- Email: [email protected]
Grand challenges, environment and urban systems
Computers, Environment and Urban Systems 30 (2006) 1–9 www.elsevier.com/locate/compenvurbsys
Editorial
Grand challenges, environment and urban systems
This journal has come a long way in the 30 years since the journal Computers and Urban Society first appeared in 1975, and subsequently evolved into the present title in 1980. Its mandate remains to focus on the development, application and enhancement of computer-based methodologies for understanding and improving environmental and urban systems. Looking back on the last 30 years, I think that it is honest to acknowledge that its contribution to understanding of the environment and urban systems has been mixed; yet the expert and clearly focused efforts of the current editorial team of Associate Editors1 and Board members provides unambiguous evidence that it has now emerged as a leading international forum for significant research and policy applications. I believe that the journal is now firmly established as one of the top three journals in the area of geographic/geospatial information technology, which as many readers will be aware, was recently recognised by the United States Department of Labor as one of the fastest-growing, knowledge-based fields (Gewin, 2004). These are exciting times. Yet there is still much to be done to develop the ideas, methods and techniques promulgated within the pages of this Journal into usable applications within the vast majority of public and private organizations. In looking forward to the next years, therefore, I would like to draw upon the discussion of Longley, Goodchild, Maguire, and Rhind (2005) in identifying a series of six ‘grand challenges’, which I think represent some of the greatest impediments to progress. The scale and pace of change in our understanding of environment and urban systems is without historical precedent: on the face of it, there seems good reason to anticipate that all of the grand challenges set out here might be overcome within the next five years. 1. The globalization of environmental and urban datasets Most all environmental and urban systems no longer respect political boundaries (if they ever did). Many of the contributions to this journal have been ahead of their time in drawing broad definitions of systems in order to accommodate the importance of externalities, spillover effects and extraneous processes. Any cursory look through the journal
1
Also including immediate past Associate Editors Robert Laurini and Dick Klosterman.
0198-9715/$ - see front matter Ó 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2005.10.002
2
Editorial / Comput., Environ. and Urban Systems 30 (2006) 1–9
archives will bear testimony to the many attempts over the last 30 years to assemble supraregional, and even global datasets that help us to understand how the world works. However, as recent papers on spatial data infrastructures and geoportals have demonstrated (e.g. Maguire & Longley, 2005), progress has often been painfully slow. Today, the best available globally consistent datasets are those derived from 1:1 m-scale topographic vector map files originally digitized under contract to the US National Geospatial Agency, and remotely-sensed sources such as EarthStat Corporation’s 15 m Landsat natural view (red, green, blue) mosaic (www.earthsat.com). It seems clear that the best environmental and urban analysis continues to be held back by a lack of basic, commonly agreed and accepted data layers, and that where data are available, there is much wasteful duplicate of effort and expense. Such data need to be made available to data standards that are clearly specified and monitored, not least in the interests of establishing benchmarks for comparative research. Longley et al. (2005) suggest that rapid progress could be made in the realms of comparative environmental and urban analysis following the creation of a global database of street centrelines at a nominal scale of 1:100 000 or better (currently available only for most of North America and Europe and some other densely populated areas), a 1 m resolution image database, and a 10 m horizontal terrain dataset. The data volumes implied by these tasks will be significant but are well within the capabilities of current computer processing technologies. The most serious outstanding problems are not technical, but relate to commercial issues, coordination, agreement on standards, and politics. In some respects, the world of practice moves on as the rather conventional ‘top down’ view of the creation of spatial data infrastructures is increasingly eclipsed by the development of Google maps, open source applications interfaces and ‘mash ups’ of diverse data sources assembled across domains. This opens up the widest range of possible applications for almost any (novice as well as expert) user, although there are important implications for the specification and maintenance of data standards. 2. Standards of analysis and standards of conduct The remit of CEUS remains fundamentally an interdisciplinary activity, which is pursued by a developing constituency of university academics, applications developers, research scientists and other interested individuals. Established academic disciplines such as archaeology, architecture, cartography, computer science, environmental science, geography, geomatic engineering, planning, remote sensing, and transport studies have each contributed to the intellectual underpinnings of this work, but so too have the inputs of practitioners and a range of other non-academic interests. This confluence of different perspectives and interests, together with the development of new (specifically grid-based) computer architectures to support them, raise important issues relating to the exchange of data in an increasingly fluid, project centred research environment. Appropriate metadata are essential to ensure the reproducibility of important scientific findings, while safeguards must be consistent between industry, research and policy particularly where data pertain to human subjects. In short, the magnitude and intensity of activity has now reached the point at which shared science must be reinforced by shared approaches to research ethics and codes of practice. For this to happen, the CEUS constituency needs to pool resources to establish standards for craftsmanship and best practices; it may also be
