National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis

This document reports on the Center’s eighth full year of operation. Two major new research initiatives were begun, on GIS and Society: The Social Implications of How People, Space, and Environment are Represented in GIS, and Formal Models of the Common-Sense Geographic World. Education programs continued to be directed to K-12, GIS in the community colleges, and the development of new curriculum materials in GIS and remote sensing. Two additional collaborative projects were initiated under the Collaborative Grants program, and the Visiting Scholars program continued to support the work of visiting researchers at NCGIA sites. The program of collaboration with the European Science Foundation’s GISDATA program continued, and the second joint Summer Institute for Young Scholars was held in Maine.

In 1995, a new proposal, “Advancing Geographic Information Science,” was submitted to NSF on behalf of NCGIA. A three-year progam will commence in  February 1997. 

The new NSF-funded project was named in honor of Bernard Varenius, a 17th Century Dutch geographer and author of Geographia Generalis, and administered as a project of UC Santa Barbara, with subagreements with the University of Maine, SUNY at Buffalo, and the University of Minnesota. This is the last NCGIA Annual Report. NCGIA research initiatives active on 12/31/96 will be transferred to, and reported upon, as part of the Varenius project (treated as a separate series on e-scholarship.org).