This book contains a selection of papers from the 16th International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling (SDH), the premier long-running forum in geographical information science. This collection offers readers exemplary contributions to geospatial scholarship and practice from the conference's 30th anniversary.

The International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling is the premier research forum for Geographic Information Science. The Symposium is particularly strong in respect to identifying significant new developments in this field. The papers published in this volume are carefully refereed by an international programme committee composed of experts in various areas of GIS who are especially renowned for their scientific innovation.

This book provides a cross-section of cutting-edge research areas being pursued by researchers in spatial data handling and geographic information science (GIS). It presents selected papers on the advancement of spatial data handling and GIS in digital cartography, geospatial data integration, geospatial database and data infrastructures, geospatial data modeling, GIS for sustainable development, the interoperability of heterogeneous spatial data systems, location-based services, spatial knowledge discovery and data mining, spatial decision support systems, spatial data structures and algorithms, spatial statistics, spatial data quality and uncertainty, the visualization of spatial data, and web and wireless applications in GIS.

This volume is based on the reviewed and edited proceedings of the International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling 2012, held in Bonn. The 15th SDH brought together scholars and professionals from the international GIScience community to present the latest research achievements and to share experiences in Geospatial dynamics, geosimulation and exploratory visualization.

This book, entitled Advances in Spatial Data Handling, is a compendium of papers resulting from the International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling (SDH), held in Ottawa, Canada, July 9-12, 2002. The SDH conference series has been organised as one of the main activities of the International Geographical Union (IGU) since it was first started in Zurich in 1984. In the late 1990’s the IGU Commission of Geographic Information Systems was discontinued and a study group was formed to succeed it in 1997. Much like the IGU Commission, the objectives of the Study Group are to create a network of people and research centres addressing geographical information science and to facilitate exchange of information. The International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling, which is the most important activity of the IGU Study Group, has, throughout its 18 year history been highly regarded as one of the most important GIS conferences in the world.

This proceedings volume introduces recent work on the storage, retrieval and visualization of spatial Big Data, data-intensive geospatial computing and related data quality issues. Further, it addresses traditional topics such as multi-scale spatial data representations, knowledge discovery, space-time modeling, and geological applications. Spatial analysis and data mining are increasingly facing the challenges of Big Data as more and more types of crowd sourcing spatial data are used in GIScience, such as movement trajectories, cellular phone calls, and social networks. In order to effectively manage these massive data collections, new methods and algorithms are called for. The book highlights state-of-the-art advances in the handling and application of spatial data, especially spatial Big Data, offering a cutting-edge reference guide for graduate students, researchers and practitioners in the field of GIScience.

This text marks the 6th Symposium in the series of Symposia examining spatial data handling.