Ed Parsons

Google Inc. | Google · Research Department

Searching for information is a ubiquitous activity, performed in a variety of contexts and supported by rapidly evolving technologies. As a process, information search often has a spatial aspect: spatial metaphors help users refer to abstract contents, and geo-referenced information grounds entities in physical space. While information search is a...

Hitherto rich geographical information has been a valuable, but highly specialized, corner of the Web. A linked Web that understands geographical concepts will immediately make much of the Web more useful to the developers of Web applications and will provide an important context for the emerging Internet of Things.

This position paper is the outcome of a joint reflection by a group of international geographic and environmental scientists from government, industry, and academia brought together by the Vespucci Initiative for the Advancement of Geographic Information Science, and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. It argues that the vision of...

Pages: 146-167

This paper demonstrates that with currently available computer visualization tools including multimedia, and with the development of virtual worlds-based interfaces, it is now possible to represent qualitative as well as quantitative spatial information. The spatial information which is conveyed by conventional cartographic representation may be ch...