1. GeoInformatics Discussion Group Betty Salzberg & Peggy Agouris

2. Participants  Peggy Agouris  Alfonso Cardenas  Isabel Cruz  Michael Gertz  Joydeep Ghosh  George Kollios  Zoran Obradovic  Betty Salzberg  Hanan Samet  Peter Scheuermann  Cyrus Shahabi  Jianwen Su  Torsten Suel  Vassilis Tsotras

3. Successes  Spatial databases  Multidimensional indexing in DBMSs  GIS, including ESRI and GRASS (open source public domain GIS)  Terraserver  Recognition of need and importance of location-based services and wide demand for such services

4. Challenges & Needs  Location-aware services related issues, incl. Computer driving directions Integration of data sources/types for location-based services (traffic reports, bridges, GPS, text etc.) Sensor-based updating of location-based services (including better and more accurate computer generated, customized and personalized maps, notification of events for e.g. emergency response, disaster recovery and crisis management) Moving object management and querying Reactive behavior for moving objects when changes occur

5.  Integration of different representations of spatial data (raster, vector, text, semantics, ontologies, geosensors) Need to automate processes for data analysis to benefit from availability of huge amounts of detailed and frequent data (e.g. browsing, sampling, real-time generalization, summarization)  Application-specific data reduction/consolidation techniques of data that are coming from different scientific domains Geo data from text and other non-traditional sources: e.g. extracting and mining geographic information from textual data and merging it with other sources Integration of data/sources and querying for location- based services Warehousing / metadata extraction / cross reference / conflation / georeferencing / registration of large amounts of geo data

6.  Change detection, modeling and management  Geospatial data mining Uncertain and incomplete data Pattern and trend discovery and analysis  Visualization of ST data and their characteristics  Geo-Sensors, incl. stream management of data/objects (incl. location as a characteristic of objects)  Easy access to data (affordable, open, ready to use) Need for large real datasets for spatiotemporal incl. moving object databases – what can we do to get them? What kind of data is both general for meaningful research and real?  Privacy concerns  Extension of spatial and temporal approaches beyond geo- applications (e.g. medical informatics, bio-informatics, computer graphics, animation, VR, etc.)

7. Actions  Collaboration with Sensors researchers (given the emerging importance of sensor networks)  Collaborate on image/video segmentation and object tracking (incl. pattern recognition)  Joint initiatives with related sciences (geosciences, climatology, environmental sciences, transportation etc.)  More visibility for Geo-Informatics related research in IDM and beyond