The UCSB Center for Spatial Studies (spatial@ucsb) is a research center at 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 center was founded in 2008 by

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 ...

, and focuses on

spatial thinking Spatial thinking may refer to: * Spatial cognition * Spatial memory * Spatial intelligence (disambiguation) {{disambiguation ...

across domains, spatial intelligence,

geoinformatics Geoinformatics is the science and the technology which develops and uses information science infrastructure to address the problems of geography, cartography, geosciences and related branches of science and engineering, such as Land Surveying. O ...

geographic information science Geographic information science or geographical information science (GIScience or GISc) is the scientific discipline that studies geographic information, including how it represents phenomena in the real world, how it represents the way humans unders ...

, and

geographic information systems A geographic information system (GIS) is a type of database containing geographic data (that is, descriptions of phenomena for which location is relevant), combined with software tools for managing, analyzing, and visualizing those data. In a br ...

. The center is currently directed by Krzysztof Janowicz, Professor for Geoinformatics. It was directed by Werner Kuhn before. With its multidisciplinary focus, the center hosts speakers, workshops, visiting researchers, and offers an academic Minor in Spatial Studies. The center's mission is to engage in interdisciplinary research and education in how people and technology solve spatial problems and how spatial thinking can be applied to address problems in a wide variety of application domains and research fields. Under Janowicz's directorship, the center put a new focus on Spatial Data Science,

Knowledge graphs Knowledge can be defined as awareness of facts or as practical skills, and may also refer to familiarity with objects or situations. Knowledge of facts, also called propositional knowledge, is often defined as true belief that is distinc ...

, and on technology transfer to the industry more broadly. The center is affiliated with the

National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis 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 State University of New York at Buffalo; and the University of Maine. The ...

and maintain
TeachSpatial
a set of educational resources for spatial thinking.

List of directors

(2008-2012) * Werner Kuhn (2012-2020) * Krzysztof Janowicz (2020-)

References

External links

*Official website: http://spatial.ucsb.edu *Spatial Archives: http://spatial.ucsb.edu/spatial-archives *TeachSpatial: http://teachspatial.org {{authority control University of California, Santa Barbara buildings and structures Non-profit organizations based in California Research institutes in California Geographic data and information organizations in the United States

List of directors

References

Further reading

External links