Editorial / Comput., Environ. and Urban Systems 30 (2006) 1–9
3
appropriate to consider a system of accreditation that hastens the diffusion and dissemination of best practice within environmental and urban analysis. 3. Spatial literacy in teaching The issue of accreditation has been referred to by Tate, Jarvis, and Moore (2005), in a discussion that reflects how restrictions on our willingness or ability to think spatially inhibit the dissemination of best policy. One of the major road blocks to better understanding of environment and urban systems is the paucity of suitably qualified spatial analysts, and limited progress in converting decision makers to spatial thinking. National programmes—such as SPACE in the US (Goodchild & Janelle, 2004) and SpLinT in the UK (www.geog.le.ac.uk/splint/) are making progress towards these ends. International sharing of experience in the best ‘spatial learning’ programmes is clearly desirable, although it also requires, on the one hand, smoothing of the considerable variability in content and quality, and recognition of the importance of local context and plurality of approach on the other. Wider promulgation of key organizing principles that govern the systematic analysis of environmental and urban systems will enrich the skill base to future research applications. The vision should be of a core set of spatial principles and techniques that might be used to spatially enable the widest range of relevant disciplines in social and environmental science. 4. Near universal empowerment and comprehensive stakeholder participation At a routine level much has been achieved in developed countries through the wide use of Web enabled technologies, but there is much to be done. At one level the problem centers upon exposure to concepts of environment and urban systems through education, together with the familiarity with technology that experience brings. Appropriately educated users will, the argument goes, typically use a technology first to solicit information, before likely using it to conduct transactions and eventually feeling confident to use it to participate in collaborative decision making (Longley, 2003). However, this view posits active user engagement independent of institutional constraints. In practice, there is some evidence that the networks that govern access and control of decision making are resistant to empowering wider user communities, and there is a need to research the ways in which such characteristics reinforce other sources of structural disadvantage in society. The drive to improve public understanding of science needs to be complemented by an improved scientific understanding of the public. Work on human–computer interaction is pivotal to this, and there is clear a need to extend previous research to consider the use of hand-held devices in field computing, as well as the use of immersive and semi-immersive technologies alongside 3D data (Lemmen & van Oosterom, 2003). The innovation of location based services is providing new challenges to the cartography and mapping communities, driven by restrictions in the viewable areas of devices. More important, this technical constraint is associated with a change in the goal of mapping from supplying products that provide geo-centred views of the world to providing services that are tailored to the precise ego-centred needs of users (Longley et al., 2005; Miller, 2003). This entails a shift in the application of the cartographer’s skill set from developer- to user-centered visualization. Different classes of users will have different needs, but common characteristics will centre upon the need for greater immediacy and ready intelligibility in field situations.
4
Editorial / Comput., Environ. and Urban Systems 30 (2006) 1–9
These kinds of developments will also benefit from the kinds of new or repackaged exploratory spatial data analysis techniques designed to foster greater intelligibility and wider understanding, and that are described in the pages of this journal (e.g. Sui, 2005). The CEUS constituency clearly remains abreast of the need to develop software that is both usable and safe to use by the overwhelming majority of users—from the classroom to the planning appeal—in the widest range of settings, from the laboratory to the street. This raises many enticing issues for future research—such as the need to develop our understanding of social and collective cognition, and thus develop our understanding of how environmental and urban decision support systems can accommodate the widest range of institutions and practices. More generally, people need collectively to be able to understand the power of generalization and the mitigating effects of uncertainty, and this raises further challenges. 5. A global geodemographic data infrastructure We know too little about the functioning of contemporary societies in relation to environmental and urban systems. If robust and fair rules controlling data supply and access can be developed and widely accepted, there is no reason why the tremendous potential of rich government and private sector datasets should not be unlocked to the greater good. Uninteresting, zonally coarse, infrequently collected surrogate indicators of society are simply no longer good enough for the huge resource expenditure (especially in the public sector) that continues to be authorized using such data. Organisations with international environment or urban management responsibilities also need more data that traverse national boundaries, but at local levels of granularity. There is also a need to extend the success of business applications to the challenges of fair and equitable access to public services. We need to unlock the potential of geographically referenced data, many of which are collected at the local level, in order to provide pictures of the health of natural and artificial environments. In the context of the arguments in the immediate previous section, it is still apparent that too much policy remains top down and that we need to empower real communities to develop and negotiate their desires and preferences—and thus to establish priorities in the provision of public goods. The speed bumps on the information highway too often reflect an unwillingness to share information, very often because of unfounded fears of disclosure of individual circumstances. We need to lighten up in our views of data supply and access, and create persuasive arguments to this end by producing top quality policy-relevant research. 