From Scratchpad

[edit] Chris McDowall

Hi I'm Chris, the course coordinator of the GEOG 103 Digital World's course.

[edit] Research Interests

I'm in the final year of the University of Auckland's PhD. programme. My dissertation is tentatively titled "Rethinking spatio-temporal primitives in GIS". That's a fancy way of saying that I'm interested in representing geographic stuff that changes. In particular, I'm interested in stuff that is in some way vague.

What on Earth does that mean?

Here's a better way of explaining the topic. Imagine we are sitting around a table covered with maps of various places in New Zealand. If I asked you to show me the location of Mount Ruapehu, or your neighbourhood on an appropriate map, I'm confident you would have little difficulty in pointing out their location. Now imagine I asked you to draw a line marking their boundaries. Could you draw such a line on a map and be absolutely certain this was the 'correct' boundary? Could anyone? Is it nonsense to even try?

If I had instead asked where the edge of your old high school's property or the main runway at Auckland International Airport is, it would be a simple matter to draw a boundary. So, how are mountains and neighbourhoods different from real-estate properties and runways? If they exist, surely they possess spatial boundaries; else Mount Ruapehu and your neighbourhood would occupy the entire world.

Many of the things we encounter in our lives are vague objects. Instead of having hard bounding edges, there is a hazy transition from one thing to another. These threshold spaces (such as the zone where mountain becomes plain) may be interpreted differently by different observers. Humans are remarkably adept at communicating with one another about vague states of affairs (although sometimes it can get us into trouble). Unfortunately, computers demand precision.

My PhD research involves developing new types of computer databases that at one level precisely describe geographic information (elevation, precipitation levels etc.), whilst allowing people to subjectively define vague objects at another.

So yeah, that's what I do ... makes for great conversation at social functions.

[edit] Some interesting links

Links will go here.