The CGA sponsors a monthly "Harvard Geography Colloquium". The colloquium series invites speakers from diverse disciplines to present their geographic work in an academic setting. All are welcome and free lunch is provided for the first 25 attendees! See our Geography Colloquium page for details.

The ABCD-GIS meeting is hosted on the third Wednesday of each month. This presentation series focuses on how Geographic Information Systems are used in the Harvard community and promotes the sharing of information and expertise to help solve mutual problems. See our GIS Presentation Series page for more information.

"New tool to battle illegal trade in animals: Mapping system will track crimes and underlying socioeconomic conditions" The WorldMap system will allow anyone — from curious members of the public to national policymakers — to map and track wildlife crime, and to understand how it is related to a host of socioeconomic data — such as ethnicity, income, and environmental conditions — already included in the AfricaMap layers of WorldMap.

The CGA has developed tutorials to show you how to use your Android or iPhone as a GPS device. Check them out on our GPS page.

The CGA performs technical service projects for researchers who have grant funding. In these cases, the researchers provide us with the base data and we perform the analysis and deliver the results with technical documentation. See what kinds of work we do on our Project Resume Page.

The Geospatial Revolution Project, created by Penn State's public broadcasting group, has created a series of videos aimed at expanding public knowledge about the history, applications, related privacy and legal issues, and the potential future of location-based technologies. Four full episodes have been released.

View the CGA's Technical Blog, filled with noteworthy news items about GIS.

Speaker: Xun Shi, Dartmouth
Title: "Dealing with Spatial Uncertainty in Health Studies"
Abstract: Spatial uncertainty is important in health studies. On the one hand, it may greatly impact the quality of such a study; on the other hand, it has been used as a means to protect patients' privacy or improve statistical stability. Spatial uncertainty may cause misplacement of areas with elevated risk of a disease; lead to misevaluation of the spatial association between a disease and an environmental factor; and bias the evidence upon which healthcare policy and resource allocation are based. A major source of spatial uncertainty in health studies is data quality issues, including spatial inaccuracy (e.g., geocoding error and displacement through dithering) and spatial imprecision (e.g., P.O. Box addresses and spatially aggregated data). Spatial inaccuracy in health-related data is usually extremely difficult to be entirely removed, but can be converted into spatial imprecision and treated in that way. In this presentation, I introduce and describe a restricted and controlled Monte Carlo (RCMC) process to deal with the spatial imprecision in health-related data. RCMC disaggregates imprecise or aggregate location data through randomization. This randomization is restricted by the known areal unit boundaries (e.g., zip code boundaries) and is controlled by the available background information (e.g. detailed population distribution data), so that first, utilization of available information is maximized (i.e., the spatial imprecision is minimized); and second, those disease mapping methods designed for individual data (e.g., kernel density estimation) can be applied. Meanwhile, through a Monte Carlo process the spatial uncertainty caused by the imprecision can be explicitly quantified, represented, and even visually presented. We have applied the RCMC to different health problems, including mapping diseases, detecting associations between diseases and environmental factors, and assessing access to healthcare services. View flyer.
Location: CGIS K354 @ noon - 1:30. Lunch provided for first 25 people.

Spring NEARC is a one-day conference held in the center of the geographic area that NEARC encompasses. The day is packed with professional development and networking opportunities for all levels of GIS users. The Spring NEARC Conference will be held Tuesday, May 22, 2012 at the Smith College Campus Center in Northampton, MA. Sign up today at www.northeastarc.org and take advantage of the early bird discounted registration fee, which is only available until May 8th. Details.

The CPGIS Service Award Committee would like to invite nomination / self-nomination for CPGIS 2012 Annual Service Excellence Award. We will have two categories of Service Award: Individual Award and Group Award. Please be specific to which category a nomination is for. To be qualified for nomination, an individual or a group of individuals should be members of CPGIS and should have made significant contributions to CPGIS. The nomination period is May 10-24, 2012. Please send your nomination and/or questions regarding this process to any committee members: Aijun Chen,  Xun Shi,  Bing Xu

A special optional feature preceding the 2012 UCGIS Symposium, May 30-June 1, will be a Tuesday afternoon pre-Symposium workshop on Geospatial Semantics, led by staff from the U.S. Geological Survey. The separate fee for this hands-on workshop is $100 and registration is limited to 20 participants. A more detailed description and schedule follow. The workshop begins at 12 noon on Tuesday, May 29th at the Symposium hotel, the Hilton Doubletree, 1515 Rhode Island Avenue, Washington, DC. To register, send an email message with your name and organization or university to execdir@ucgis.org. The Workshop will be an introductory tutorial on geospatial semantics with hands-on exercises using standard Web browsers. The workshop is divided into two major sections, general semantics on the Web and specific examples of geospatial semantics using data from The National Map of the USGS. The general section will include information and access to publicly available semantic archives. The specific session will include information on geospatial semantics with access to semantically enhanced data for hydrography, transportation, boundaries, names, and land cover.

The Global Journal of Educational Research (GJER) is a multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal that will be published monthly by Global Research Journals. GJER is dedicated to increasing the depth of the subject across disciplines with the ultimate aim of expanding knowledge of the subject.
Editors and reviewers: GJER is seeking energetic, qualified and high profile researchers to join its editorial team as editors, subeditors or reviewers. Kindly send your resume to: gjer.submit@globalresearchjournals.org
Call for Research Articles: GJER will cover all areas of the subject. The journal welcomes the submission of manuscripts that meet the general criteria of significance and scientific excellence, and will publish: Original articles in basic and applied research; Case studies; Critical reviews, surveys, opinions, commentaries and essays. We invite you to submit your manuscript(s) at: gjer.submit@globalresearchjournals.org for publication.