6. Support data models for simulating a complete range of geographic phenomena Any computer-based representation of environmental or urban systems is necessarily a selective abstraction, or simplification, of real world phenomena or processes. In the best of all possible worlds, computers would allow us to include data models for all types of geographic phenomena, including those that are well beyond the range of currently supported data models. Longley et al. (2005) reflect that it is remains impossible, for example, to build effective representations of environmental phenomena such as storms that simultaneously move, change shape, and change internal structure. There are similarly no methods for representing watersheds, since a watershed exists for every point on a landscape. Many more examples exist, leading us to suggest that the development of data models
Editorial / Comput., Environ. and Urban Systems 30 (2006) 1–9
5
for complex environmental and urban phenomena will continue to be given high priority by the CEUS research community. The various simulation approaches developed in the pages of this journal are supported by a range of data models. These are usually devised in order to develop an understanding of not just how environmental and urban systems look, but also how they work. The motivation for understanding process rather than just form is clear—a model of how the world works enables us to predict the likely consequences of human interventions in natural and artificial systems. Our understanding about process is best tested in computational environments before they are the subject of human-induced experiment. Throughout the first half of the 30 year history of this journal, most formal evaluation of the quality of predictive models has been through numerical comparisons. Visual simulation has subsequently become the norm, and the ready availability of colour in the Web version of the journal makes it much easier to envision the forecasts of environmental or urban simulation. We may now realistically look forward to a point at which our predictions about future environments and conditions on the Earth’s surface are indistinguishable from actual outcomes—an acid test of the ability of the computational system to match reality. Simulations of many processes already come close to this standard, and we may anticipate substantial progress in the coming years as tools for simulation become more and more prevalent in computer systems. Conclusions and acknowledgements The mandate of this journal embodies the tensions of encapsulating the best environmental and urban science in the most robust and defensible computer-based systems. Systems and science are intimately bound together in this quest, and the study of the ways in which systems and science are critically juxtaposed and closely interwoven provides an important focus for critical evaluation. Seen from most perspectives, the world of Computers and Urban Society has become more fragmented in the 30 year history of this journal. As such, the strengthened raison d’eˆtre of the journal today is to keep pace with these changes—and thus to embed greater understanding of environmental and urban systems in the best international research. None of this is possible without the active support of the international research community itself. Peter van Oosterom, Dan Sui and I are therefore most grateful to the individuals named below who have given time during the last (2005) review period to maintaining the highest standards of peer review in this journal—often through refereeing more than one paper or reviewing successive versions of resubmitted papers. Bob Abrahart, University of Nottingham, Pragya Agarwal, University College London, John Allinson, University of the West of England, Gennady Andrienko, German National Research Center for Information Technology, Katy Appleton, University of East Anglia, Theo Arentze, Eindhoven University of Technology, Marc Armstrong, University of Iowa, David Askew, Rural Development Service (UK), Mike Barnsley, University of Wales, Swansea,
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Editorial / Comput., Environ. and Urban Systems 30 (2006) 1–9
Stuart Barr, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Paul Bates, University of Bristol, Itzhak Benenson, Tel-Aviv University, Brandon Bennett, University of Leeds, Ian Bishop, University of Melbourne, Michela Bertolotto, University College Dublin, Jaap Besemer, Delft University of Technology, Michael Blakemore, University of Durham, Richard Brail, Rutgers University, Stefan Bronnimann, University of Arizona, Iain Brown, University of East Anglia, Chris Brunsdon, University of Leicester, Roger Burrows, University of York, Martin Charlton, NUI Maynooth, Christophe Claramunt, Naval Academy Brest, Elisio Clementini, University of L’Aquila, Paul Clough, University of Sheffield, Sam Cockings, University of Southampton, Tom Cova, University of Utah, Kevin Daugherty, ESRI Inc., Redlands, Wim Devos, Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Martin Dodge, University of Manchester, Max Craglia, Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Lee de Cola, United States Geological Survey, Paul Dolman, University of East Anglia, Matt Duckham, University of Melbourne, Jason Dykes, City University, London, Max Egenhofer, University of Maine, Claire Ellul, University College London, Stig Enemark, Aalborg University, David Fairbairn, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Peter Fisher, City University, London, Joseph Forrai, Survey of Israel, Andrew Frank, Technical University of Vienna, Pierre Frankhauser, University of Besanc¸on, Robert Fransoza, University of Maine, Mark Gahegan, Pennsylvania State University, Art Getis, San Diego State University, Bruce Gittings, University of Edinburgh, Mike Goodchild, University of California, Santa Barbara, Amy Griffin, Australian Defence Force Academy, Muki Haklay, University College London, Peter Halls, University of York, Michael Hardey, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Frank Hardisty, Pennsylvania State University, Keith Harries, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Lars Harries, University of Lund,
