Error Analysis in Geoinformatics

Error analysis in geoinformatics is a very important problem

In late Spring 2003, a working meeting on Geoinformatics was held in San Diego, California, at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. This meeting was sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), as a part of the $11.5 million Information technology Research grant on Geoinformatics.

At this meeting, Dr. Leonard E. Johnson, Director of the Continental Dynamics Program of NSF's Division of Earth Science, emphasized that handling uncertainty in geospatial databases -- especially interval and probabilistic uncertainty -- is one of the most important problems in geoinformatics.

One of the main objectives of geospatial data processing is to estimate the values of the geophysical quantities that are difficult to measure directly, such as density at different depths, etc. At present, most algorithms for processing geospatial data produce estimates for the desired values, but these algorithms do not reliable accuracy bounds for these estimates. It is therefore very important to be able to provide such estimates.

An additional important problem is how to best represent the corresponding uncertainty when we visualize the geophysical data as a 2-D or 3-D map.

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What is currently known: in brief

Several researchers (including L. E. Johnson himself) have come up with uncertainty estimates for specific cases, but in general, the problem is far from being solved. To solve this problem, it is reasonable to first collect (and analyze) the known techniques for error analysis in geoinformatics, and then to extend these techniques to the most general classes of geoinformatics problems.

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What this page intends to do about this problem

Ilya Zaslavsky from the San Diego Supercomputer Center is currently leading the effort to collect the existing techniques and results. The goal is to set up a working website, and to compile a survey of such techniques and applications. Once the draft survey is ready, the plan is to organize a workshop, in which interested researchers will discuss the most important open problems, and the most promising strategies for extending known techniques to these new challenging situations.

In this endeavor, he needs the help of the research community. If you are interested in this project, please send, to Ilya (email zaslavsk@sdsc.edu and to Vladik vladik@utep.edu) the following information:

We will try our best to include this information into the newly designed webpage.

We strongly believe that these geoinformatics-related practical problems present a unique application opportunity for our community.

Ilya and Vladik

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Researchers doing research related to error analysis in geoinformatics

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Relevant publications

L. Anselin, and A. Getis, "Spatial Statistical Analysis and Geographic Information Systems", The Annals of Regional Science, 1992, Vol. 26, pp. 19-33.

Gyorgy Bardossy and Janos Fodor, "Evaluation of Uncertainties and Risks in Geology", Springer Verlag, Berlin, 2004.

Stefan Borovac, and Gerhard Heindl, "Result Verification for Computational Problems in Geodesy", Dagstuhl-Meeting, October 2003. Compressed PostScript file.

Yupo Chan, Li Ning, NingNing Wu, and John Talburt, "Visualization and Ontology of Geo-Spatial Intelligence Information", Acxiom Data Engineering Lab Working Paper Series, 2003. pdf file.

Ping Chen, Chenyi Hu, Heloise Lynn, and Yves Simon, "Visualizing Multi-dimensional Data", Acxiom Data Engineering Lab Working Paper Series, 2003. pdf file.

David D. Coblentz, Vladik Kreinovich, Brian S. Penn, and Scott A. Starks, "Towards Reliable Sub-Division of Geological Areas: Interval Approach" Proceedings of the 19th International Conference of the North American Fuzzy Information Society NAFIPS'2000, Atlanta, Georgia, July 13-15, 2000, pp. 368-372. Compressed PostScript file

David D. Coblentz, Vladik Kreinovich, Brian S. Penn, and Scott A. Starks, "Towards Reliable Sub-Division of Geological Areas: Interval Approach", In: L. Reznik and V. Kreinovich (eds.), Soft Computing in Measurements and Information Acquisition, Springer-Verlag, Berlin-Heidelberg, 2003, pp. 223-233. Compressed PostScript file; pdf file.

Robert Demicco and George Klir (eds.), "Fuzzy Logic in Geology", Academic Press, 2003, ISBN 0124151469

Diane I. Doser, Kevin D. Crain, Mark R. Baker, Vladik Kreinovich, and Matthew C. Gerstenberger "Estimating uncertainties for geophysical tomography", Reliable Computing, 1998, Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 241-268.

M. Goodchild, and S. Gopal, eds. "Accuracy of Spatial Databases", Taylor & Francis, London, 1989.

S. Kennedy, "The small number problems and accuracy of spatial databases", 1989 In: M. Goodchild, and S. Gopal, eds. "Accuracy of Spatial Databases", Taylor & Francis, London, 1989, pp. 187-196.

