As Geographic Information Systems (GIS) develop, there is a need to demystify the complex geographical world to facilitate computerization in GIS by the inaccuracies that emerge from man-machine interactions in data acquisition and by error propagation in geoprocessing. Users need to be aware of the impacts of uncertainties in spatial analysis and decision-making. Uncertainty in Geographical Information discusses theoretical and practical aspects of spatial data processing and uncertainties, and covers a wide range of types of errors and fuzziness and emphasizes description and modeling. High level GIS professionals, researchers and graduate students will find this a constructive book.

Remote sensing and geographical information science (GIS) have advanced considerably in recent years. However, the potential of remote sensing and GIS within the environmental sciences is limited by uncertainty, especially in connection with the data sets and methods used. In many studies, the issue of uncertainty has been incompletely addressed. The situation has arisen in part from a lack of appreciation of uncertainty and the problems it can cause as well as of the techniques that may be used to accommodate it. This book provides general overviews on uncertainty in remote sensing and GIS that illustrate the range of uncertainties that may occur, in addition to describing the means of measuring uncertainty and the impacts of uncertainty on analyses and interpretations made. Uncertainty in Remote Sensing and GIS provides readers with comprehensive coverage of this largely undocumented subject: * Relevant to a broad variety of disciplines including geography, environmental science, electrical engineering and statistics * Covers range of material from base overviews to specific applications * Focuses on issues connected with uncertainty at various points along typical data analysis chains used in remote sensing and GIS Written by an international team of researchers drawn from a variety of disciplines, Uncertainty in Remote Sensing and GIS provides focussed discussions on topics of considerable importance to a broad research and user community. The book is invaluable reading for researchers, advanced students and practitioners who want to understand the nature of uncertainty in remote sensing and GIS, its limitations and methods of accommodating it.

Uncertainty and context pose fundamental challenges in GIScience and geographic research. Geospatial data are imbued with errors (e.g., measurement and sampling) and various types of uncertainty that often obfuscate any understanding of the effects of contextual or environmental influences on human behaviors and experiences. These errors or uncertainties include those attributable to geospatial data measurement, model specifications, delineations of geographic context in space and time, and the use of different spatiotemporal scales and zonal schemes when analyzing the effects of environmental influences on human behaviors or experiences. In addition, emerging sources of geospatial big data – including smartphone data, data collected by GPS, and various types of wearable sensors (e.g., accelerometers and air pollutant monitors), volunteered geographic information, and/ or location- based social media data (i.e., crowd- sourced geographic information) – inevitably contain errors, and their quality cannot be fully controlled during their collection or production. Uncertainty and Context in GIScience and Geography: Challenges in the Era of Geospatial Big Data illustrates how cutting- edge research explores recent advances in this area, and will serve as a useful point of departure for GIScientists to conceive new approaches and solutions for addressing these challenges in future research. The seven core chapters in this book highlight many challenges and opportunities in confronting various issues of uncertainty and context in GIScience and geography, tackling different topics and approaches. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Geographical Information Science.

This book will be useful both to those new to spatial uncertainty assessment and to experienced practitioners.

This is one of the first books to take an ecological perspective on uncertainty in spatial data. It applies principles and techniques from geography and other disciplines to ecological research, and thus delivers the tools of cartography, cognition, spatial statistics, remote sensing and computer sciences by way of spatial data. After describing the uses of such data in ecological research, the authors discuss how to account for the effects of uncertainty in various methods of analysis.

This book features papers presented at a NATO Advanced Research Workshop, help in Kyiv, Ukraine, in July 2006. The workshop focused on how uncertainty and fuzziness can be better modeled and implemented in Geographic Information Science to help decision makers make more informed choices, especially as they pertain to environmental security and protection, and brought together top researchers from both NATO countries as well as partner countries.

Features a five part structure covering: Foundations; Principles; Techniques; Analysis; and Management and Policy. This book includes chapters on Distributed GIS, Map Production, Geovisualization, Modeling, and Managing GIS. It offers coverage of such topics as: GIS and the New World Order; security, health and well being; and the greening of GIS.