Editorial / Comput., Environ. and Urban Systems 30 (2006) 1–9
Glen Hart, Ordnance Survey (GB), Winfried Hawerk, Geoinformation and Surveying Agency, Hamburg, Claudia Hess, Bamberg University, Martin Herold, Friedrich Schiller University, Gerard Heuvelink, Wageningen University, Gary Higgs, University of Glamorgan, Lew Hopkins, University of Illinois, Piotr Jankowski, University of Idaho, Claire Jarvis, University of Leicester, Bin Jiang, University of Ga¨vle, Chris Jones, Cardiff University, Jistke de Jong, Delft University of Technology, Ioannis Kanellopoulos, Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Hassan Karimi, University of Pittsburgh, Zarine Kemp, University of Kent, Gili Kirschner, Survey of Israel, Richard Klosterman, University of Akron, Menno Kraak, University of Utrecht, Mei-Po Kwan, Ohio State University, Iain Lake, University of East Anglia, Eckart Lange, ETH Zurich, Mitch Langford, University of Glamorgan, Ray Larson, University of California, Berkeley, Daryl Lloyd, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (UK), Robert Laurini, INSA de Lyon, Jiyeong Lee, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, Michael Leitner, Lousianna State University, Christiaan Lemmen, ITC, the Netherlands, Chao Li, CASA, UCL, London, Hongxing Liu, Texas A&M University, Bastiaan van Loenen, Delft University of Technology, Andrew Lovett, University of East Anglia, Yongmei Lu, Texas State University, William Mackaness, University of Edinburgh, David Maguire, ESRI Inc., Redlands, Steven Manson, University of Minnesota, David Martin, University of Southampton, Hans Mattsson, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, Colin McClean, University of York, Victor Mesev, Florida State University, Shaw-Pin, Miaou, Texas Institute of Transportation, Harvey Miller, University of Utah, Harold Moellering, Ohio State University, Paul van der Molen, Kadaster Netherlands, Jeremy Morley, University College London, David Mountain, City University, London, Gerhard Muggenhuber, BEV, Austria,
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Editorial / Comput., Environ. and Urban Systems 30 (2006) 1–9
Greg Mulholland, Computer Aided Resource Information System (CARIS), Canada, Atsuyuki Okabe, University of Tokyo, Itzhak Omer, Tel-Aviv University, Peter van Oosterom, Delft University of Technology, Scott Orford, Cardiff University, David O’Sullivan, University of Auckland, Chris Parker, Ordnance Survey (GB), Mike Peterson, University of Nebraska, Omaha, Gunther Plicher, Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Europe (Germany), Juval Portugali, Tel-Aviv University, Gary Priestnall, University of Nottingham, Ross Purves, University of Zurich, Siva Ravada, Oracle Inc., Tumasch Reichenbacher, TU-Munich, James Reilly, Maryland Department of Planning, Anne Ruas, Institut Ge´ographique National, Bengt Rystedt, Lantmateriet, Sweden, Mark Sanderson, University of Sheffield, Bernhard Schneider, University of Zurich, Irchel, Naru Shiode, SUNY Buffalo, Alex Singleton, University College London, Aidan Slingsby, University College London, Terry Slocum, Univ. of Kansas, David Streutker, Idaho State University, Erik Stubjaer, Aalborg University, Heinder Stuckenschmidt, VU Amsterdam, Kokichi Sugihara, University of Tokyo, Dan Sui, Texas A&M University, Nick Tate, University of Leicester, Jan Terje Bjorke, Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, Jean-Claude Thill, SUNY Buffalo, Richard Thomas (deceased), University of Manchester, Stewart Thompson, Oxford Brookes University, Waldo Tobler, University of California, Santa Barbara, Mika Torhonen, FAO, Rome, Paul Torrens, University of Utah, Jean Trumbo, University of Nevada, Reno, Ian Turton, Penn State University, Peter Verburg, Wageningen University, Chris Webster, Cardiff University, Rob Weibel, University of Zurich, Irchel, Peter Weller, City University, London, Ian Williamson, University of Melbourne, Ian Wilson, University of Glamorgan, Stephan Winter, University of Melbourne, Steven Wise, University of Sheffield,
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Cecilia Wong, University of Liverpool, David Wong, George Mason University, Mike Worboys, University of Maine, Fulong Wu, Cardiff University, Ray Wyatt, University of Melbourne, Ikuho Yamada, Indiana University, Jaap Zevenbergen, Delft University of Technology, Ming Zhang, University of Texas, Austin, Sisi Zlatanova, Delft University of Technology.
References Gewin, V. (2004). Mapping opportunities. Nature, 427, 376–377. Goodchild, M. F., & Janelle, D. G. (2004). Thinking spatially in the social sciences. In M. F. Goodchild & D. G. Janelle (Eds.), Spatially integrated social science (pp. 3–22). New York: Oxford University Press. Lemmen, C., & van Oosterom, P. (2003). 3D cadastres. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 27, 337–343. Longley, P. A. (2003). Towards better understanding of digital differentiation. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 27, 103–106. Longley, P. A., Goodchild, M. F., Maguire, D. J., & Rhind, D. W. (2005). Geographic information systems and science. Wiley: Chichester. Maguire, D. J., & Longley, P. A. (2005). The emergence of geoportals and their role in spatial data infrastructures. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 29, 3–14. Miller, H. J. (2003). What about people in geographic information science? Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 27, 447–453. Sui, D. (2005). Will ubicomp make GIS invisible? Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 29, 361–367. Tate, N. J., Jarvis, C. H., & Moore, K. E. (2005). Locating spatial thinking in teaching practice. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 29, 87–91.
