Stephan Winter - Böcker

Landmarks: GI Science for Intelligent Services targets practitioners and researchers working in geographic information science, computer science, information science, cognitive science, geography and psychology.

This book covers the latest research on landmarks in GIS, including practical applications. It addresses perceptual and cognitive aspects of natural and artificial cognitive systems, computational aspects with respect to identifying or selecting landmarks for various purposes, and communication aspects of human-computer interaction for spatial information provision. Concise and organized, the book equips readers to handle complex conceptual aspects of trying to define and formally model these situations. The book provides a thorough review of the cognitive, conceptual, computational and communication aspects of GIS landmarks. This review is unique for comparing concepts across a spectrum of sub-disciplines in the field. Portions of the ideas discussed led to the world’s first commercial navigation service using landmarks selected with cognitive principles. Landmarks: GI Science for Intelligent Services targets practitioners and researchers working in geographic information science, computer science, information science, cognitive science, geography and psychology. Advanced-level students in computer science, geography and psychology will also find this book valuable as a secondary textbook or reference.

The worldwide popularisation of mobile communication technologies and the incre- ing awareness of usability issues since 1990’s have been urging map designers to s- cialise and extend cartographic semiotics, visualisation styles and map use techniques for mobile contexts and small display devices. As a follow-up to the first book “M- based Mobile Services – Theories, Methods and Implementations” published in 2005, this new one is devoted to design strategies, user interactions and usability issues. It addresses methods and techniques for topics that range from design and rendering, context modelling, personalisation, multimodal interaction to usability test. Instead of striving for a seamless coverage of all essential theoretical and technical issues with an equal depth and extent, we attempt to pinpoint a number of research highlights and representative development activities at universities, research institutions and so- ware industry. The operational prototypes and platforms reported in the book are on the one hand outcome and feasibility proof of various approaches. On the other hand, they serve as a new starting point for the refinement of user interfaces and iterative usability tests. The book is intended not only for cartographers, surveying engineers and g- information scientists engaged in the development of location-based services, but also for software engineers and cognitive scientists working with interface design and - ability assessment. In addition, we try to provide a number of real-life case studies for students, academics and practitioners from GIS, computer graphics and other relevant disciplines.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory, COSIT 2007, held in Melbourne, Australia in September 2007. The 27 revised full papers were carefully reviewed from 102 submissions, and they are organized in topical sections on cultural studies, semantics, similarity, mapping and representation, perception and cognition, reasoning and algorithms, navigation and landmarks, as well as uncertainty and imperfection.

The worldwide popularisation of mobile communication technologies and the incre- ing awareness of usability issues since 1990’s have been urging map designers to s- cialise and extend cartographic semiotics, visualisation styles and map use techniques for mobile contexts and small display devices. As a follow-up to the first book “M- based Mobile Services – Theories, Methods and Implementations” published in 2005, this new one is devoted to design strategies, user interactions and usability issues. It addresses methods and techniques for topics that range from design and rendering, context modelling, personalisation, multimodal interaction to usability test. Instead of striving for a seamless coverage of all essential theoretical and technical issues with an equal depth and extent, we attempt to pinpoint a number of research highlights and representative development activities at universities, research institutions and so- ware industry. The operational prototypes and platforms reported in the book are on the one hand outcome and feasibility proof of various approaches. On the other hand, they serve as a new starting point for the refinement of user interfaces and iterative usability tests. The book is intended not only for cartographers, surveying engineers and g- information scientists engaged in the development of location-based services, but also for software engineers and cognitive scientists working with interface design and - ability assessment. In addition, we try to provide a number of real-life case studies for students, academics and practitioners from GIS, computer graphics and other relevant disciplines.