ACM SIGSPATIAL Research Articles

3rd ACM SIGSPATIAL Workshop on Analytics for Local Events and News (LENS 2019)

The 3rd ACM SIGSPATIAL Workshop on Analytics for Local Events and News (LENS 2019) was held in conjunction with the 27th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (ACM SIGSPATIAL 2019). The workshop is intended to bring together experts in the workshop scope to exchange ideas on opportunities, challenges and cutting-edge techniques for local events and news analytics. The workshop has attracted ten submissions, all full-length research papers. Six submissions were accepted for publications; with 60% acceptance rate. The papers are reviewed by 7 program committee members, where each paper is assigned to two reviewers. Total 8 attendants registered for the workshop. The actual number of attendants along the day fluctuated from 8 to 12, with an average of 9 attendants maintained almost all the time. The paper titled DeepSpot: Understanding Online Opinion Spam by Text Augmentation using Sentiment Encoder-Decoder Networks , by Avik Nayak, Haiquan Chen, Xiaojun Ruan, and Jinsong Ouyang was awarded the best paper award. The paper titled Scalable Community Detection over Geo-Social Network , by Xiuwen Zheng, Qiyu Liu, and Amarnath Gupta was awarded the best presentation award. The workshop has achieved its goal in bringing up together experts and conducted a set of productive discussions and talks.

GeoHumanities 2019 workshop report

This article reports on the 3rd ACM SIGSPATIAL Workshop on Geospatial Humanities, held in conjunction with the 27th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems. The article outlines the objectives of the workshop, and briefly describes the technical program.

1st ACM SIGSPATIAL Workshop on Geo-Computational Thinking in Education (GeoEd 2019)

The 1st International Workshop on Geo-computational Thinking in Education (GeoEd 2019) was held in conjunction with the 27th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (ACM SIGSPATIAL 2019). The workshop is intended to bring together experts from both geography (or related) and computer science disciplines who have primary interest in geospatial data and technologies, either from academia or industry, to discuss the grand challenges towards improving existing learning pathways through integration of geo-computational thinking in higher education. This could impact a variety of disciplines that increasingly deal with geospatial data beyond geography, such as social sciences, environmental sciences, public policy, climatology, and other geo-related disciplines. The workshop speakers and attendants have discussed their vision on challenges and opportunities of various topics within the workshop scope.

The 1st ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on Geospatial Data Access and Processing APIs (SpatialAPI 2019)

With the increasing amounts of geospatial data, there is a growing demand on by developers and researchers to analyze geospatial data efficiently. The SIGSPATIAL community is both a provider of new systems with cutting edge technology on maintaining and processing geospatial data, and a user for all these systems. The SpatialAPI workshop is designed to help the SIGSPATIAL community by growing the knowledge of the existing well-established systems that are available for accessing and processing geospatial data. This includes, but is not limited to, web APIs, programming libraries, database systems, and geospatial extensions to existing systems.

The 1st ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on Computing with Multifaceted Movement Data (MOVE++ 2019)

Modern technology allows us to track essentially anything that moves, be it animals, people, vehicles, or hurricanes. As a result, many efficient computational methods have been developed to analyze movement data, including methods for similarity analysis, clustering, segmentation, classification, and pattern detection. However, movement rarely occurs in isolation and to truly understand movement data it is of paramount importance to understand the intrinsic and extrinsic factors that influence movement, such as or health conditions or motivation (intrinsic) or the (natural) environment, weather, and other surrounding entities (extrinsic). Often the data that describes these factors is available together with the tracked object data for analysis, but comparatively few computational techniques fully utilize the potential of such multifaceted data. This workshop brought together researchers who are interested in developing computational techniques to analyze movement data in conjunction with other data sources that capture (some of) the factors which influence movement.