Paul Longley Editor-in-Chief Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis and Department of Geography, University College London, 1-19 Torrington Place, London WC1E 7HB, United Kingdom Tel.: +44 207 679 1782; fax: +44 207 813 2843 E-mail address: [email protected]
Editorial
Grand challenges, environment and urban systems
This journal has come a long way in the 30 years since the journal Computers and Urban Society first appeared in 1975, and subsequently evolved into the present title in 1980. Its mandate remains to focus on the development, application and enhancement of computer-based methodologies for understanding and improving environmental and urban systems. Looking back on the last 30 years, I think that it is honest to acknowledge that its contribution to understanding of the environment and urban systems has been mixed; yet the expert and clearly focused efforts of the current editorial team of Associate Editors1 and Board members provides unambiguous evidence that it has now emerged as a leading international forum for significant research and policy applications. I believe that the journal is now firmly established as one of the top three journals in the area of geographic/geospatial information technology, which as many readers will be aware, was recently recognised by the United States Department of Labor as one of the fastest-growing, knowledge-based fields (Gewin, 2004). These are exciting times. Yet there is still much to be done to develop the ideas, methods and techniques promulgated within the pages of this Journal into usable applications within the vast majority of public and private organizations. In looking forward to the next years, therefore, I would like to draw upon the discussion of Longley, Goodchild, Maguire, and Rhind (2005) in identifying a series of six ‘grand challenges’, which I think represent some of the greatest impediments to progress. The scale and pace of change in our understanding of environment and urban systems is without historical precedent: on the face of it, there seems good reason to anticipate that all of the grand challenges set out here might be overcome within the next five years. 1. The globalization of environmental and urban datasets Most all environmental and urban systems no longer respect political boundaries (if they ever did). Many of the contributions to this journal have been ahead of their time in drawing broad definitions of systems in order to accommodate the importance of externalities, spillover effects and extraneous processes. Any cursory look through the journal
1
Also including immediate past Associate Editors Robert Laurini and Dick Klosterman.
0198-9715/$ - see front matter Ó 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2005.10.002
2
Editorial / Comput., Environ. and Urban Systems 30 (2006) 1–9
archives will bear testimony to the many attempts over the last 30 years to assemble supraregional, and even global datasets that help us to understand how the world works. However, as recent papers on spatial data infrastructures and geoportals have demonstrated (e.g. Maguire & Longley, 2005), progress has often been painfully slow. Today, the best available globally consistent datasets are those derived from 1:1 m-scale topographic vector map files originally digitized under contract to the US National Geospatial Agency, and remotely-sensed sources such as EarthStat Corporation’s 15 m Landsat natural view (red, green, blue) mosaic (www.earthsat.com). It seems clear that the best environmental and urban analysis continues to be held back by a lack of basic, commonly agreed and accepted data layers, and that where data are available, there is much wasteful duplicate of effort and expense. Such data need to be made available to data standards that are clearly specified and monitored, not least in the interests of establishing benchmarks for comparative research. Longley et al. (2005) suggest that rapid progress could be made in the realms of comparative environmental and urban analysis following the creation of a global database of street centrelines at a nominal scale of 1:100 000 or better (currently available only for most of North America and Europe and some other densely populated areas), a 1 m resolution image database, and a 10 m horizontal terrain dataset. The data volumes implied by these tasks will be significant but are well within the capabilities of current computer processing technologies. The most serious outstanding problems are not technical, but relate to commercial issues, coordination, agreement on standards, and politics. In some respects, the world of practice moves on as the rather conventional ‘top down’ view of the creation of spatial data infrastructures is increasingly eclipsed by the development of Google maps, open source applications interfaces and ‘mash ups’ of diverse data sources assembled across domains. This opens up the widest range of possible applications for almost any (novice as well as expert) user, although there are important implications for the specification and maintenance of data standards. 2. Standards of analysis and standards of conduct The remit of CEUS remains fundamentally an interdisciplinary activity, which is pursued by a developing constituency of university academics, applications developers, research scientists and other interested individuals. Established academic disciplines such as archaeology, architecture, cartography, computer science, environmental science, geography, geomatic engineering, planning, remote sensing, and transport studies have each contributed to the intellectual underpinnings of this work, but so too have the inputs of practitioners and a range of other non-academic interests. This confluence of different perspectives and interests, together with the development of new (specifically grid-based) computer architectures to support them, raise important issues relating to the exchange of data in an increasingly fluid, project centred research environment. Appropriate metadata are essential to ensure the reproducibility of important scientific findings, while safeguards must be consistent between industry, research and policy particularly where data pertain to human subjects. In short, the magnitude and intensity of activity has now reached the point at which shared science must be reinforced by shared approaches to research ethics and codes of practice. For this to happen, the CEUS constituency needs to pool resources to establish standards for craftsmanship and best practices; it may also be
