Improving geospatial data usability

地理信息系统（GIS）是一种绘图软件，越来越多地用于支持各个领域的决策，从社会科学和人文科学（例如人类学、社会学）到工程学（例如土木工程）。事实上，根据某些研究，80%以上的数据可以在空间上参考，在许多情况下，考虑地理环境对于更好地理解所分析的现象可能至关重要。然而，地理信息系统所使用的数据在不同程度上总是不准确、不精确、不完整或过时的，这些数据是某一特定时间的地理环境的一种表示，是使用各种质量的获取程序（例如土地测量、全球定位系统、卫星图像）产生的。我们希望GIS在计算中考虑这些不确定性，但不幸的是，它们处理数据时就好像它们是完美的，即使质量通常是众所周知的。关于质量的信息往往由数据生产者提供，而且越来越经常地与数据一起提供，作为总体元数据（关于数据的数据）的一部分。如果大多数最终用户认为GIS结果是真实的，专家用户知道有一定程度的不确定性，但通常不能估计这个水平。现在，人们经常发现，在使用低质量地理空间数据的基础上根据地理信息系统作出的决定所产生的问题。这种决定可能产生强大的经济、社会或政治影响，并已导致人员死亡。随着用户数量的增加，必须能够向用户提供信息，说明他们可以从地理空间数据中得到什么。该研究计划的目的是提高地理空间数据的可用性。为此，将开发各种技术，改进向最终用户传递高质量信息的工作，并设计各种工具，增加地理信息系统对数据质量信息的使用，以减少最终用户滥用地理空间数据的风险。

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are mapping software increasingly being used to support decision-making in various fields, ranging from social and human sciences (e.g. anthropology, sociology) to engineering (e.g. civil engineering). Indeed, according to certain studies, more than 80% of data can be spatially referenced, and taking the geographic environment into account may be critical in many cases to better understand the phenomenon analysed. However, the data used by the GIS are always, at different levels, inaccurate, imprecise, incomplete or out-of-date, being one representation of the geographic environment at a given time, produced using acquisition procedures of various qualities (e.g. land surveying, GPS, satellite imagery). We would then expect GIS to take into consideration these uncertainties in their calculations, but they unfortunately process data as if they were perfect, even if quality is often well-known. Information about quality is often produced by data producers and is more and more frequently provided together with data as part of the overall metadata (data about data). If most end-users consider GIS results as true, expert users know there is some level of uncertainty, but usually can't estimate this level. It is now common to observe problems that result from a decision based on GIS using geospatial data of low quality. Such decisions can have strong economic, social or political impacts and already led to the death of people. With the increasing number of users, it is then critical to be able to provide users with information about what they can expect from geospatial data. The aim of this research program is to enhance the usability of geospatial data. This will be done by developing techniques to improve the communication of quality information to the end-users as well as designing tools that would increase the use of data quality information by GIS in order to reduce the risks of misuse of geospatial data by the end-users.