Alan E. McKinnon and Emma Raymond, "Visualising the Probability Distribution Function of Uncertain Data: Application to Stochastic Modelling of Ground Water Solute Transport", ACM International Conference Proceeding Series, Australian symposium on Information visualisation, 2001, Vol. 9, pp. 139-142.

Alex Pang, "Visualizing Uncertainty in Geo-spatial Data", Proceedings of the Workshop on the Intersections between Geospatial Information and Information Technology, prepared for the National Academies committee of the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board. Arlington, VA, October, 2001. pdf file.

Leon Reznik, Vladik Kreinovich and Scott A. Starks, "Use of Fuzzy Expert's Information in Measurement and What We Can Gain from Its Application in Geophysics", Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems FUZZ-IEEE'2003, St. Louis, Missouri, May 25-28, 2003, pp. 1026-1031. MSWord file; pdf file.

L. Scott, "Identification of GIS Attribute Error Using Exploratory Data Analysis", Professional Geographer, 1994, Vol. 46, No. 3, pp. 378-386.

Roberto Torres, G. Randy Keller, Vladik Kreinovich, Luc Longpre, and Scott A. Starks, "Eliminating Duplicates Under Interval and Fuzzy Uncertainty: An Asymptotically Optimal Algorithm and Its Geospatial Applications", Reliable Computing, 2004, Vol. 10, No. 5, pp. 401-422. Compressed PostScript file; pdf file.

Qian Wen, Ann Q. Gates, Jan Beck, Vladik Kreinovich, and G. Randy Keller, "Towards automatic detection of erroneous measurement results in a gravity database", Proceedings of the 2001 IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Conference, Tucson, Arizona, October 7-10, 2001, pp. 2170-2175. Compressed PostScript file; pdf file.

Hongjie Xie, Nigel Hicks, G. Randy Keller, Haitao Hunag, and Vladik Kreinovich, "Implementation, test, and analysis of an automatic image registration algorithm based on FFT and IDL/ENVI", Computers and Geosciences, 2003, Vol. 29, No. 8, pp. 1045-1055. MS Word file.

Ilya Zaslavsky, Bertram Ludaescher, Amarnath Gupta, and Richard Marciano, "Accuracy Mediation in a Spatial Wrapper-Mediator System", 1st Geographic Information Science Conference, 2000. Extended abstract. pdf file.

Ilya Zaslavsky, and Naum Naimark, "Development of the Urban Planning Cadastre in Russia", In: Geographical Information and Planning, J. Stillwell, S. Geertman, S. Openshaw (Eds.), Springer-Verlag; 1999, pp. 154-169. pdf file.

Visualization of Uncertainty: General References

Christoph Busch and Eric Debes, "Wavelet Transform for Analyzing Fog Visibility", IEE Intelligent Systems, November, 1998, Vol. 13, No. 6, pp. 66-71. pdf file.

K. Denecker, P.De Neve, S. Van Assche, R. Van de Walle, I. Lemahieu, and W. Philips, "Psychovisual Evaluation of Lossy CMYK Image Compression for Printing Applications", Computer Graphics Forum, 2002, Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 5-17.

E. Bruce Goldstein, "Sensation and Perception", Wadsworth Publishing, 2001, pp. 185-218, ISBN 0534539645

Reiner Lenz and Peter Meer, "Non-euclidean Structure of Spectral Color Space", In E. A. Marszalec and E. Trucco, editors, Polarization and Color Techniques in Industrial inspection, Proceedings Europto Series, SPIE, 1999, Vol. 3826, pp. 101-112. PostScript file; pdf file.

K. T. Mullen, "The Contrast Sensitivity of Human Colour Vision to Red-Green and Blue-Yellow Chromatic Gratings", J. Physiology, 1985, 359, pp. 381-400.

Marcus J. Nadenau and Julien Reichel, "Opponent Color, Human Vision and Wavelets for Image Compression", Proceedings of the Seventh Color Imaging Conference, Scottsdale, Arizona, November 16-19, 1999, pp. 237-242. pdf file.

Alex T. Pang, Craig M. Wittenbrink, and Suresh K. Lodha, "Approaches to Uncertainty Visualization", Visual Computer, 1997, Vol. 13, No. 8, pp. 370-390.

G. Qiu and G. Schaefer,"Visual Colour Image Processing", SPIE Color Imaging: Device Independent Color, Color Hardcopy and Graphic Art V, 2000, pp.132-142.

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