Editorial / Comput., Environ. and Urban Systems 30 (2006) 1–9
3
appropriate to consider a system of accreditation that hastens the diffusion and dissemination of best practice within environmental and urban analysis. 3. Spatial literacy in teaching The issue of accreditation has been referred to by Tate, Jarvis, and Moore (2005), in a discussion that reflects how restrictions on our willingness or ability to think spatially inhibit the dissemination of best policy. One of the major road blocks to better understanding of environment and urban systems is the paucity of suitably qualified spatial analysts, and limited progress in converting decision makers to spatial thinking. National programmes—such as SPACE in the US (Goodchild & Janelle, 2004) and SpLinT in the UK (www.geog.le.ac.uk/splint/) are making progress towards these ends. International sharing of experience in the best ‘spatial learning’ programmes is clearly desirable, although it also requires, on the one hand, smoothing of the considerable variability in content and quality, and recognition of the importance of local context and plurality of approach on the other. Wider promulgation of key organizing principles that govern the systematic analysis of environmental and urban systems will enrich the skill base to future research applications. The vision should be of a core set of spatial principles and techniques that might be used to spatially enable the widest range of relevant disciplines in social and environmental science. 4. Near universal empowerment and comprehensive stakeholder participation At a routine level much has been achieved in developed countries through the wide use of Web enabled technologies, but there is much to be done. At one level the problem centers upon exposure to concepts of environment and urban systems through education, together with the familiarity with technology that experience brings. Appropriately educated users will, the argument goes, typically use a technology first to solicit information, before likely using it to conduct transactions and eventually feeling confident to use it to participate in collaborative decision making (Longley, 2003). However, this view posits active user engagement independent of institutional constraints. In practice, there is some evidence that the networks that govern access and control of decision making are resistant to empowering wider user communities, and there is a need to research the ways in which such characteristics reinforce other sources of structural disadvantage in society. The drive to improve public understanding of science needs to be complemented by an improved scientific understanding of the public. Work on human–computer interaction is pivotal to this, and there is clear a need to extend previous research to consider the use of hand-held devices in field computing, as well as the use of immersive and semi-immersive technologies alongside 3D data (Lemmen & van Oosterom, 2003). The innovation of location based services is providing new challenges to the cartography and mapping communities, driven by restrictions in the viewable areas of devices. More important, this technical constraint is associated with a change in the goal of mapping from supplying products that provide geo-centred views of the world to providing services that are tailored to the precise ego-centred needs of users (Longley et al., 2005; Miller, 2003). This entails a shift in the application of the cartographer’s skill set from developer- to user-centered visualization. Different classes of users will have different needs, but common characteristics will centre upon the need for greater immediacy and ready intelligibility in field situations.
4
Editorial / Comput., Environ. and Urban Systems 30 (2006) 1–9
These kinds of developments will also benefit from the kinds of new or repackaged exploratory spatial data analysis techniques designed to foster greater intelligibility and wider understanding, and that are described in the pages of this journal (e.g. Sui, 2005). The CEUS constituency clearly remains abreast of the need to develop software that is both usable and safe to use by the overwhelming majority of users—from the classroom to the planning appeal—in the widest range of settings, from the laboratory to the street. This raises many enticing issues for future research—such as the need to develop our understanding of social and collective cognition, and thus develop our understanding of how environmental and urban decision support systems can accommodate the widest range of institutions and practices. More generally, people need collectively to be able to understand the power of generalization and the mitigating effects of uncertainty, and this raises further challenges. 5. A global geodemographic data infrastructure We know too little about the functioning of contemporary societies in relation to environmental and urban systems. If robust and fair rules controlling data supply and access can be developed and widely accepted, there is no reason why the tremendous potential of rich government and private sector datasets should not be unlocked to the greater good. Uninteresting, zonally coarse, infrequently collected surrogate indicators of society are simply no longer good enough for the huge resource expenditure (especially in the public sector) that continues to be authorized using such data. Organisations with international environment or urban management responsibilities also need more data that traverse national boundaries, but at local levels of granularity. There is also a need to extend the success of business applications to the challenges of fair and equitable access to public services. We need to unlock the potential of geographically referenced data, many of which are collected at the local level, in order to provide pictures of the health of natural and artificial environments. In the context of the arguments in the immediate previous section, it is still apparent that too much policy remains top down and that we need to empower real communities to develop and negotiate their desires and preferences—and thus to establish priorities in the provision of public goods. The speed bumps on the information highway too often reflect an unwillingness to share information, very often because of unfounded fears of disclosure of individual circumstances. We need to lighten up in our views of data supply and access, and create persuasive arguments to this end by producing top quality policy-relevant research. 