I'll give you the dissertation topic I ended up not pursuing because I
decided it was too hard, and my urban studies and planning department
wouldn't have rewarded me for the hard parts (computational math).
The premise was that the "design" of the American landscape has in
large part been determined by regulations -- not by urban designers.
Things like federal highway legislation, commercial parking
requirements, etc. almost completely determine the cheapest design
options for developers.
My idea was to take the most significant legislative "rules", encode
them in some sort of geographic computational engine, and see if I
could re-create the American suburban landscape just by the direct
application of these rules.
Step 2 for extra credit would be to design a what-if system that let
the user change the regulations so that we could see what new rules
would lead to better urban design.
The big problem is that there are plenty of simulation games you could
start with, but they are all grid/cell-based for their geography. This
lets you get an idea of large-scale patterns, but doesn't tell you
anything about the look and feel of place. Doing this right would
require a different approach, combining small-scale, vector mapping
and possibly 3D modeling.
---
Raj
On Mar 11, at 12:37 PM, Eric Wolf wrote:
Fellow Wankers,
I have reached the point in my PhD where I have to decide exactly what
the "big question" my dissertation will address. This is a Geography
PhD, so the "big question" has to be focused on Geography, not
Computer Science. And since it's not a Masters Degree, it can't just
be a novel application of existing concepts.
Thus far, I have been focusing on problems of automated generalization
of vector features. My planned question to answer has been something
along the lines of "Can database ontologies be used to guide
conceptual generalization for cartographic applications?" It's a very
heady topic and attempts to blend a currently "hot" topic, ontologies,
with a classically difficult problem: generalization. But it's also a
very contrived project since I get much more excited about things a
little more "hands-on" and grounded in application.
So my advisor left the door open for me to try to come up with a "big
question" based on some of my current efforts in my job at USGS. I
have been playing with ways to enrich the capabilities of the FOSS4G
web mapping stack for The National Map. Specifically, I've started
exploring embedding geoprocessing methods inside OpenLayers whilst
designing an architecture for rapid deployment of tile cached
basemaps. This really excites me because I feel like I'm making real
contributions rather than just reformulating some philosophical BS
about difficult, vague questions.
My question to you, dear GeoWankers, is: What kind of big question
could or should I attempt to answer with FOSS4G-oriented efforts?
Think big. Think vague...
-Eric
-=--=---=----=----=---=--=-=--=---=----=---=--=-=-
Eric B. Wolf 720-209-6818
USGS Geographer
Center of Excellence in GIScience
PhD Student
CU-Boulder - Geography
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