CyberGIS for Transforming Geospatial Discovery and Innovation

Geographic information science and systems (GIS) have undergone rapid growth during the past several decades. This growing trend seems likely to persist into the foreseeable future driven by numerous diverse applications and enabled by steady progress of related technologies. As a geospatial data deluge permeates broad scientific and societal realms, to sustain the trend, however, requires GIS to be innovated based on synergistic integration of data-intensive and spatial approaches enabled by advanced cyberinfrastructure—a rapidly evolving infrastructure of communication, computing, and information technologies. Consequently, cyberGIS has been developed as a fundamentally new cyberinfrastructure and GIS modality comprising a seamless blending of advanced cyberinfrastructure, GIS, and spatial analysis and modeling capabilities and, thus, has enabled scientific advances and shown broad societal impacts while contributing to the advancement of cyberinfrastructure. For example, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has funded a major multi-institution initiative on cyberGIS software integration for sustained geospatial innovation—arguably the largest investment by NSF on related subjects during the past several years. Therefore, this book represents a timely effort to inform pertinent research communities about opportunities and challenges, roadmaps for research and development, and major progress, trends, and impacts of cyberGIS. The book serves as an authoritative source of information to fill the void of introducing this new, exciting, and growing field.