A Computational Model For Geographic Information Systems

Robert F. Dugan
Computer Science Department
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Friday, April 19, 1996
11 a.m. - 12 noon
Fuller Labs 320

Geographic Information Systems are an increasingly pervasive technology in industry and academia. The ability to relate objects by spatial, graph, and alpha-numeric attributes makes GIS a powerful analytical and decision making tool. Most of the early work in GIS had been done by commercial interests such as IBM, DEC, ESRI, Intergraph, and MapInfo. However, the academic community has recently "rediscovered" GIS as an exciting research area. Most of the excitement lies in the fact that GIS integrates so many different disciplines: Algorithms, Geometry, Databases, Image Processing, and Operating Systems to name a few. This cross pollination of disciplines is leading to many new discoveries in Computer Science. This talk presents an introduction to Geographic Information Systems and derives a computational model more suited to the kinds of I/O bound problems encountered in a typical GIS.

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