CPGIS will present the Excellence in Education Award annually to two individuals who have made outstanding contributions to GIScience & Technology education. Such contributions may be reflected in (but not limited to): Effective teaching of GIS courses ; Enhancing public awareness of GIS ; Mentoring of students who enter careers in GIS related professions ; Authorship of significant GIS textbooks ; Publication of significant research concerned with GIS education ; Leadership in developing GIS education across the campus ; Leadership in GIS curriculum development ; Leadership in the development of GIS education policy ; Leadership in fostering education collaboration between China and other countries is a plus. All CPGIS members are eligible for this award.

To nominate a member for the award, submit a nominating letter or e-mail, containing basic contact and affiliation information for the nominee, and a brief summary of the nominee's contributions to GIS education to Pinde Fu by June 1, 2012. If you nominate a nominee, please work with the nominee or ask the nominee to provide a document describing and justifying the specific contributions of the nominee, as suggested above, and a CV of the nominee. The Education Committee will form an Award Selection Committee with members from the Education Committee and the BOD. Members of the Education Committee and BOD can be nominated for the award, but will be excluded from the award selection committee. The Award Selection Committee will review the nominations and select two award recipients. The award will be presented at the Geoinformatics Conference, June 15-17, in Hong Kong.

The International Cartographic Association invites students, young cartographers, enthusiasts to express their vision on modern cartography through the development of a video that will be suitable for uploading on YouTube. It is envisaged that the video would focus on content like:

• how cartography relates to situations in daily life;
• what is the role of cartographers.

A cash prize will be awarded to the amount of €300 to the winning video. The ICA will make the video available on YouTube, the ICA website and for promoting cartography globally. The video will be made available free of charge to ICA national members, educationalists, etc. Contestants must submit their video till the deadline, 1 June 2012. The videos entered into this competition will be judged by the ICA Executive Committee. Videos will be judged on originality, creativity, adherence to theme. To enter, Contestants must upload their video to the web (preferably to YouTube) and send the link to the ICA Secretary-General: sg@icaci.org. The video should be 2 minutes or less in duration and be produced in a format suitable for being uploaded on a web page.

The 2012 Applied Geography Conference will be held on Oct 10-13 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. For over three decades, the Applied Geography Conferences has provided a forum for the exchange and critique of ideas related to the application of geographic concepts, analytical techniques, data and methods. The conference brings together practitioners, academics, and other professionals who seek geographic solutions and explanations to societal problems. Abstract deadline is 6/3/2012. Also join the Student Paper/Poster Competition.

Webinar will be on Tuesday, June 5th from 10:00am - 11:30am. Agenda:

• Introduction and Overview of Town of Amherst GIS Data Sharing Program - Michael Olkin, Town of Amherst GIS Administrator and NEURISA President
• From Public Records to Open Government: Access to Massachusetts Municipal Geographic Data Robert Goodspeed, MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning.
• 2011 Storm Season Opens Doors to Data Sharing with Utility Companies Meghan McGaffin, GIS Analyst City of Milford, CT; Editor, CT GeoFocus; Municipal Representative, CT GIS User to User Network.

Register online at http://www.neurisa.org/events

SciTechnol successfully publishes quality journals with the support from scientists like you. We cordially invite you to be the prestigious Editorial Board Member of our Journal Journal of Geoinformatics & Geostatistics. We assure you of international quality and standards of our articles published in our journals, using state-of-the-art prominent reviewers and editorial board. We also assure you of our best co-operation always. Email editor.gigs@scitechnol.com

Mapping cyberspace and social media (such as Twitter, Facebook, weblogs, Flickr, and YouTube) becomes a new research direction for cartographers and GIScientists to visualize and study human thoughts, group behaviors, global issues, and communication theories. With the new media (e.g., the Web and online social networks), scientists can trace geographic and chronological patterns of messages to reveal the diffusion of news, ideas, concepts, and public opinions in response to radical issues, social movements, natural disasters, or epidemic outbreaks. The Web, a powerful platform for collective thinking and exchange of ideas, provides valuable intelligence to help scientists monitoring dynamic processes of innovation diffusions. This special issue of Cartography and Geographic Information Science will assemble prominent research papers and discussions from multiple disciplines with the focus on pursuing basic scientific questions as well as the development of new cartographic and visualization methods. July 1 is the deadline to provide an early expression of interest with a draft title and an abstract (300 words) by email to mtsou@mail.sdsu.edu

Today, there is an increasing demand to capture provenance in the whole life cycle of remotely sensed geoscience data from acquisition, archival, processing, distribution, to applications and make the provenance information available to user community. The technology covered by this special issue will include latest developments of provenance awareness in all aspects of remote sensing data archiving, information management, search and access, and specialized services for data users, such as on-demand processing and visualization. Deadline for submission of manuscripts: 30 September 2012. View full CFP for details.

The fast growing volume, diversity, and intensity of spatio-temporal data pose fundamental GIScience challenges, spanning from conceptualization, representation, computation, and visualization. While many disciplines face the so-called Big Data Challenge, GIScience rises to the frontier in the geospatial revolution as enormous amount of location-aware data cutting across environmental, economic, social, behavioral, and public health dimensions become ubiquitous. We invite submissions of original GIScience research with novel space-time approaches to address these new challenges. A space-time research panel has been organized in the GIScience 2012 international conference to stimulate discussions on pertinent topics in this research area. The special issue will be open to all ideas and topics, not limited to the panel discussion. See detailed information of instructions for authors.