For the sixth consecutive year, the AGILE conference promoted the publication a book collecting high-level scientific contributions from unpublished fundamental scientific research. The papers published in the AGILE 2012 LNG&C volume contribute substantially to Geographical Information Science developments and to the success of the 15th AGILE conference (Avignon, France, 24-27April, 2012) under the title ‘Bridging the Geographic Information Sciences’. This year’s conference emphasizes that geoinformation science, geomatics and spatial analysis are fields in which different disciplines, epistemologies and scientific cultures meet. Indeed, the scientific articles published in this volume cover a wide diversity of GIScience related themes, including: Spatio-temporal Data Modelling and Visualisation; Spatial Data Infrastructures; Geo Web Services and Geo Semantic Web; Modelling and Management of Uncertainty; Spatio-temporal Data Quality and Metadata; Mobility of Persons, Objects and Systems, Transports and Flows; Spatial Analysis, Geostatistics, and Geo Information Retrieval; Modelling and Spatial Analysis of Urban Dynamics, Urban GIS; GIS and Spatial Analysis for Global Change Modelling, Impact on Space; and Geographic Information Science: links with other disciplines and people.

As the use of geographical information systems develops apace, a significant strand of research activity is being directed to the fundamental nature of geographic information. This volume contains a collection of essays and discussions on this theme. What is geographic information? What fundamental principles are associated with it? How can

"This book provides a comprehensive treatment of collaborative GIS focusing on system design, group spatial planning and mapping; modeling, decision support, and visualization; and internet and wireless applications"--Provided by publisher.

"The Steinbergs have produced a very relevant book for the times. . . . While many books have emerged on the details of GIS, few resources exist to help teach the merger of GIS with more standard research methods. The Steinbergs accomplish this goal in a way that is readily accessible even to undergraduates." —Theodore Wagenaar, Miami University "The Steinbergs take the reader through all of the essential foundations of GIS... using examples drawn from the social sciences throughout. This book will be essential reading for any social scientist looking for a straightforward introduction to GIS." —Mike Goodchild, University of California, Santa Barbara Geographic Information Systems for the Social Sciences: Investigating Space and Place is the first book to take a cutting-edge approach to integrating spatial concepts into the social sciences. In this text, authors Steven J. Steinberg and Sheila L. Steinberg simplify GIS (Geographic Information Systems) for practitioners and students in the social sciences through the use of examples and actual program exercises so that they can become comfortable incorporating this research tool into their repertoire and scope of interest. The authors provide learning objectives for each chapter, chapter summaries, links to relevant Web sites, as well as suggestions for student research projects. Key Features: Presents step-by-step guidance for integrating GIS with both quantitative and qualitative research Provides an introduction to the use of GIS technology written at an accessible level for individuals without GIS experience while providing depth and guidance appropriate to experienced GIS users Offers an associated interactive Web site—http://www.socialsciencegis.org—to provide a forum for sharing experience and ideas, input to the authors, and a variety of other examples, data, and information related to the topics covered in the text Geographic Information Systems for the Social Sciences offers a nuts-and-bolts introduction to GIS for undergraduate and graduate students taking methods courses across the social sciences. It is an excellent textbook for courses dedicated to GIS research and its applications in the fields of Sociology, Criminology, Public Health, Geography, Anthropology, Political Science, and Environmental Studies. It is also a valuable resource for any social scientist or practitioner interested in applying GIS technology to his or her work. An Instructor′s Resource CD, containing PowerPoint slides, test questions, and suggested Web site links, among other items, is also available to all professors adopting this text.

"This book provides an overview of why geography is important in the investigation of health, the importance of the main components of a GIS, how important neighborhood context is when using a GIS, and the general differences found between urban and rural health environments"--Provided by publisher.

Geographic information systems have developed rapidly in the past decade, and are now a major class of software, with applications that include infrastructure maintenance, resource management, agriculture, Earth science, and planning. But a lack of standards has led to a general inability for one GIS to interoperate with another. It is difficult for one GIS to share data with another, or for people trained on one system to adapt easily to the commands and user interface of another. Failure to interoperate is a problem at many levels, ranging from the purely technical to the semantic and the institutional. Interoperating Geographic Information Systems is about efforts to improve the ability of GISs to interoperate, and has been assembled through a collaboration between academic researchers and the software vendor community under the auspices of the US National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis and the Open GIS Consortium Inc. It includes chapters on the basic principles and the various conceptual frameworks that the research community has developed to think about the problem. Other chapters review a wide range of applications and the experiences of the authors in trying to achieve interoperability at a practical level. Interoperability opens enormous potential for new ways of using GIS and new mechanisms for exchanging data, and these are covered in chapters on information marketplaces, with special reference to geographic information. Institutional arrangements are also likely to be profoundly affected by the trend towards interoperable systems, and nowhere is the impact of interoperability more likely to cause fundamental change than in education, as educators address the needs of a new generation of GIS users with access to a new generation of tools. The book concludes with a series of chapters on education and institutional change. Interoperating Geographic Information Systems is suitable as a secondary text for graduate level courses in computer science, geography, spatial databases, and interoperability and as a reference for researchers and practitioners in industry, commerce and government.

This volume represents a bold attempt by the editors to bring scholars from distinct research orientations together, to discuss the interplay between the geographic and social dimensions of different kinds of interaction networks. Within the humanities, networks afford an umbrella of approaches to the study of social relations and their patterning, both through qualitative and quantitative applications, with two main perspectives standing out: those centered.