| Abbreviation | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ABM | Agent Based Models (ABM) are dynamic models with a collection of autonomous decision-making agents moving in a virtual environment. |
| AI | Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the study and design of machines or computational methods that can perform tasks that normally require human intelligence. |
| ANN | Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is a computer algorithm that emulates a biological neural network to conduct regression and classification tasks. |
| area-class map | A thematic map that categorizes geographic regions into distinct classes or categories based on specific criteria such as land use, vegetation type, or geological formations. |
| atmospheric correction | The process of inferring the surface reflectance component of a signal from a measured radiance spectrum. |
| boolean logic | A type of algebra in which results are calculated as either TRUE (1) or FALSE (0). |
| BRDF | Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF): An approach to simulate reflectance from a standard solar and viewing geometry using diverse directional reflectance measurements. |
| BRF | Bidirectional Reflectance Function (BRF): The fraction of incident light that is reflected from a surface. It is a function of incidence angle, exitance angle, and wavelength. |
| CA | Cellular Automata (CA) is collection of "colored" cells on a grid that evolves through discrete time steps based on the neighborhood's conditions. |
| classification | Methods that seek to place data into known groupings or categories. |
| clustering | Methods that seek to identify groupings or place data into groups. |
| combination rule | A mathematical function that aggregates criterion values with weights into a single summary score for each alternative. |
| compensatory model | A decision model where poor performance in one criterion can be offset by better performance in another. |
| continuous data | data that represent geographic phenomena that vary over space and have no distinct boundaries (e.g., elevation, rainfall, slope) |
| contour | An isoline, all points of which are at the same elevation above or below a specified reference surface. |
| decision matrix | A table representing alternatives and their performance across criteria. |
| deliberative democracy | Democratic processes based on thorough consideration and discussion of issues from a variety of perspectives, especially going beyond the aggregation of preferences by voting or other ways of tallying opinions. |
| digital economy | complex of economic activities increasingly characterized by the transaction of digital products and services through digital networks. |
| discrete data | data that represent geographic features that exist independently and have clear, definable boundaries (e.g., administrative unit, building footprint, road, tree) |
| elevation | The distance of a point above a specified surface of constant potential; the distance is measured along the direction of gravity between the point and the surface |
| epistemology | The branch of philosophy concerned with the study of knowledge, particularly as pertaining to the status and range of scientific and sociological knowledge; explaining how we “come to know” things. |
| First Law of Geography | Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things. See Tobler (1970). |
| fuzzy operator | A mathematical function for combining or transforming membership degrees to model relationships. |
| geodetic height | The perpendicular distance from an ellipsoid of reference to a point. |
| geographic accuracy | degree to which spatial data representation matches the spatial extent and dimensions of the geographic phenomena being mapped |
| geographic similarity | The outcome of a geographic variable at a location is similar to those with similar geographic configurations. |
| geoid | The equipotential surface of the Earth's gravity field coinciding with the mean sea level of the oceans. |
| geoweb | Collection of geographic information of all types (from government-created to user-generated) stored and shared via the Internet. |
| GTCM | The Geospatial Technology Competency Model (GTCM) framework was developed through a collaborative effort involving the Employment and Training Administration (ETA), the GeoTech Center, and industry experts. |
| HDRF | Hemispherical Directional Reflectance Factor (HDRF): The reflectance of a surface. |
| heatmap | type of thematic map used to depict the intensity and magnitude of geographic phenomena using variation in color hue and brightness |
| ideographic | An ideology in study which focuses on the uniqueness of the phenomenon. |
| imaging spectrometer | An instrument which measures a spectrum at every location in an image. |
| indoor space | space bounded by building physical elements in which people perform their activities |
| inference system | In the context of fuzzy logic, is a computational framework that uses fuzzy rules and membership functions to derive conclusions from uncertain or imprecise data. |
| isoline map | type of thematic map that depicts continuous data interpolated from vector points (isarithms) or areas (isopleth) using lines to connect regions of equal values |
| LLM | Large Language Models (LLMs) are Artificial Intelligence models trained on extensive text to predict and generate language based on context. |
| map algebra | grid-based form of cartographic modeling that defines a syntax for combining mathematical, logical, and/or Boolean operators with spatial analysis functions to perform raster calculations |
| map analysis | Evaluating the effectiveness of the map’s communication (map critique) and describing the geographic information contained within it. |
| map audience | The people for whom the map is intended, to include their needs and experience with maps. |
| map critique | An evaluation of the design and development of the map, meant to provide insight on map user response and map maker intent. |
| map interpretation | Recognizing/describing patterns, drawing geographic connections, and compiling information (including from other sources) to study the map. |
| map reading | Understanding the map as a representation of the real world, and using the tools of the map (scale, directional indicator, legend) for wayfinding, position finding, and recognition of symbols. |
| MCDA | Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) includes methods and techniques for evaluating and ranking alternatives based on multiple criteria or objectives, aiding decision-makers in selecting the most suitable option. |
| mean | Also called the average, the mean is calculated as the sum of the values for a variable, divided by the number of observations. It is one way of representing the center of the data. |
