions in Geographic Information Systems. In addition, the conference proceedings is being published in compact disc/web book format and contains the nearly 300 papers and abstracts written for its paper sessions, workshops, and other venues. The proceedings are also backed by a web publishing enterprise via the conference’s web site at http://www.colorado.edu/research/cires/ banff. Unique among these publications, however, will be a new book Geographic Information Systems and Environmental Modeling, hopefully to become available shortly after the meeting and before the end of 2000. Organized by key GIS/EM research themes, it is written collectively by members of the Scientific Advisory group and other invited authors. Among these publishing ventures, it is expected that the publication of Geographic Information Systems and Environmental Modeling will best advance the strong educational goals of the meeting, as are evidenced by the high degree and quality of student participation at Banff. The creation of a graduate student competition for NSFfunded fellowships to encourage student participation at Banff, and the presence of one such student fellow among the authors of this special issue, both underscore the importance of teaching in GIS/EM-relevant fields, especially graduate programs in ecology, resources management, geography, and others concerned with the environmental
sciences. However, the necessity of crossdisciplinary working, thinking and teaching, while it is accepted and expected by GIS/EM participants, remains a priority that is hard to defend to universities already formally structured by disciplines and to funding agencies that lack mechanisms for cross-discipline evaluations and rewards. The reduction and elimination of these barriers is close to the heart of the GIS/EM agenda.
The future of GIS/EM Will there be, at some point in the future, a GIS/EM5, or a GIS/EM20? We expect the former, but not the latter. Successful elimination of most barriers to model-GIS integration is likely to be achieved before the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. For now, GIS continues to serve both as an important tool set and an integrating technological framework, and themes of interoperability and interchangeability continue to pervade thinking about GIS, models, and common frameworks. But improved tools in better frameworks will languish and perhaps be malformed or misapplied without the conscious and creative involvement of those whose task it is to apply the methods and products of modeling. For this reason, the Journal of Environmental Management provides an excellent means to reinforce research to strengthen the already close links between GIS and environmental models and to demonstrate that computational modeling is very much the inexpensive and safe alternative for discovering and evaluating environmental management options and futures.
References Goodchild, M. F., Parks, B. O. and Steyaert, L. T. (eds) (1993). Environmental Modeling with GIS. Compiled papers and proceedings of the 1st International Conference/Workshop on Integrating GIS and Environmental Modeling. New York: Oxford University Press. Goodchild, M. F., Parks, B. O., Steyaert, L. T. et al. (eds) (1996a). The Third International Conference/Workshop on Integrating GIS and Environmental Modeling. Santa Fe, NM. January 21–26, 1996. National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis. University of California, Santa Barbara. CD. (http://www. ncgia.ucsb.edu/conf/SANTA FE CD-ROM/main. html).
Preface Goodchild, M. F., Steyaert, L. T. and Parks, B. O. (eds) (1996b). Environmental Modeling with GIS. Compiled papers and proceedings of the 2nd International Conference/Workshop on Integrating GIS and Environmental Modeling. Fort Collins, CO: GIS World Books. Parks, B. O. (1993). The need for integration. Environmental Modeling with GIS. Compiled
papers and proceedings of the 1st International Conference/Workshop on Integrating GIS and Environmental Modeling (M. F. Goodchild, B. O. Parks and L. T. Steyaert, eds). New York: Oxford University Press. Wilson, J. P. (ed.) (1995). Special issue: integrating GIS and environmental modeling. International Journal of Geographical Information Systems 9.
233