Pre-conference workshop of GeoInfo2010 November 27, 2010

The research symposium on GIScience for Environmental Change (“GeoChange”) is the second cooperative workshop organized by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) and the Institute for Geoinformatics (ifigi), University of Münster. It will be held on November 27, 2010 at Campos do Jordao, Brazil. Read more about the symposium programme.

The goals of the “GeoChange” research symposium are to discuss and initiate solutions to modelling environmental change based on scientific achievements in the following areas:

Spatio-temporal data sources are the backbone for GeoChange research. They are the basis for analysis of current situations and simulations. Such data sources can be based on (remote & in-situ) sensor data, cadastral data and Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI, such as the Openstreetmap project). A major challenge now is to enable real-time access of such different data sources for Geochange research. This question addresses architectural issues such as scalability (massive concurrent amount of user requests) and data volume (massive amount of data to be transferred).

Understanding and modeling change in the environment is boosted by ubiquitous sensing capabilities. Yet, it remains largely unclear what it means to sense change. How do we get from snap shot data at low levels of abstraction to an understanding of dynamic processes and their impacts? This track of the symposium is devoted to a discussion of achievements and challenges in ontologies of environmental processes and in sensor data abstraction.

When modelling spatio-temporal phenomena, some kind of spatial and temporal resolution needs to be chosen. In addition, to reconstruct a spatio-temporal field from limited sample data, estimation algorithms are used that typically aggregate, smooth variability and introduce errors. When we try to figure out relationships between variables in order to model the processes that govern geochange, resolution choices, aggregation strategies and estimation errors play a role and need to be taken into account. This track will address these, and other change and scale related issues.

Ontologies are built, shared and published in order to semantically integrate and link data sets coming from different sources. Machine Learning and Knowledge Discovery are intended to find out relationships for e.g. building ontologies, or finding useful patterns from the Web of Data. In this track we will discuss research problems and results regarding these kinds of combinations of ontological and statistical approaches.

Orotour Garden Hotel, in Campos do Jordão (São Paulo).

GeoChange invites extended abstracts on the following tracks:

• Data sources for GeoChange research
• Sensing change
• Change and scale – spatial and temporal
• Combining statistical and ontological models

The extended abstracts will be reviewed by the program committee. Selected contributions will be invited for presentation at the symposium and be published in the conference proceedings.

Extended abstracts of 2-3 pages (incl. tables, figures, references, …) should be submitted by September 15, 2010.

Please use MyReview to submit your contribution. Templates can be found here.

The organizing committee will notify you by September 30, 2010 about acceptance.

Brazilian Young Researchers can apply for a symposium grant.

Grants for Brazilian Young Researchers

Call for applications of Brazilian young researchers for a symposium grant

The GeoChange Research Symposium offers four symposium grants for Brazilian Young Researchers. Each grant is 500 € lump sum for travel support.

Applicants need to have Brazilian citizenship, completed a Master programme in a pertinent area and propose an extended abstract for one of the Geochange symposium tracks. Postdoctoral candidates will be considered if their PHD was completed within the last four years.

Applications with letter of motivation, CV, certificates, references and extended abstract for the Geochange symposium are to be sent to geochange@dpi.inpe.br by September 15, 2010.

In addition, the extended abstract for the Geochange research symposium is to be submitted via the MyReview submission tool.

The registration fee amounts 20 €/ R$ 50 and is to be paid on site. The number of participants for the GeoChange Research Symposium is limited to 50.

• Gilberto Câmara, INPE, Brazil (Chair)
• Edzer Pebesma, ifgi, Germany (Chair)
• Werner Kuhn, ifgi, Germany
• Lúbia Vinhas, INPE, Brazil
• Tomi Kauppinen, ifgi, Germany
• Angela Schwering, ifgi, Germany
• Theodor Förster, ifgi, Germany

• Lúbia Vinhas, INPE, Brazil
• Christoph Brox, ifgi, Germany
• Giovana Mira de Espindola, INPE, Brazil
• Katharina Henneböhl, ifgi, Germany

geochange@dpi.inpe.br