ABSTRACT
The University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) is to be a non-profit organization of universities and other research institutions dedicated to advancing of geographic processes and spatial relationships through improved theory, methods, technology, and data. During 1987 the National Science Foundation, recognizing the rapid growth in geographic information systems (GIS), sent out a request for proposals for the creation of a national GIS center. The graphics illustrate the closeness of Cognition, Geographic Representation, Interoperability, Uncertainty, and GIS and Society, especially along the vertical axis. The UCGIS membership considered emerging themes in each of its Assemblies with refinements occurring to each topic that survived. A more diffuse cluster of Uncertainty, GIS and Society, Spatial Data Acquisition and Integration, and Spatial Information Infrastructure is less easily explained from the listing of concepts. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
