CGA Collaborates with National Science Foundation Cooperative Research Program

February 28, 2014
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The Center for Geographic Analysis (CGA) at IQSS has received funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to establish a spatiotemporal innovation center. Industry & University Cooperative Research Center (I/UCRC) Program, which aims to develop partnerships among academic, industry, and government organizations, is funding CGA as part of an initiative to establish the I/UCRC for Spatiotemporal Thinking, Computing, and Applications. The purpose of the new research center—a virtual collaboration among Harvard, UC Santa Barbara, and George Mason University—will be to deepen human understanding of how global phenomena are linked in space and time, and to solve engineering challenges through innovative technology and methodology.

Under the direction of Peter Bol (Director) and Wendy Guan (Executive Director), CGA has been involved in a global temporal gazetteer initiative in collaboration with several US and international partners, but this recent support from the NSF offers a valuable opportunity to build on CGA's work in this realm. The NSF program, Guan explains, will add the dimension of time to CGA executive training programs on geospatial technology that currently exist. CGA is also working with additional government agencies to further expand the training programs; CGA’s WorldMap platform development (funded by the NEH) will expand to include the dimension of time through collaboration with partners in this program.