6. Support data models for simulating a complete range of geographic phenomena Any computer-based representation of environmental or urban systems is necessarily a selective abstraction, or simplification, of real world phenomena or processes. In the best of all possible worlds, computers would allow us to include data models for all types of geographic phenomena, including those that are well beyond the range of currently supported data models. Longley et al. (2005) reflect that it is remains impossible, for example, to build effective representations of environmental phenomena such as storms that simultaneously move, change shape, and change internal structure. There are similarly no methods for representing watersheds, since a watershed exists for every point on a landscape. Many more examples exist, leading us to suggest that the development of data models
Editorial / Comput., Environ. and Urban Systems 30 (2006) 1–9
5
for complex environmental and urban phenomena will continue to be given high priority by the CEUS research community. The various simulation approaches developed in the pages of this journal are supported by a range of data models. These are usually devised in order to develop an understanding of not just how environmental and urban systems look, but also how they work. The motivation for understanding process rather than just form is clear—a model of how the world works enables us to predict the likely consequences of human interventions in natural and artificial systems. Our understanding about process is best tested in computational environments before they are the subject of human-induced experiment. Throughout the first half of the 30 year history of this journal, most formal evaluation of the quality of predictive models has been through numerical comparisons. Visual simulation has subsequently become the norm, and the ready availability of colour in the Web version of the journal makes it much easier to envision the forecasts of environmental or urban simulation. We may now realistically look forward to a point at which our predictions about future environments and conditions on the Earth’s surface are indistinguishable from actual outcomes—an acid test of the ability of the computational system to match reality. Simulations of many processes already come close to this standard, and we may anticipate substantial progress in the coming years as tools for simulation become more and more prevalent in computer systems. Conclusions and acknowledgements The mandate of this journal embodies the tensions of encapsulating the best environmental and urban science in the most robust and defensible computer-based systems. Systems and science are intimately bound together in this quest, and the study of the ways in which systems and science are critically juxtaposed and closely interwoven provides an important focus for critical evaluation. Seen from most perspectives, the world of Computers and Urban Society has become more fragmented in the 30 year history of this journal. As such, the strengthened raison d’eˆtre of the journal today is to keep pace with these changes—and thus to embed greater understanding of environmental and urban systems in the best international research. None of this is possible without the active support of the international research community itself. Peter van Oosterom, Dan Sui and I are therefore most grateful to the individuals named below who have given time during the last (2005) review period to maintaining the highest standards of peer review in this journal—often through refereeing more than one paper or reviewing successive versions of resubmitted papers. Bob Abrahart, University of Nottingham, Pragya Agarwal, University College London, John Allinson, University of the West of England, Gennady Andrienko, German National Research Center for Information Technology, Katy Appleton, University of East Anglia, Theo Arentze, Eindhoven University of Technology, Marc Armstrong, University of Iowa, David Askew, Rural Development Service (UK), Mike Barnsley, University of Wales, Swansea,
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Stuart Barr, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Paul Bates, University of Bristol, Itzhak Benenson, Tel-Aviv University, Brandon Bennett, University of Leeds, Ian Bishop, University of Melbourne, Michela Bertolotto, University College Dublin, Jaap Besemer, Delft University of Technology, Michael Blakemore, University of Durham, Richard Brail, Rutgers University, Stefan Bronnimann, University of Arizona, Iain Brown, University of East Anglia, Chris Brunsdon, University of Leicester, Roger Burrows, University of York, Martin Charlton, NUI Maynooth, Christophe Claramunt, Naval Academy Brest, Elisio Clementini, University of L’Aquila, Paul Clough, University of Sheffield, Sam Cockings, University of Southampton, Tom Cova, University of Utah, Kevin Daugherty, ESRI Inc., Redlands, Wim Devos, Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Martin Dodge, University of Manchester, Max Craglia, Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Lee de Cola, United States Geological Survey, Paul Dolman, University of East Anglia, Matt Duckham, University of Melbourne, Jason Dykes, City University, London, Max Egenhofer, University of Maine, Claire Ellul, University College London, Stig Enemark, Aalborg University, David Fairbairn, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Peter Fisher, City University, London, Joseph Forrai, Survey of Israel, Andrew Frank, Technical University of Vienna, Pierre Frankhauser, University of Besanc¸on, Robert Fransoza, University of Maine, Mark Gahegan, Pennsylvania State University, Art Getis, San Diego State University, Bruce Gittings, University of Edinburgh, Mike Goodchild, University of California, Santa Barbara, Amy Griffin, Australian Defence Force Academy, Muki Haklay, University College London, Peter Halls, University of York, Michael Hardey, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Frank Hardisty, Pennsylvania State University, Keith Harries, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Lars Harries, University of Lund,