| membership | The degree or extent to which an element belongs to a fuzzy set, represented by a value between 0 and 1. |
| MESF | Moran eigenvector spatial filtering (MESF) |
| Multivariate | Multivariate refers to more than one variable. |
| NDVI | Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). A metric for quantifying the health and density of vegetation, calculated with spectrometric data from red and near-infrared bands. |
| NER | Named Entity Recognition (NER) is a process in Natural Language Processing (NLP) that identifies and classifies names in text into predefined categories. |
| NLP | Natural language processing (NLP) are techniques that enable computers to interpret and generate human language. |
| nomothetic | An ideology in study which seeks common principles (or laws). |
| non-compensatory model | A model where a poor performance in one criterion cannot be compensated by others. |
| normalization | A process to standardize criterion values for comparison across different scales. |
| observation | Observations are the individual data points in a larger dataset. In GIS&T, an observation may be a row in an attribute table. |
| occupied space | space that contains a physical entity |
| orthometric | The distance between the geoid and a point measured along the plumb line and taken positive upward from the geoid. |
| outdoor space | space unbounded to the sky |
| participatory action | Research which seeks to explicitly bring about social change through improved understanding of the world, achieved through emergent processes of collective knowledge production. |
| preference structure | The decision-maker’s priorities or preferences among criteria and alternatives. |
| public participation | Formal involvement of people in a decisionmaking process who are somehow affected by that decision, enabling them to take action, be heard, and affect the final outcome. |
| radiance | Energy emitted (or received) per unit surface area per unit solid angle. |
| ranking | The process of ordering alternatives from best to worst based on their performance across crite-ria. |
| raster | pixel-based spatial data model that represents geographic phenomena as an organized grid or matrix of cells |
| rasterization | process of converting vector points, lines, and polygons into gridded cell data |
| rem. sensing reflectance | Remote Sensing Reflectance, Rrs: Directional reflectance of water, excluding glint and whitecap signals, expressed in units of inverse steradians. |
| RNN | Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) are neural networks designed for sequential data processing, such as language or time series. |
| Second Law of Geography | Geographic phenomena vary in an uncontrolled manner, over time, over space and over scale. |
| semi-bounded space | large group of spaces that have openings from different sides and cannot be defined as outdoor or indoor |
| sensitivity analysis | The systematic process of identifying the sources of variability in the MCE model outcome. |
| Skills Gap | A skills gap is the disparity between the skills an employer expects their employees to possess and the skills that said employees have. |
| skills transferability | Transferable skills (also known as portable skills) are skills that can be transferred across employment sectors. These can include technical skills like IT skills or skills such as teamwork and communication. |
| space | Either unlimited expand or an empty area usually bounded in some way between things |
| space-time volume | A concept in spatiotemporal analysis that extends the idea of volume by incorporating the temporal dimension, resulting in a four-dimensional representation. |
| spatial autocorrelation | The extent to which a spatial feature and its values are systematically clustered (positive autocorrelation) or dispersed (negative autocorrelation) across space. The relationship of the attribute values of a given geographic variable over distance. |
| spatial heterogeneity | Geographic phenomena inherently vary over space and over time. |
| spatial interpolation | estimation of raster surface values at unsampled locations based on known values of nearby vector points or polygons |
| spatial resolution | ground area dimensions represented by a single pixel or raster cell |
| spatiotemporal event | An ST-event is an encapsulated occurrence within a defined timeframe, involving one or more ST-objects and their interrelationships. Typically represented as graphs, illustrating the dynamics and interactions of its constituent objects over time. |
| spatiotemporal object | ST-objects are dynamic entities that evolves both spatially and temporally. Each is uniquely identified by its attributes across timestamps and can exhibit changes in shape, size, and internal characteristics due to environmental or contextual factors. |
| spatiotemporal relation | ST-relations are connections between ST-objects across different timestamps, which depict interactions such as expansion, contraction, continuation, merging, splitting, appearance, and disappearance. |
| spectrum | Energy as a function of wavelength, often defined over a set of discrete wavelength channels. |
| Third Law of Geography | The more similar the geographic configurations of two points (areas), the more similar the values (processes) of the target variable at these two points (areas). |
| Toponym Resolution | Identifying and assigning geographic locations to place names found in text. |
| trade-off | The compromise between competing criteria where improving one reduces the performance of another. |
| Transformers | A model architecture in machine learning that relies on attention mechanism to improve the speed and quality of learning tasks related to language understanding. |
| univariate | Univariate refers to a single variable or attribute. |
| variable | A variable is a property or characteristic that has been measured about one or more observations. In GIS&T these may be referred to as attributes, or columns or fields in an attribute table. |
| vector | coordinate-based spatial data model that represents geographic features as points, lines, and polygons |
| vectorization | process of converting gridded cell data into vector points, lines, and polygons |
| VIF | Variance Inflation Factor (VIF). The formula to calculate VIF values can be found at https://online.stat.psu.edu/stat462/node/180/. |
| volume | Volume refers to the three-dimensional space occupied by an object or phenomenon, enclosed by surfaces. |
| voxel | A volumetric pixel, or voxel, represents the smallest distinguishable box-shaped part of a three-dimensional space in a voxel-based model. |
| VSWIR | Visible-ShortWave InfraRed (VSWIR): The spectral range from about 380 nm to 2500 nm. |
| weights | Numerical values that represent the relative importance of each criterion and derive from pref-erence structure. |