The table of numbers or statistics is such a common way to organize information that we scarcely if ever think about its significance. Tables are used to organize information about states from the decennial census; to report the comparative performance of national economies; to summarize the performance of individual schools in a state; and for a host

The dazzling development of GIS technology in recent years has rendered each of the traditional, mostly instrumental, views of GIS—as spatial database, mapping tool, and spatial analytical tool—inadequate to capture the fundamental essence of this technology and its social implications. Each year brings new software packages from innovative developers that are easier to use, more powerful, and more easily adopted by users with minimal training. GIS and mapping tools are increasingly available on the World Wide Web (WWW), and an increasing number of sites oŒer advanced GIS services such as route � nding and geocoding. In-vehicle navigation systems using GIS technology are becoming part of our daily lives (Cowen 1994). In the next two years cellphones in the US will be required to be geographically enabled—to be able to report their current location to an accuracy of 100 m—in the interests of accurate response to emergency calls. New imagery is becoming available from commercial sources with spatial resolutions as � ne as 1 m, and is being distributed through new mechanisms such as distributed geolibraries and spatial data clearinghouses (NRC 1993, 1999). New methods of data documentation are being

I Progress in modelling and representation Rapid though developments in geographic information (GI) handling technologies continue to be, digital representations of the real world within GIS will almost always necessarily remain partial and incomplete. This point was implicit in my last report (Longley, 2003) with regard to digital data infrastructures that are becoming ever richer and more detailed, yet inevitably remain deficient in detail. Not just with respect to data per se, but also with respect to the methods and technologies that are used to assemble them into representations of the real world, there is a sense that the research horizon continues to recede ahead of us, until the realization dawns that attempts to built the perfect representation are almost inevitably doomed to failure. Research effort must therefore refocus upon effective management of the uncertainties that are inherent in incomplete representational models of reality (see Miller, 2003). In this report I would like to consider the interplay between networked computer technologies and new approaches to modelling that are helping to further this objective. For human geographers, it is nearly 40 years since the general notion of the ‘model’

This paper provides a new representation for fields (continuous surfaces) in Geographical Information Systems (GIS), based on the notion of spatial functions and their combinations. Following Tomlin’s (1990) Map Algebra, the term “Map Calculus” is used for this new representation. In Map Calculus, GIS layers are stored as functions, and new layers can be created by combinations of other functions. This paper explains the principles of Map Calculus and demonstrates the creation of function-based layers and their supporting management mechanism. The proposal is based on Church’s (1941) Lambda Calculus and elements of functional computer languages (such as Lisp or Scheme).

INTRODUCTION The analysis of space and place has become an increasingly pivotal component of social science research during the past two decades. In part this is attributable to the transformation of social space around the globe, accompanied by shifts of varying degrees of magnitude in social science conceptualizing and theorizing. One aspect of these changes is subsumed under the general notion of "space-time compression" and results largely from such revolutions in information and communication technology as the microchip, satellite television, and low-cost, high-volume transoceanic shipping and travel. Other rapid transformations result from huge shifts in populations across the globe in migrations of unparalleled scope and scale. Also of note are the changing political landscapes of the late 20 th Century with their kaleidoscope effects of expanded (e.g., the European Community) or contracted (e.g., former Soviet Union states) territorial boundaries. All o

Abstract. Segregation measures have been applied in the study of many societies and traditionally such measures have been used to assess the degree of division between social and cultural groups across national or regional areas. The degree of segregation can vary substantially from place to place even within cities. In this paper, the concern is with religious/political segregation – particularly the proportion of Protestants (often taken as an indicator of Unionism) to Catholics (often taken as an indicator of Nationalism). This paper examines a variety of global measures and also local measures that account for spatial variation in segregation. The dissimilarity index D is one widely used measure and this can be adapted to account for spatial variation. Wong (2003) discusses a range of spatial segregation measures including a variant of the D index. In the present paper, global and local (spatial) variants of D and other indices are computed based on the religious/political composition of Northern Ireland with 2001 census Output Areas as the measurement unit. The paper demonstrates (i) the high degree of spatial variation in segregation in Northern Ireland and (ii) compares results obtained using a variety of global and local measures of segregation. 1.

Mozambique has suffered from 16 years of war, which terminated in 1992. The following years were characterized by political stabilization and rigid economical transformations resulting in rapid overall socio-economic growth. Through a careful study of the economic growth process in Mozambique, it is possible to correlate the requirements in GIS applications with the socioeconomic development of the country. With changing conditions in Mozambique the demand for applications in Geoinformation changed. Immediately after the war applications were based on issues such as the relocation of refugees, the control of informal settlements and food security. Later on, land use/land cover data as well as support to activities concerning demining became important. With the political shift from centralized to decentralized structures, laid down in the land act and water law, generated a demand for cadastre and local-scale maps. Ongoing post-war rehabilitation, sanitation and new construction of infrastructures provide a variety of Geoinformation applications. With the growing service sector the demand for GIS will further increase. Another important area of GIS applications is disaster risk management, as Mozambique is periodically affected by natural disasters. Applications were part of disaster mitigation, but will in future be

Introduction Understanding the spatial distribution of data from phenomena that occur in space constitute today a great challenge to the elucidation of central questions in many areas of knowledge, be it in health, in environment, in geology, in agronomy, among many others. Such studies are becoming more and more common, due to the availability of low cost Geographic Information System (GIS) with user-friendly interfaces. These systems allow the spatial visualization of variables such as individual populations, quality of life indexes or company sales in a region using maps. To achieve that it is enough to have a database and a geographic base (like a map of the municipalities), and the GIS is capable of presenting a colored map that allows the visualization of the spatial pattern of the phenomenon. Besides the visual perception of the spatial distribution of the phenomenon, it is very useful to translate the existing patterns into objective and measurable considerations, like in the

This document describes work undertaken as part of a programme of study at the International Institute for Geo-information Science and Earth Observation. All views and opinions expressed therein remain the sole responsibility of the author, and do not necessarily represent those of the institute

Decision support system based on socio-demographic segmentation and distribution channel analysis in the US furniture market