ACM SIGSPATIAL Conference 2016: Student Activities and U.S.-Based Students Support

University Of California - Merced, Merced CA

Investigators

Abstract

This grant supports student activities at the 24th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems 2016 (ACM SIGSPATIAL 2016) that takes place October 31-November 3, 2016, in the San Francisco Bay Area, CA, USA (http://sigspatial2016.sigspatial.org). The ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS conference was originated in 1993 and has established itself as the world's premier conference to foster research in the areas of spatial data and analysis and geographic information systems (GIS). The conference provides a forum for original research contributions covering all aspects of GIS. The conference has attracted in excess of 300 participants in recent years, with a majority of the participants from the U.S., followed by Europe and Asia. The support will enable 25-30 U.S.-based graduate and undergraduate students to participate in the conference, fostering the intellectual stimulation of young minds to pursue advanced research and development activities in this area with significant technical and societal impact. Student focused activities include a Ph.D. symposium where graduate students present, discuss, and receive feedback on their research in a constructive atmosphere; a student research competition with separate tracks for undergraduate and graduate students; and a spatial computing competition, the SIGSPATIAL Cup, where teams focus on a specific technical problem. More generally, the students benefit greatly from attending conference sessions featuring current state-of-the-art results in the area of geospatial systems and applications, potentially making connections for research collaborations and research mentoring. Besides the technical program, the conference will feature workshops and demos. ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS 2016 will bring together researchers, students, and professionals interested in research, development, and deployment of solutions to spatial information handling and spatial knowledge extraction problems, including conceptual, design, and implementation issues ranging from applications, user interfaces, and visualization to storage management and indexing issues. Spatial data and applications pose novel research challenges in a wide variety of sub-areas, which include (but are not limited to), spatial information acquisition, modeling, data structures and algorithms, analysis, querying and integration, human-computer interaction and visualization, and systems and architectures. From these sub-areas deep research questions emerge that are motivated by a broad range of applications (e.g., emergency and crisis management, environmental monitoring, global positioning and location detection, geosciences, location-based and mobile services, navigation and route planning). A strong representation of U.S.-based students at ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS is key to maintaining U.S. competitiveness in important research areas crucial for U.S. infrastructure as well as applications that critically depend on geo-referenced information. Spatial data and analysis and geographic information systems contribute in a range of of societal contexts including: improving the lives of ordinary citizens through advanced transportation applications; increasing the security of the nation through better intelligence gathering using geospatial knowledge; and developing applications that will have a positive impact on the global environment.