Scales of Cybergeography

Michael Goodchild

Department of Geography
University of California, Santa Barbara

Date: Friday, January 21, 2005
Place: Engineering Sciences Building, Room 2001
Time: 2:00 pm — 3:00 pm (Refreshments served at 1:30 pm)

Abstract:
Scale is an innate property of any analog representation of the Earth's surface, such as a paper map. In a digital world, however, the analog definition is meaningless. I examine alternative definitions that are meaningful, and explore the properties of a dimensionless ratio formed from two of them. The implications are discussed in the context of Digital Earth, which is envisioned as a complete digital representation of the surface of the planet, supported by a distributed network of databases.

MICHAEL F. GOODCHILD is Professor of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara; Chair of the Executive Committee, National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA); Associate Director of the Alexandria Digital Library Project; and Director of NCGIA's Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science. He received his BA degree from Cambridge University in Physics in 1965 and his PhD in Geography from McMaster University in 1969. After 19 years at the University of Western Ontario, including three years as Chair, he moved to Santa Barbara in 1988. He was Director of NCGIA from 1991 to 1997. He was elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and Foreign Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2002. He has received honorary doctorates from Laval University (1999), Keele University (2001), McMaster University (2004), and Ryerson University (2004). In 1990 he was given the Canadian Association of Geographers Award for Scholarly Distinction, in 1996 the Association of American Geographers award for Outstanding Scholarship, in 1999 the Canadian Cartographic Association's Award of Distinction for Exceptional Contributions to Cartography, and in 2002 the Educator of the Year Award from the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science. In 2001 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. He was Editor of Geographical Analysis between 1987 and 1990, and serves on the editorial boards of ten other journals and book series. In 2000 he was appointed Editor of the Methods, Models, and Geographic Information Sciences section of the Annals of the Association of Americal Geographers. His major publications include Accuracy of Spatial Databases (1989); Geographical Information Systems: Principles and Applications (1991); Environmental Modeling with GIS (1993); GIS and Environmental Modeling: Progress and Research Issues (1996); Scale in Remote Sensing and GIS (1997); Interoperating Geographic Information Systems (1999); Geographical Information Systems: Principles, Techniques, Management and Applications (1999); Geographic Information Systems and Science (2001); Spatial Uncertainty in Ecology (2001); Spatial Data Quality (2002); Uncertainty in Geographical Information (2002); Foundations of Geographic Information Science (2003); and Spatially Integrated Social Science (2004); in addition he is author of some 350 scientific papers. He was Chair of the National Research Council's Mapping Science Committee from 1997 to 1999; has been a member of NRC's Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Applications; and is currently a member of NRC's Geographic Science Committee. His current research interests center on geographic information science, spatial analysis, the future of the library, and uncertainty in geographic data.