ABSTRACT
GIS algorithms and programming are critical to the research and development in advancing GIScience, because most mature GIS software packages are not flexible enough to be revised for the purpose of testing new ideas, models, and systems. This chapter introduces how GIS programming and algorithms are utilized in advancing several GIScience frontiers. It provides four examples to reflect the four fast-growing aspects of GIScience: first developing new spatial data structure using climate data as an example, introducing a spatiotemporal index for speeding up climate data access. The second example introduces how big social media data can be analyzed to extract information of interest from the algorithm and modeling aspects. The third introduces how a distributed GIS can be developed to support online climate data discovery, navigation, and visual analytics. The fourth example discusses how to leverage spatiotemporal thinking and computing to improve dust storm simulation speed.
