Student Support for 2017 International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (ACM SIGSPATIAL 2017)

Northwestern University, Evanston IL

Investigators

Abstract

This award provides support for U.S-based students to attend the 25th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems, November 7-10, 2017 in Redondo Beach, CA (http://sigspatial2017.sigspatial.org/). In addition to regular research/demo papers and industry papers, ACM SIGSPATIAL 2017 features several sessions dedicated to young researchers: PhD Symposium, SIGSPATIAL Cup, and Student Research Competition. PhD Symposia in the past four years have also organized panels and keynote talks by prominent researchers, to help young researchers in improving the focus of their work. Spatial information is essential in many branches of industry and academia, and businesses as well as governmental agencies are utilizing it their daily operations to improve the structuring of new strategies, and increase overall productivity. Applications of spatial information handling can be found in location-based services in the mobile-commerce industry, strategic assessments in the military agencies, climatology studies (e.g., determining the potential effects of a tsunami) in meteorological research, computer-aided design and computer aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM) applications, medical imaging and atlases (e.g., 3D brain atlas), land-use classification of satellite imagery in urban planning, detection of local instability in transportation networks, epidemiological pattern forecasting (predicting the spread of disease) in the health-care field, analyzing crime hot spots for law enforcement, creation of high resolution three-dimensional maps from satellite imagery for intelligence applications, etc. Combined with the increased demand for spatial data processing, spatial information systems are gaining a substantial share across the spectrum in the industrial, government, and academic sectors. The ACM Special Interest Group on Spatial Information (SIGSPATIAL) is an association for researchers, students, developers, practitioners, and professionals interested in research, development, and deployment of solutions to spatial data, spatial operations, spatial information handling, and spatial knowledge extraction problems. The scope of members' interests spans from more theoretical aspects (e.g., geometric algorithms) to very focused application-oriented aspects, and has generated a significant body of research in the past decade. The charter of ACM SIGSPATIAL is dedicated to fostering research and development activities especially as it pertains to the acquisition, management, and processing of spatially-related information with a focus on algorithmic, geometric, and visual considerations, and is at the heart of enabling technologies for geographic information systems (GIS), navigation systems, etc. Given the relative importance of the field of spatial and geographical data, ACM SIGSPATIAL conference aims to augmenting its role and impact by motivating and supporting a new generation of scientists and engineers to take on the challenge of pursuing their graduate careers and beyond in this multidisciplinary area. The ACM SIGSPATIAL conference has established itself as the world's premier research conference in Spatial Information and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The conference provides a forum for original research contributions covering all conceptual, design, and implementation aspects of GIS ranging from applications, user interfaces, and visualization to storage management and indexing issues. It brings together researchers, developers, users, and practitioners carrying out research and development in novel systems based on geospatial data and knowledge, and fostering interdisciplinary discussions and research in all aspects of GIS. Proceedings of the ACM SIGSPATIAL 2017 Conference will be published in the ACM Digital Library (http://dl.acm.org/).