Springer Time-Integrative Geographic Information Systems: Management and Analysis of Spatio-Temporal Data

This book is the provisional result of more than 10 years of continued discussion with friends and colleagues from neighbouring disciplines. Although only a small minority ofthe millions of GIS users on this planet are geographers, it seems that somehow, geographers are a kind ofnatural contact persons for historians, archae ologists, economists, social scientists or others who are looking for appropriate ways ofworking with spatial data. We received constant encouragements and many valuable suggestions from our colleagues. Particularly we wish to thank the members ofthe GIS Study Group of the German Association of Geography (AK GIS) as well as the participants of a workshop in June 2000 on "Mapping Europe's historic boundaries and borders" which was generously sponsored by the European Science Foundation. Among the individuals we owe special appreciation are Humphrey Southall and Ian Gregory (The Great Britain Historical GIS Programme, University ofPortsmouth), Michael Goerke (European University Institute, Florence), Konrad Pierau (Center for His torical Social Research, University of Cologne), Bernhard Holfter (Forderverein Historische Grundkarte, Leipzig) and Stephan Riediger (Department of History, University of Mannheim). Review From the reviews of the first edition: "The integration of time in predominantly spatially driven and static geographical information systems (GIS) has been biased towards theoretical concepts rather than practical solutions. This book by Ott and Swiaczny provides a new addition to the small but growing collection of textbooks that are available on temporal GIS. … This book will be of use to graduate students and senior undergraduate students … . Professionals whose work involves the development of spatiotemporal databases will find interest in this book." (Suzana Dragicevic, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, Vol. 30, 2003) From the Back Cover The book deals with the integration of temporal information in Geographic Information Systems. The main purpose of an historical or time-integrative GIS is to reproduce spatio- temporal processes or sequents of events in the real world in the form of a model. The model thus making them accessible for spatial query, analysis and visualization. This volume reflects both theoretical thoughts on the interrelations of space and time, as well as practical examples taken from various fields of application (e.g. business data warehousing, demographics, history and spatial analysis).