The Center for Spatial Analysis is pleased to announce Introduction to ArcGIS II Training Plus August 11-14. Registration deadline is August 1st. More information and registration is available online.

The application period for the the Geospatial Summer Institute fellowship program is now open. This is an intensive, hands-on training in GIS, GPS and remote sensing for students of all Oklahoma NASA Space Grant universities. All application material and information is now online.

Introduction to ArcGIS I Training Plus will be offered by CSA Associate Director and ESRI authorized instructor Dr. Tarek Rashed. Registration deadline is March 10th. Full information and online registration is available here.

CSA will participate in GIS Day at the Capitol on March 12, 2008. The event is corrdinated by the Oklahoma Geographic Information Council to promote geospatial information technology to our state legislators and highlight work from across the state of Oklahoma. More information is available at: http://okmaps.onenet.net/GIS_day.htm

CSA is pleased to welcome new undergraduate research assistant Sarah Glenn. Sarah is a Meteorology major and will be working under Dr. May Yuan of CSA and Dr. William Beasley of Meterology on a lightning visualization project with funding from EPSCoR and Oklahoma NASA Space Grant.

The registration period for the Introduction to ArcGIS I Training Plus course is now open. The course will cover the fundamentals of GIS software including ArcMap^TM, ArcCatalog^TM and ArcToolbox^TM All registration material and information is now online.

Anne Brodie and Kathy Hines will be traveling to Kansas City, Missouri April 20th-24th to attend the Mid-America GIS Consortium (MAGIC) 2008 Symposium. MAGIC is a nonprofit, educational organization established to foster the applications of GIS and related spatial technologies in the mid-continent region. MAGIC states include, but are not limited to: Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma and South Dakota. While attending the symposium, Anne and Kathy will participate in a Panel Discussion on Regional Clearinghouses, attend short courses and present a poster which is being created by Trung Tran with input from several CSA staff.

Four CSA students will give presentations at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the AAG in Boston, April 15-19. James Bothwell will present "Representation and Analysis of Geographic Kinematics" from his doctoral dissertation research in geographic dynamics. Semi Caliskan will give a talk entitled "GIS Analysis of Schistosomiasis Transmission in West Samar" based on her work with Dr. May Yuan. Dustin Howard will speak on "Exploring Ideoscapes: The Spatialization of Psychological Variables" concerning his work coupling GIS and self organizing maps. Chih-Yu Lai will present "Examining the Effect of Nuclear Waste Shipments on Property Values". Muhammad T. Rahman will give a talk on "Using LiDAR Data for Tree Height and Density Measurements" from his doctoral research with Dr. Tarek Rashed.

The Center for Spatial Analysis is partnering with the Oklahoma Cooperative Extension to provide hands-on assistance in our computer lab for youth and adult leaders to develop and complete their Community Atlas projects under grants from Environmental Research Systems Institute (ESRI). CSA is also a direct participant with two local county 4-H teams who are conducting community service projects under the ESRI Alert, Evacuate and Shelter grants program on emergency preparedness.

CSA is pleased to welcome Brian Hart, newly hired IT Specialist II. Brian graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a B.S in Aviation Management. Brian has a long history of working in IT and has held several positions as a student and beyond at OU. Most recently he has been employed with the FAA at Will Rogers Airport as Business Analyst and IT Liaison for the Flight Operations Group.

In cooperation with Impact Computing (http://www.impact-computing.com/), CSA recently received a small business research initiative (SBIR) phase I award from the Army Corp of Engineers. The project aims to develop a new spatiotemporal data model capable of representing and analyzing transition, mutation, and movement.



Data models are at the heart of any information system, with the data model serving as the infrastructure that ultimately determines what meaningful information can be distilled from the data. Though conventional Geographic Information System (GIS) data models have been extended to support some of today’s more advanced spatio-temporal queries and capabilities, a fundamental shift in our conceptualization and representation of spatio-temporal dynamics is necessary in order to truly harness and exploit the informational power of these datasets.



Our Phase 1 research emphasizes the need to represent geographic dynamics in spatio-temporal data models. Conventionally, GIS databases incorporate the temporal dimension as attributes of spatial data elements, or through time-stamping of individual data layers, records or values. This constraining of time to spatial data layers or elements is self-limiting in that it is fundamentally incapable of representing movement, mutation, deformation (or any other spatio-temporal behavior that involves changes to location, geometry, size, topology, and aggregated spatial characteristics), especially when these changes transcend or transform the constraints or nature of the spatial elements to which they relate.



Extending beyond the conventional treatment of space and time in GIS databases, our Phase 1 research takes a new direction to tackle the aforementioned challenges. Our premise is that spatio-temporal data are samples of geographic dynamics and that understanding the drivers and outcomes of these geographic dynamics is the ultimate goal of a spatio-temporal GIS. Hence, an expressive spatio-temporal GIS must be able to represent these paradigms and relationships. While there are no unified definitions of spatio-temporal dynamics in literature, we consider its drivers to include activities, processes, and events, and its outcomes to primarily consist of change, movement and mutation (i.e., integration, fragmentation, dispersion, contraction, intensification, diminution, etc.).

