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.

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 book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Conference on Interoperating Geographic Information Systems, INTEROP'99, held in Zurich, Switzerland in March 1999. The volume presents 22 revised full papers carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. Also included are three invited full papers. The book addresses various topics of database interoperability and spatial data processing in particular identification, infrastructure, implementation, vectors and graphics, semantics, heterogeneous databases and representation.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the International Workshop on Integrated Databases, Digital Images and GIS, ISD'99, held in Portland, Maine, USA in June 1999. The 18 revised full papers presented went through a double reviewing process and were selected from nearly 40 original submissions. The book is divided into parts on object extraction from raster images, geospatial analysis, formalisms and modeling, and data access.

Urban spaces are being called upon to develop a capacity for resilience and sustainability in order to meet the major challenges they face. To achieve such a goal, a practical development framework must be implemented in order to take advantage of the technological innovations that characterize the field of construction and urban engineering. Today, multi-scale BIM is bringing about significant changes that are redefining the paradigms of urban management. It facilitates simulations of the sustainability of urban spaces with respect to several criteria; most notably relating to energy, the economy and the environment. Building Information Modeling for a Smart and Sustainable Urban Space proposes a theoretical and practical framework for implementing BIM models for the creation of sustainable and intelligent urban spaces. It addresses the issues of acquisition, modeling, interoperability, and BIM and GIS integration for the production of BIM models. Case studies are presented, providing a practical dimension that demonstrates the production process of the urban model and its contribution to multiscale simulations, particularly in real estate evaluation and urban renewal.