New trends in Geoinformatics in a changing world

New trends in Geoinformatics in a changing world Gilberto Câmara National Institute for Space Research, Brazil

We need cooperation at a global level… By 2050. . . 8, 5 billion people: 6 billion tons of GHG and 60 million tons of urban pollutants. Resource-hungry: We will withdraw 30% of available fresh water. Risky living: 80% urban areas, 25% near earthquake faults, 2% in coast lines less than 1 m above sea level. source: Guy Brasseur

Global Change: How is the Earth’s environment changing, and what are the consequences for human civilization? Global Change Where are changes taking place? How much change is happening? Who is being impacted by the change?

source: Global Land Project Science Plan (IGBP)

From land cover to land use Soybeans Pasture Abandoned Land

Land change is crucial for the world

Changes in dietary patterns: Meat consumption FAOSTAT 2007

Productivity and prices: the challenge source: The Economist

The food challenge source: Nature

The food challenge: technology gaps source: The Economist

Forests and food production: potential conflicts

1973 1987 2000 Slides from LANDSAT images: USGS Modelling Human-Environment Interactions How do we decide on the use of natural resources? What are the conditions favoring success in resource mgnt? Can we anticipate changes resulting from human decisions? What techniques and tools are needed to model humanenvironment decision making?

Geoinformatics enables crucial links between nature and society Nature: Physical equations Describe processes Society: Decisions on how to Use Earth´s resources

Why GI Engineering? Chemistry Physics Computer Science GI Science Chemical Eng. Electrical Eng. Computer Eng. GI Engineering= “The discipline of systematic construction of GIS and associated technology, drawing on scientific principles”

Scientists and Engineers Photo 51(Franklin, 1952) Scientists build in order to study Engineers study in order to build

What set of concepts drove GIS -20? Map-based (cartography) User-centered (user interfaces) Toblerian spaces (regionalized data analysis) Object-based modelling and spatial reasoning

GIS-20: Object-oriented modelling Egenhofer, M. and A. Frank (1992). "Object-Oriented Modeling for GIS. " URISA Journal 4(2): 3 -19. SPRING´s object-oriented data model (1995) ARCGIS´s object-centred data model (2002) Spatial database contains Coverage Geo-field Is-a Geo-object Cadastral Is-a Categorical Numerical

GIS-20: Topological Spatial Reasoning Egenhofer, M. and R. Franzosa (1991). "Point-Set Topological Spatial Relations. " IJGIS 5(2): 161 -174 OGC´s 9 -intersection dimension-extended Open source implementations (GEOS)

GIS-20: User interfaces Jackson, J. (1990) Visualization of metaphors for interaction with GIS. M. S. thesis, University of Maine. Geographer´s desktop (1992) Arc. View (1995)

GIS -20: Region-based spatial analysis Geo. DA: Spatial data analysis SPRING´s Geostatistics Module

Terra. Amazon – open source software for large-scale land change monitoring 116 -112 116 -113 Spatial database (Postgre. SQL with 166 -112 vectors and images) 2004 -2008: 5 million polygons, 500 GB images

mobile devices shared analysis GIS-21 Data-centered, mobile-enabled, contributionbased, field-based modelling sensor networks ubiquitous images

Resource. Sat-2 2013 2014 CBERS-3 Amazônia-1 CBERS-4 Landsat-8 Sentinel-2 A 2015 2012 2011 Data is coming. . . are we ready? Sentinel-2 B Resource. Sat-3

Data Access Hitting a Wall Current science practice based on data download How do you download a petabyte?

Data Access Hitting a Wall Current science practice based on data download How do you download a petabyte? You don’t! Move the software to the archive

Virtual Observatory If data is online, internet is the world’s best telescope Scientific Data Management in the Coming Decade (Jim Gray) 26

source: ARGOS Sensor Webs Tracking Monitoring Positions collected over a fixed period of time Data from remote stations, fixed or mobile

Earth observation satellites and geosensor webs provide key information about global change… …but that information needs to be modelled and extracted

What´s in an Image? “Remote sensing images provide data for describing landscape dynamics” (Câmara, Egenhofer et al. , COSIT 2001).

GIS-21: Spatio-temporal semantics Different types of ST-objects (source: JP Cheylan)

GIS-21: Discovering the history of land change objects Reconstructing the history of a landscape

Land Use Change by Sugarcane expansion 32 source: INPE

Sugarcane expansion source: Rudorff et al, Remote Sensing Journal (2010)

GIS-21: Spatio-temporal modelling “A dynamical spatial model is a computational representation of a real-world process where a location on the earth’s surface changes in response to variations on external and internal dynamics on the landscape” (Peter Burrough) f (It+1) F f (It+2) F f ( It+n ) . . Dynamic Spatial Models need good conceptual models

Spatially-explicit LUCC models • • • Explain past changes, through the identification of determining factors of land use change; Envision which changes will happen, and their intensity, location and time; Assess how choices in public policy can influence change, by building different scenarios considering different policy options.

Concepts for spatial dynamical models Events and processes Resilience

Concepts for spatial dynamical models vulnerability degradation

Concepts for spatial dynamical models biodiversity sustainability and much more… Human-environmental models need to describe complex concepts (and store their attributes in a database)

Clouds: statistical distributions Clocks, clouds or ants? Clocks: deterministic equations Ants: emerging behaviour

Models: From Global to Local Athmosphere, ocean, chemistry climate model (200 x 200 km) Atmosphere only global climate model (50 x 50 km) Regional climate model (10 x 10 km) Hydrology, Vegetation Soil Topography (1 x 1 km) Regional land use change Socio-economic adaptation (e. g. , 100 x 100 m)

Human-enviroment models should be multiscale, multi-approach 25 x 25 km 2 1 x 1 km 2 [Moreira et al. , 2008]

Multi-scale modelling using explicit relationships Express explicit spatial relationships between individual objects in different scales [Moreira et al. , 2008] [Carneiro et al. , 2008]

How can we express behavioural changes in human societies? photos: Isabel Escada Small Farmers When a small farmer becomes a medium-sized one, his behaviour changes Medium-Sized Farmers

Societal systems undergo phase transitions Isabel Escada, 2003 Farms Settlements 10 to 20 anos Recent Settlements (less than 4 years) Old Settlements (more than 20 years) [Escada, 2003]

Networks as enablers of human actions Bus traffic volume in São Paulo Innovation network in Silicon Valley

GIS-21: Network-based analysis Emergent area Consolidated area Modelling beef chains in Amazonia

Terra. ME: Computational environment for developing human-environment models Cell Spaces Support for cellular automata and agents http: //www. terrame. org [Carneiro, 2006]

Terra. Lib: spatio-temporal database as a basis for innovation Visualization (Terra. View) Modelling (Terra. ME) Spatio-temporal Database (Terra. Lib) Statistics (a. RT) Data Mining(Geo. DMA)

R-Terralib interface Loaded into a Terra. Lib database, and visualized with Terra. View. R data from geo. R package.

Conclusions Managing change is a major challenge for the scientific community Images are a major source of new data Move the software, not the data We need new algebras, data representations and algorithms to handle spatio-temporal data