Dr. May Yuan recently published a book with Dr. Kathleen Stewart Hornsby at University of Iowa (http://www.uiowa.edu/~geog/faculty/stewart/stewart.shtml) on Computation and Visualization for the Understanding of Dynamics in Geographic Domains http://www.amazon.com/Computation-Visualization-Understanding-Dynamics-Geographic/dp/1420060325/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200761058&sr=8-1). The book expands up discussions in a workshop sponsored by geospatial intelligence communities and University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (http://www.ucgis.org/dynamics_workshop/) and gives an overview of the state of research and how this research relates to intelligence analysis. It addresses broad issues and challenges in areas, such as spatiotemporal analysis and modeling, spatiotemporal visual analytics; spatiotemporal data mining, spatiotemporal reasoning, and spatiotemporal ontologies.


A companion edited book based on collections of research papers presented at the workshop is scheduled to be published in April 2008. The edited book is entitled Understanding Dynamics of Geographic Domains (http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Dynamics-Geographic-Domains-Kathleen/dp/1420060341/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200761509&sr=8-7)

As part of our educational outreach mission under Oklahoma NASA Space Grant CSA students will provide training and lab assistance to 4-H clubs participating in the ESRI Community Atlas project. More details will be posted for participants as they become available.

Effective 14 December 2007, CSA director Dr. May Yuan, started her role as the regional editor of Americas for the International Journal of Geographic Information Science (http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/tf/13658816.html). In addition, Dr. Yuan also serves on the editorial boards for Annals of American Association of Geographers and Transaction in GIS.

CSA will celebrate GIS Day with Advanced Placement Human Geography students from Norman High. With support from Oklahoma NASA Space Grant, CSA research assistants and faculty will provide a day of hands on activities that integrate GIS, GPS and remote sensing technologies. Students from Norman High will also have the opportunity to meet faculty from the OU Department of Geography, receive geography career and education materials, and compete in a geography bowl.

Due to a planned service outage at another agency, certain imagery datasets may not be avaialable through the Data Warehouse over the week of Thanksgiving. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Matthew Collier recently won the poster contest at the 10th Annual Oklahoma SCAUG Conference. Matthew is a Ph.D. Student at OU's Center for Spatial Analysis. His poster, "Mapping with Recreational Grade GPS," was one of 13 entries. The SCAUG (South Central Arc Users Group) conference was well attended this year, with roughly 270 registrants.

Matthew is a longtime GPS enthusiast, and has helped organize numerous GPS activities, including clinics and demonstrations for several local groups.

On the web:
College of Atmospheric & Geographic Sciences http://ags.ou.edu
Center for Spatial Analysis http://csa.ou.edu
South Central Arc User Group http://scaug.org

Portions of our website were inaccessible for about half an hour this morning due a scripting error. The problem has been resolved, and we apologize for any inconvenience.

The Center for Spatial Analysis has an immediate opening for an IT Specialist II. The full listing can be viewed here.

The Development of Geographic Information Science and Technology: the past, the present, the challenges, and the future. Presented by Dr. David Maguire (Director of Corporate Product Planning, ESRI) and Dr. Mike Phoenix (Manager of Education Solutions, ESRI). The colloquium will take place at the National Weather Center Auditorium (room 1350).

Many of CSA's data warehouse and spatial tools will be unavailable today while we relocate our servers to a new, faster location. Our data products should be available again late this afternoon. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Update 7/11/07 3:45 PM: The servers are now ready to go, and we've got a request in with our IT department to update the DNS. Once that happens everything should be accessible withing a couple of hours.

Update 7/12/07 10:15 AM: We've been told that DNS information has been updated and our sites are starting to come back online.

Update 7/12/07 1:45 PM: Our systems are now all running normally. Some users may still have difficulty accessing information until their ISP's have updated their DNS information, which typically takes less than 24 hours.

With support from Oklahoma NASA Space Grant Consortium, the Geospatial Summer Institute provided undergraduate and graduate students with opportunities to explore technological, application, and industrial experiences in remote sensing, GPS, and GIS. The program included intensive hands-on geo-techniques training and tours to geospatial industries and government agencies. Photos from the 2007 institute are now online.

The OK GITA Spring Chapter Meeting will be from 2-4pm, May 3, 2007, at the National Weather Center room 1350. We are proud to announce that our guest speaker will be Robert Stokes, the GIS Administrator for the Cherokee Nation. Refreshments will be provided by The James W. Sewall Company and the Center for Spatial Analysis. Please download this flyer for more information.

The registration period for the Introduction to ArcGIS I Training Plus course is now open. The course will cover the fundamentals of GIS software including ArcMap™, ArcCatalog™ and ArcToolbox™ All registration material and information is now online.

The application period for the the Geospatial Summer Institute fellowship program has been extended to May 7th and submission guidelines have been updated. This is an intensive, hands-on training in GIS, GPS and remote sensing for students of all Oklahoma NASA Space Grant universities. All application material and information is is available here.

The application period for the the Geospatial Summer Institute fellowship program is now open. This is an intensive, hands-on training in GIS, GPS and remote sensing for students of all Oklahoma NASA Space Grant universities. All application material and information is now online.

GIS Day at the Capitol is a unique opportunity for the public and private sectors to highlight the uses of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and to showcase how the technology is being used as a decision-making tool throughout the state of Oklahoma. On Wednesday, March 14, over 25 state, federal, and local agencies will be on hand to demonstrate the power of GIS. Come join us on the fourth floor rotunda in the State Capitol Building from 9 am to 3 pm.

The new and improved CSA site is now online.

With support from Oklahoma NASA Space Grant CSA and volunteers from the National Weather Center Program presented the GeoGirl Badge workshop on March 10th. More than 40 Junior Girl Scouts age 9-12 from the Sooner Council District earned the Weather Watch badge.