The National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) was founded in 1988 and hosted at three member campuses: The

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduate ...

; the

State University of New York at Buffalo The State University of New York at Buffalo, commonly called the University at Buffalo (UB) and sometimes called SUNY Buffalo, is a public research university with campuses in Buffalo and Amherst, New York. The university was founded in 1846 ...

; and the

University of Maine The University of Maine (UMaine or UMO) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Orono, Maine. It was established in 1865 as the land-grant college of Maine and is the Flagship universities, flagshi ...

. The center was founded after receiving a $5 million grant from the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

. Ron Abler—then at NSF—described the rationale for the NCGIA and compared it to corresponding efforts in the UK. Notable faculty involved with the NCGIA include

Michael Goodchild Michael Frank Goodchild (born February 24, 1944) is a British-American geographer. He is an Emeritus Professor of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara. After nineteen years at the University of Western Ontario, including th ...

Michael Batty Michael Batty (born 11 January 1945) is a British urban planner, geographer and spatial data scientist, and Bartlett Professor of Planning in The Bartlett at University College London . He has been Director—now Chairman—of the Centre fo ...

David Mark David Alechenu Bonaventure Mark , is a retired Nigerian Army Brigadier General and politician. He was President of the Senate of Nigeria from 2007 to 2015 and was the Senator for Benue South Senatorial District Benue State. He is a member of the ...

, A. Stewart Fotheringham, Andrew Frank,

Helen Couclelis Helen may refer to: People * Helen of Troy, in Greek mythology, the most beautiful woman in the world * Helen (actress) (born 1938), Indian actress * Helen (given name), a given name (including a list of people with the name) Places * Helen, ...

Keith Clarke Keith may refer to: People and fictional characters * Keith (given name), includes a list of people and fictional characters * Keith (surname) * Keith (singer), American singer James Keefer (born 1949) * Baron Keith, a line of Scottish barons i ...

Luc Anselin Luc Anselin (born December 1, 1953) is one of the developers of the field of spatial econometrics. Life and contributions Luc Anselin was previously the Regents' Professor, Walter Isard Chair and Director of the School of Geographical Sciences an ...

Waldo R. Tobler Waldo Rudolph Tobler (November 16, 1930 – February 20, 2018) was an American- Swiss geographer and cartographer. Tobler's idea that "Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things" is referred ...

amongst others.

David William Rhind David William Rhind is a British geographer and expert on geographic information systems (GIS). He was Vice-Chancellor of City University, London, until July 2007. Rhind graduated in geography and geology from the University of Bristol in 1965 ...

and Mike Goodchild compare later US and the UK approach. The research plan was organized along so-called Research Initiatives, which generally started and ended with "specialist meetings", where interdisciplinary teams discussed pressing research issues. Often a publication followed: * Initiative 1: Accuracy of spatial databases, led by

* Initiative 2: Languages of Spatial Relations, led by David Mark and

Andrew U. Frank Andrew U. Frank (born February 3, 1948) was a Swiss-Austrian professor for geoinformation at Vienna University of Technology from 1992 until 2016. Previously he was Professor at the University of Maine at Orono. Frank was recognized for his achi ...

* Initiative 3: Multiple Representations, led by Barbara Buttenfield * Initiative 4: The Use and Value of Geographic Information, led by Harlan Onsrud and Hugh Calkins * Initiative 5: Architecture of Very Large Spatial Databases, led by Terence Smith and

* Initiative 6: Spatial Decision Support Systems (SDSS), led by Paul Densham and Michael Goodchild * Initiative 7: Visualizing the Quality of Spatial Information, led by Kate Beard and Barbara Buttenfield * Initiative 8: Formalizing Cartographic Knowledge, led by Barbara Buttenfield * Initiative 9: Institutions Sharing Geographic Information, led by Harlan Onsrud and Gerard Rushton * Initiative 10: Spatio-Temporal Reasoning in GIS, led by Max Egenhofer and Reginald Golledge * Initiative 12: Integration of Remote Sensing and GIS, led by John Estes, Frank Davis and Jeffrey Star In 1992 the list of publications resulting from these research initiatives and other efforts of the NCGIA were published in the ''

International Journal of Geographical Information Systems ''International Journal of Geographical Information Science'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Taylor & Francis. The editor-in-chief is May Yuan (University of Texas at Dallas), who succeeded Brian Lees (geographer) , Br ...

''. The NCGIA produces a Core Curriculum for teaching Geographic Information SystemsGoodchild, M.F., and K.K. Kemp, eds. 1990. NCGIA Core Curriculum in GIS. National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis, University of California, Santa Barbara CA http://ibis.geog.ubc.ca/courses/klink/gis.notes/ncgia/toc.html

References

External links

NCGIA Official websiteNCGIA @ U. of MaineNCGIA @ BuffaloUCSB Center for Spatial Studies (spatial@ucsb)
{{DEFAULTSORT:National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis 1988 establishments in the United States Research institutes established in 1988 Geographic data and information organizations in the United States

See also

References

External links