What is GIScience About?

Werner Kuhn, Professor for Geography, UC Santa Barbara

Beyond the superficial phrase “geographic information,” geographic information science lacks consensus on its subject. What do geographic information scientists study?

Kuhn will propose a preliminary answer in the form of a set of “core concepts” of spatial information. While originally designed to help students understand GIS, these concepts are evolving into lenses through which to view geographic environments and select computation on their representations. The goal is to make geographic computing more accessible across disciplines. In addition to an overview of the core concepts, Kuhn will discuss associated computations and their implementations.

Event is free and open to the public. Reservations are requested. RSVP.

At UC Santa Barbara, Werner Kuhn holds the Jack and Laura Dangermond Endowed Chair, is a professor in the Department of Geography, and is director of the Center for Spatial Studies with co-director Mary Hegarty from the Department of Psychology. His research and teaching focus is on enabling transdisciplinary research through spatial information and computing. Before joining UCSB in 2013, Kuhn was a professor of Geoinformatics at the University of Münster, Germany, where he led MUSIL, an interdisciplinary semantic interoperability research lab. He holds a doctorate from ETH Zurich in surveying engineering and was a post-doctoral researcher with the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis as well as with the Vienna University of Technology. He is a co-founder of the COSIT Conference Series and of the Vespucci Initiative.