Visions and challenges in GeoAI, ethics, and spatial quantum computing

Geographic information systems are changing rapidly as new technologies, such as advances in artificial intelligence and quantum computing, proliferate. Towards gaining a glimpse of possible new directions for the next decades, it is paramount to disseminate and discuss new research directions, challenges, and visions, that may be of broad interest to the SIGSPATIAL community. In the last few years, our community has excelled at providing a forum for such visions and challenges in dedicated Vision and Challenge tracks, leading to many visionary research directions [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21]. A goal of this newsletter is to continue and complement these visions. Three vision and challenge topics are covered in this special issue: 1. the first article is contributed by the organizers of GeoAI, the most successful ACM SIGSPATIAL Workshop of the last years, having 40+ registrations each year, and having 50+ people in the workshop room at a time. The authors survey and summarize the directions of GeoAI publications of the last three years, and provide a list of open research directions for this rapidly advancing field; 2. in the second article, Fu et al. discuss ethical issues of mining urban spatial data. They identify ethical vulnerabilities from three primary research directions of urban computing: urban safety analysis, urban transportation analysis, and social media analysis for urban events; 3. in the third article, Martin Werner introduces central aspects of quantum algorithms and explores future directions on how quantum algorithms can be used to leverage spatial and spatio-temporal algorithms. This article describes example algorithms, such as map coloring and dynamic time warping, which may benefit from advances in quantum computing.

ACM SIGSPATIAL cup 2018 - identifying upstream features in large spatial networks

ACM SIGSPATIAL Cup 2018 was the 7th GIS-focused algorithm contest hosted by the 26th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (ACM SIGSPATIAL 2018). The contest explored the problem of analyzing large spatial networks (e.g., utility networks) in order to find upstream features from a given set of starting points (a feature is considered to be upstream if it is on a simple path between a starting point and a controller).

The 26th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (ACM SIGSPATIAL 2018) Seattle, Washington, USA November 6--9, 2018

This report describes the development and finalization of the 26th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (ACM SIGSPATIAL 2018), held in Seattle, Washington, USA, November 6--9, 2018. The attendance for the 2018 conference was 414 (representing 29 countries), the first such event with more than 400 attendees. The conference was also notable for having 148 of the attendees from industry, exceeding the previous high of 100 attendees in 2015 (also in Seattle).

Introduction to the Special Issue on the Best Papers from the 2017 ACM SIGSPATIAL Conference

Introduction to the Special Issue on the Best Papers from the 2017 ACM SIGSPATIAL Conference

2nd ACM SIGSPATIAL workshop on analytics for local events and news (LENS 2018) seattle, washington, USA - November 6, 2018

The 2nd ACM SIGSPATIAL Workshop on Analytics for Local Events and News (LENS 2018) was held in conjunction with the 26th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (ACM SIGSPATIAL 2018). The workshop is intended to bring together experts in the workshop scope to exchange ideas on opportunities, challenges and cutting-edge techniques for local events and news analytics. The workshop has attracted 8 submissions, including 7 regular full-length research papers and one short paper, accepted 5 submissions for publications; with 62.5% acceptance rate. The papers are reviewed by 13 program committee members, where each paper is assigned to three reviewers. Total 7 attendants registered for the workshop. The actual number of attendants along the day fluctuated from 8 to 12, with an average of 9 attendants maintained almost all the time. The workshop has achieved its goal with bringing up together experts and conducted a set of productive discussions and talks.

GeoHumanities 2018 workshop report

This article reports on the 2nd ACM SIGSPATIAL Workshop on Geospatial Humanities, held in conjunction with the 26th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems. The article outlines the objectives of the workshop, and briefly describes the technical program.

The 25th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (ACM SIGSPATIAL 2017) Redondo Beach, California, USA November 7--10, 2017

This report describes the development and finalization of the 25th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (ACM SIGSPATIAL 2017), held in Redondo Beach, California, USA, November 7--10, 2017.

