Spatial Context: An Introduction to Fundamental Computer Algorithms for Spatial Analysis

Many disciplines are concerned with manipulating geometric (or spatial) objects in the computer – such as geology, cartography, computer aided design (CAD), etc. – and each of these have developed their own data structures and techniques, often independently. Nevertheless, in many cases the object types and the spatial queries are similar, and this book attempts to find a common theme.

Professor Christopher Gold has worked on the development of GIS methods since the 1970s, and is particularly concerned about the integration of geographical analysis and algorithms, and cooperation with the Computer Science community. As well as his current emphasis on spatial data structures and algorithms, he has had extensive experience in applications such as forestry, geology, landscape modelling and marine navigation. Professor Gold has been active for over 30 years in the development of spatial data structures, spatial models of perception and adjacency, Geo-informatics applications, and algorithms.

He has approximately 200 publications and presentations in many fields – GIS (Geographic Information Science), Computer Science, Geology, Forestry and others. He is known in the Geo-informatics community for his work on spatial data structures, Voronoi diagrams, dynamic mapping and 3D modelling, and within the Computational Geometry community for his work on GIS applications. He has been active in Mathematics conferences, in Geology and Engineering workshops, and in Forestry. He has made presentations or organized workshops in Canada, USA, Europe and China. Gold has received a variety of honours from Canadian and Asian associations, and has collaborated with a wide variety of researchers in Europe, North America and Asia. He has supervised approximately 20 research students and research assistants.