Natural language interface to spatial databases have not received a lot of attention in computational linguistics, in spite of the potential value of such systems for users of Geographical Information Systems (GISs). This paper presents a controlled language for GIS queries, solves some of the semantic problems for spatial inference in this language, and introduces a system that implements this...

Commercially available scheduling tools such as Primavera and Microsoft Project fail to provide information pertaining to the spatial aspects of construction project. A methodology using geographical information systems (GIS) is developed to represent spatial aspects of the construction progress graphically by synchronizing it with construction schedule. The spatial aspects are depicted by 3D m...

This chapter presents a programming-by-demonstration (PBD) approach to Geographical Information Systems (GIS). The aim of our approach is to enable non-specialist users to avail themselves of the software without having to resort to the help of expert users. We begin with a story of one group of non-specialist users who encountered difficulty with GIS software. Next we summarize findings of a s...

Geographical Bioinformatics Systems (GBS) represent the marriage between two distinct and well established fields, GIS & Bioinformatics. Bioinformatics refer to the use of computers to handle biological information—that is, the use computers to store, compare, retrieve, analyze and predict the composition or structure of biomolecules. On the other hand, the term Geographic Information Systems (...

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) privacy rule was enacted to protect patients' personal health information from undue disclosure. Despite its intention to protect patients, recent reports suggest that HIPAA restrictions may be negatively impacting health research. Quantitative, visual geographical and statistical analysis of zip code geographical information syste...

The development of temporal GIS systems capable of dealing with the evolution of geographical objects is still a challenging task. Although many successful GIS systems have been implemented, comparatively little has been done on how to determine and analyse the patterns of continuous changes of geographical objects. The aim of this paper is to construct a GIS system using an object-oriented mod...

We introduce SIGTERNET (named before e-Edita) which is a tool to build, manage and query Geographical Information Systems (GIS) by the Internet in a client-server architecture. The system has evolved from a project designed in 1996 to establish links between spatial and alphanumeric information. The project was reformulated in 2006 to meet the GIS art of state systems. One of the most important...

Geographic information systems (GIS) are computerised information systems that allow for the capture, storage, manipulation, analysis, display and reporting of geographically referenced data. They have been used in recent years for a wide variety of purposes, including town planning and environmental resource management. The technology has many features which make it ideal for use in animal dis...

A major limitation in the use of transportation models is the difficulty of obtaining adequate data for them. Geographical information systems are a means of addressing this need. A geographical information system (GIS) is a “computerized database management system for the capture, storage, retrieval, analysis, and display of spatial (i.e., vocationally defined) data.’” GIST is the adoption and...

The rapid development of computers and associated software during the last thirty years has led to the expansion (emergence) of Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Geographical information systems (GIS) are computer-based systems designed specifically to facilitate the digital storage, retrieval, and analysis of spatially-referenced environmental data. Coupled with ecological modelling, GIS...