This special issue collects enhanced and extended versions of papers that were presented at the Symposium on Spatial Vagueness, Uncertainty, and Granularity held in October 2001. The contributions examine fundamental problems in the analysis of spatial vagueness and uncertainty, and the editors hope this selection stimulates further investigation in this growing subfield of the theory of spatial information.

Spatial information is pervaded by uncertainty. Indeed, geographical data is often obtained by an imperfect interpretation of remote sensing images, while people attach ill-defined or ambiguous labels to places and their properties. As another example, medical images are often the result of measurements by imprecise sensors (e.g. MRI scans). Moreover, by processing spatial information in real-world applications, additional uncertainty is introduced, e.g. due to the use of interpolation/extrapolation techniques or to conflicts that are detected in an information fusion step. To the best of our knowledge, this book presents the first overview of spatial uncertainty which goes beyond the setting of geographical information systems. Uncertainty issues are especially addressed from a representation and reasoning point of view. In particular, the book consists of 14 chapters, which are clustered around three central topics. The first of these topics is about the uncertainty in meaning of linguistic descriptions of spatial scenes. Second, the issue of reasoning about spatial relations and dealing with inconsistency in information merging is studied. Finally, interpolation and prediction of spatial phenomena are investigated, both at the methodological level and from an application-oriented perspective. The concept of uncertainty by itself is understood in a broad sense, including both quantitative and more qualitative approaches, dealing with variability, epistemic uncertainty, as well as with vagueness of terms.

An examination of emerging forms of knowledge creation using Web-based technologies, analyzed from an interdisciplinary perspective.

"The definitive guide to a technology that succeeds or fails depending upon our ability to accommodate societal context and structures. This handbook is lucid, integrative, comprehensive and, above all, prescient in its interpretation of GIS implementation as a societal process." - Paul Longley, University College London "This is truly a handbook - a book you will want to keep on hand for frequent reference and to which GIS professors should direct students entering our field... Selection of a few of the chapters for individual attention is difficult because each one contributes meaningfully to the overall message of this volume. An important collection of articles that will set the tone for the next two decades of discourse and research about GIS and society." - Journal of Geographical Analysis Over the past twenty years research on the evolving relationship between GIS and Society has been expanding into a wide variety of topical areas, becoming in the process an increasingly challenging and multifaceted endeavour. The SAGE Handbook of GIS and Society is a retrospective and prospective overview of GIS and Society research that provides an expansive and critical assessment of work in that field. Emphasizing the theoretical, methodological and substantive diversity within GIS and Society research, the book highlights the distinctiveness and intellectual coherence of the subject as a field of study, while also examining its resonances with and between key themes, and among disciplines ranging from geography and computer science to sociology, anthropology, and the health and environmental sciences. Comprising 27 chapters, often with an international focus, the book is organized into six sections: Foundations of Geographic Information and Society Geographical Information and Modern Life Alternative Representations of Geographic Information and Society Organizations and Institutions Participation and Community Issues Value, Fairness, and Privacy Aimed at academics, researchers, postgraduates, and GIS practitioners, this Handbook will be the basic reference for any inquiry applying GIS to societal issues.

As research in the geosciences and social sciences becomes increasingly dependent on computers, applications such as geographical information systems are becoming indispensable tools. But the digital representations of phenomena that these systems require are often of poor quality, leading to inaccurate results, uncertainty, error propagation, and

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Conference on Geographic Information Science, GIScience 2002, held in Boulder, Colorado, USA in September 2002.The 24 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 64 paper submissions. Among the topics addressed are Voronoi diagram representation, geospacial database design, vector data transmission, geographic information retrieval, geo-ontologies, relative motion analysis, Web-based maps information retrieval, spatial pattern recognition, environmental decision support systems, multi-scale spatial databases, mobile journey planning, searching geographical data, indexing, terrain modeling, spatial allocation, distributed geographic internet information systems, and spatio-thematic information programming.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering, CAiSE 2005, held in Porto, Portugal in June 2005. The 39 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 282 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on conceptual modeling, metamodeling, databases, query processing, process modeling and workflow systems, requirements engineering, model transformation, knowledge management and verification, Web services, Web engineering, software testing, and software quality.