PROPOSED RESEARCH CHALLENGES 2003

1.    Multimedia and visualization: particularly virtual reality and cave
technologies for geographic understanding.

2.    Spherical reference systems for global research: the latitude and
longitude system is not appropriate for metric analysis. A global
geo-reference system that enables direct metric computation and spatial
analysis is critical to global research, such as globalization and
global climate change.

3.    Integration of time and space in geographic representation: the central
issue here is to enable representation, query, and analysis of dynamic
processes in GIS for a better understanding of the Earth system.

4.    Integration of geographic data and knowledge: the key concern here is
how to make GIS data smart, in the sense that the system has the
knowledge of data relevance and is able to apply appropriate methods for
data aggregation, data analysis, and data summation.

5.    Geocomputation: while GIS technology has become part of the IT
mainstream, there is little improvement in making GIS as a major tool
for scientific understanding. One key reason is that GIS technology
lacks direct support for scientific modeling, such as numerical modeling
and dynamic modeling. It is critical to develop GIS computational
components that couple geospatial data and models to bring GIS to the
mainstream of science.