Introduction
Advanced Geographic Information Systems is a component of Encyclopedia of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences in the global Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), which is an integrated compendium of twenty one Encyclopedias.
The content of the Theme on Advanced Geographic Information Systems is organized with state-oc-the-art presentations covering the following aspects of the subject: Spatio-Temporal Information Systems; Interacting with GIS - From Paper Cartography to Virtual Environments; Spatial Data Management: Topic Overview; Introduction to Spatial Decision Support Systems; GIS Interoperability, from Problems to Solutions. These volumes are aimed at the following five major target audiences: University and College students Educators, Professional practitioners, Research personnel and Policy analysts, managers, and decision makers and NGOs.
Editor(s) Biography
Claudia Bauzer Medeiros is a full professor of Computer Science at the Institute of Computing of the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil. She received her Electronic Engineering degree in 1976 and her M.Sc. degree in Informatics in 1979 from Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her Ph.D. degree was awarded by the University of Waterloo, Canada, in 1985, in the area of database systems. She is the head of the database research group in UNICAMP, and leads projects on different aspects of geospatial databases, including query processing, versions, spatial decision support systems, and the management of integrity constraints and temporal data. Other research interests include image databases and documentation management. One of her major concerns is the design and development of applications centered on geo-referenced databases, aggregating interdisciplinary teams, for environmental and urban planning. She has co-ordinated several large research and development projects around GIS technology in Brazil, and was the senior database consultant for the development of many GIS applications in the domains of urban planning. She was for six years the Editor in Chief of the Journal of the Brazilian Computer Science Society, the main scientific publication of the Brazilian Computer Society (SBC), and is on the editorial board of GeoInformatica and the VLDB Journal. She has been a keynote speaker or participated in program committees of major database and GIS conferences, having been the program chair of the Seventh ACM GIS Symposium. She is one of the co-founders of the Brazilian Special Interest Group on Databases, and a member of ACM, IEEE, and SBC.
She was awarded the 1996 and the 2001 Academic Merit Prize of the University of Campinas, and the 2000 Newton Faller Prize of the Brazilian Computer Society.