1st ACM SIGSPATIAL Workshop on Analytics for Local Events and News (LENS 2017)

The 1st ACM SIGSPATIAL Workshop on Analytics for Local Events and News (LENS 2017) was held in conjunction with the 25th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (ACM SIGSPATIAL 2017). The workshop is intended to bring together experts from the research community and industry to exchange ideas on opportunities, challenges and cutting-edge techniques for local events and news analytics. The workshop has attracted 12 submissions, including 11 regular research papers and one vision paper, accepted 6 submissions for publications; 5 regular papers and one vision paper, with 50% acceptance rate. The papers are reviewed by 13 program committee members, where each paper is assigned to three reviewers. Total 11 attendants registered for the workshop. The actual number of attendants along the day fluctuated from 11 to 15, with an average of 11 attendants maintained almost all the time. The workshop has achieved its goal with bringing up together experts from both academia and industry with a set of productive discussions and talks.

Geohumanities 2017 workshop report

This article reports on the 1st ACM SIGSPATIAL Workshop on Geospatial Humanities, held in conjunction with the 25th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems. The article outlines the objectives of the workshop, and briefly describes the technical program.

IWCTS 2017: Tenth ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on Computational Transportation Science

The 10th International Workshop on Computational Transportation Science (IWCTS 2017) was held in conjunction with the 25th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (SIGSPATIAL 2017) on November 7, Redondo Beach, California, USA. This workshop has built upon the success of previous workshops with a focus on data, computation, and knowledge discovery aspects of transportation systems. There were 17 registrations to the workshop.

IWGS 2017 workshop report: the 8th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on Geostreaming

The ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on Geostreaming (IWGS) was held for the eighth time in conjunction with the 25th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (ACMGIS 2017). The workshop has been a successful event that attracted participants from both academia and industry. The workshop addressed topics that are at the intersection of data streaming and geospatial systems. The workshop fostered an environment where geospatial researchers can benefit from the advances in geosensing technologies and data streaming systems.

ACM SIGSPATIAL 2016 conference report

This is the conference report on the 24 th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (ACM SIGSPATIAL 2016), held in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA, October 31 through November 3, 2016. The conference started as a series of symposia and workshops back in 1993 with the aim of promoting interdisciplinary discussions among researchers, developers, users, and practitioners and fostering research in all aspects of geographic information systems, especially in relation to novel systems based on geospatial data and knowledge. It provides a forum for original research contributions covering all conceptual, design, and implementation aspects of geospatial data ranging from applications, user interfaces and visualization, to data storage, query processing, indexing and data mining. The conference is the premier annual event of the ACM Special Interest Group on Spatial Information (ACM SIGSPATIAL).

IWGS 2016 workshop report: The 7th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on GeoStreaming

The ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on Geostreaming (IWGS) was held for the seventh time in conjunction with the 24th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (ACMGIS 2016). The workshop has been a successful event that attracted participants from both academia and industry. The workshop addressed topics that are at the intersection of data streaming and geospatial systems. The workshop fostered an environment where geospatial researchers can benefit from the advances in geosensing technologies and data streaming systems.

ACM SIGSPATIAL 2015 conference report: the 23rd ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (ACM SIGSPATIAL 2015) Seattle, Washington, USA - November 3-6, 2015

This is the conference report of the 23 rd ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (ACM SIGSPATIAL 2015), held in Seattle, Washington, USA, November 3-6, 2015. This conference was the twenty-third edition in a series of symposia and workshops that began in 1993 with the aim of promoting interdisciplinary discussions among researchers, developers, users, and practitioners and fostering research in all aspects of geographic information systems, especially in relation to novel systems based on geospatial data and knowledge. The conference is the premier annual event of the ACM Special Interest Group on Spatial Information (ACM SIGSPATIAL) and provides a forum for original research contributions covering all conceptual, design, and implementation aspects of geospatial data ranging from applications, user interfaces, and visualization to data storage, query processing, indexing and data mining.

IWGS 2015 workshop report

The ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on Geostreaming (IWGS) was held for the sixth time in conjunction with the 23rd ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (ACMGIS 2015). The workshop has been a successful event that attracted participants from both academia and industry. The workshop addressed topics that are at the intersection of data streaming and geospatial systems. The workshop fostered an environment where geospatial researchers can benefit from the advances in geosensing technologies and data streaming systems.