Springer Geographic Information Science: 5th International Conference, GIScience 2008, Park City, UT, USA, September 23-26, 2008, Proceedings: 5266 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 5266)

The GIScience conference series was founded in 2000 with the goal of providing a forum for researchers interested in advancing the fundamental aspects of the prod- tion, dissemination, and use of geographic information. The conference is held bi- nually and attracts people from academia, industry, and government across a host of disciplines including cognitive science, computer science, engineering, geography, information science, mathematics, philosophy, psychology, social science, and stat- tics. Following a very successful conference in Münster, Germany in 2006, this year’s conference was held in Park City, Utah, USA, the prior site of the 2002 Winter Ol- pics and home to the annual Sundance Film Festival. There are two forms of submission to the conference: full papers of 6000 words or less and extended abstracts of 500-1000 words for either a presentation or poster. This format was originally designed to capture the cultural difference between researchers who prefer to publish a peer-reviewed conference paper and those who would rather submit an abstract covering work in progress. This year 77 full papers were submitted and reviewed by 3 Program Committee members, of which 24 were selected for pr- entation and inclusion in this volume. Of the 115 extended abstracts that were subm- ted and reviewed by 2 Program Committee members, 47 were accepted for an oral presentation and 25 were accepted for presentation as a poster. The abstracts were published in a second booklet and are available on the GIScience website (http://www. giscience. org).