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Glen Hart, Ordnance Survey (GB), Winfried Hawerk, Geoinformation and Surveying Agency, Hamburg, Claudia Hess, Bamberg University, Martin Herold, Friedrich Schiller University, Gerard Heuvelink, Wageningen University, Gary Higgs, University of Glamorgan, Lew Hopkins, University of Illinois, Piotr Jankowski, University of Idaho, Claire Jarvis, University of Leicester, Bin Jiang, University of Ga¨vle, Chris Jones, Cardiff University, Jistke de Jong, Delft University of Technology, Ioannis Kanellopoulos, Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Hassan Karimi, University of Pittsburgh, Zarine Kemp, University of Kent, Gili Kirschner, Survey of Israel, Richard Klosterman, University of Akron, Menno Kraak, University of Utrecht, Mei-Po Kwan, Ohio State University, Iain Lake, University of East Anglia, Eckart Lange, ETH Zurich, Mitch Langford, University of Glamorgan, Ray Larson, University of California, Berkeley, Daryl Lloyd, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (UK), Robert Laurini, INSA de Lyon, Jiyeong Lee, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, Michael Leitner, Lousianna State University, Christiaan Lemmen, ITC, the Netherlands, Chao Li, CASA, UCL, London, Hongxing Liu, Texas A&M University, Bastiaan van Loenen, Delft University of Technology, Andrew Lovett, University of East Anglia, Yongmei Lu, Texas State University, William Mackaness, University of Edinburgh, David Maguire, ESRI Inc., Redlands, Steven Manson, University of Minnesota, David Martin, University of Southampton, Hans Mattsson, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, Colin McClean, University of York, Victor Mesev, Florida State University, Shaw-Pin, Miaou, Texas Institute of Transportation, Harvey Miller, University of Utah, Harold Moellering, Ohio State University, Paul van der Molen, Kadaster Netherlands, Jeremy Morley, University College London, David Mountain, City University, London, Gerhard Muggenhuber, BEV, Austria,
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Greg Mulholland, Computer Aided Resource Information System (CARIS), Canada, Atsuyuki Okabe, University of Tokyo, Itzhak Omer, Tel-Aviv University, Peter van Oosterom, Delft University of Technology, Scott Orford, Cardiff University, David O’Sullivan, University of Auckland, Chris Parker, Ordnance Survey (GB), Mike Peterson, University of Nebraska, Omaha, Gunther Plicher, Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Europe (Germany), Juval Portugali, Tel-Aviv University, Gary Priestnall, University of Nottingham, Ross Purves, University of Zurich, Siva Ravada, Oracle Inc., Tumasch Reichenbacher, TU-Munich, James Reilly, Maryland Department of Planning, Anne Ruas, Institut Ge´ographique National, Bengt Rystedt, Lantmateriet, Sweden, Mark Sanderson, University of Sheffield, Bernhard Schneider, University of Zurich, Irchel, Naru Shiode, SUNY Buffalo, Alex Singleton, University College London, Aidan Slingsby, University College London, Terry Slocum, Univ. of Kansas, David Streutker, Idaho State University, Erik Stubjaer, Aalborg University, Heinder Stuckenschmidt, VU Amsterdam, Kokichi Sugihara, University of Tokyo, Dan Sui, Texas A&M University, Nick Tate, University of Leicester, Jan Terje Bjorke, Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, Jean-Claude Thill, SUNY Buffalo, Richard Thomas (deceased), University of Manchester, Stewart Thompson, Oxford Brookes University, Waldo Tobler, University of California, Santa Barbara, Mika Torhonen, FAO, Rome, Paul Torrens, University of Utah, Jean Trumbo, University of Nevada, Reno, Ian Turton, Penn State University, Peter Verburg, Wageningen University, Chris Webster, Cardiff University, Rob Weibel, University of Zurich, Irchel, Peter Weller, City University, London, Ian Williamson, University of Melbourne, Ian Wilson, University of Glamorgan, Stephan Winter, University of Melbourne, Steven Wise, University of Sheffield,
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Cecilia Wong, University of Liverpool, David Wong, George Mason University, Mike Worboys, University of Maine, Fulong Wu, Cardiff University, Ray Wyatt, University of Melbourne, Ikuho Yamada, Indiana University, Jaap Zevenbergen, Delft University of Technology, Ming Zhang, University of Texas, Austin, Sisi Zlatanova, Delft University of Technology.
References Gewin, V. (2004). Mapping opportunities. Nature, 427, 376–377. Goodchild, M. F., & Janelle, D. G. (2004). Thinking spatially in the social sciences. In M. F. Goodchild & D. G. Janelle (Eds.), Spatially integrated social science (pp. 3–22). New York: Oxford University Press. Lemmen, C., & van Oosterom, P. (2003). 3D cadastres. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 27, 337–343. Longley, P. A. (2003). Towards better understanding of digital differentiation. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 27, 103–106. Longley, P. A., Goodchild, M. F., Maguire, D. J., & Rhind, D. W. (2005). Geographic information systems and science. Wiley: Chichester. Maguire, D. J., & Longley, P. A. (2005). The emergence of geoportals and their role in spatial data infrastructures. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 29, 3–14. Miller, H. J. (2003). What about people in geographic information science? Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 27, 447–453. Sui, D. (2005). Will ubicomp make GIS invisible? Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 29, 361–367. Tate, N. J., Jarvis, C. H., & Moore, K. E. (2005). Locating spatial thinking in teaching practice. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 29, 87–91.
Paul Longley Editor-in-Chief Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis and Department of Geography, University College London, 1-19 Torrington Place, London WC1E 7HB, United Kingdom Tel.: +44 207 679 1782; fax: +44 207 813 2843 E-mail address: [email protected]