Research Committee, Working Group 1

Initiative on CyberGIS and Decision Support Systems

Members

  • Zhe Zhang (Leader), Texas A&M University
  • Jochen Albrecht, Hunter College
  • Marc Armstrong, University of Iowa
  • Wenwen Li, Arizona State University
  • Lynn Usery, U.S. Geological Survey
  • Guiming Zhang, University of Denver
  • Lei Zou, Texas A&M University

Geographical Information System (GIS) provides technical solutions to help decision-makers understand interactions between spatial and cultural factors in spatial decision-making processes. However, conventional GIS approaches lack support for knowledge sharing and communication among different decision-makers, which weakens their ability to deal with conflicting decision objectives. On the other hand, knowledge is often derived from geospatial data that comes from various data sources in different formats and scales, leading to tremendous computational challenges. A CyberGIS-enabled spatial decision support system (SDSS) represents a framework for integrating advanced cyberinfrastructure, spatial analytical capabilities, spatial and non-spatial data management system, domain knowledge base, and spatial visualization system to tackle challenging decision problems that involve global changes which are geospatially heterogeneous and interdependent.

The objectives for the CyberGIS and Decision Support Systems initiative are as follows:

1.     Build bridges across geospatial application domains by establishing human-centered geospatial knowledge hub to serve diverse research and education communities. The initiative will develop workshops or surveys to collect domain knowledge from decision-makers. The initiative will also emphasize developing citizen science and using social media data mining techniques to generate human-centered and volunteer-based knowledge hub.

2.     Integrate scalable geospatial data and visualization tools into an intelligent decision support framework and advanced cyberinfrastructure to support decision-making across diverse application areas. The initiative aims to promote the development of high-performance geospatial data visualization tools. These tools will provide an easy and secure open-access platform for spatial knowledge representation, visualization, and dissemination. 

3.     Advance geospatial decision science using emerging technologies and transform the research outcomes into high-performance geospatial-inspired software products. The initiative will focus on developing novel decision-making techniques and open software tools using emerging technologies and methods. The initiative will also offer high-performance computing training to GIS students and professionals based on different application research themes.