GeoConvergence Workshop

The NSF Convergence Accelerator supports use-inspired, team-based, multidisciplinary efforts that address challenges of national importance and will produce deliverables of value to society in the near future. The objective of this workshop on GeoConvergence is to help identify topic areas for new tracks in the NSF Convergence Accelerator.

A wide variety of scientific and engineering fields rely on a common, accurate, and precise, 4-dimensonal (4D) geographical framework. Yet, these fields of inquiry have their own origins, communities, and languages that balkanize collaboration and hinder the synergies that might otherwise be realized. This is an issue not just in science and technology fields such as Artificial Intelligence; Computational Modeling and Simulation; Augmented-, Virtual-, and Mixed-Reality; Sensors and the Internet of Things; Robotics & Autonomy; and GIS & Remote Sensing, but also in so many other academic disciplines and professional fields whose advancement depends upon overcoming data silos and organizing observations and knowledge within a common 4D space/time framework.

Otherwise, the various “silos of excellence” would expend their intellectual energies working without the benefit of an organized intellectual community dedicated to easing the common barriers, liberating scholars and practitioners from mechanistic issues to focus on fundamental advancements needed by all.

The GeoConvergence workshop will convene a broad and diverse set of stakeholders across disciplines, professions, and sectors of society to help identify, characterize, and develop a common, accurate, and precise, 4D geographical framework to for real-time convergence of 4D data across a broad range of applications. Such a framework must be developed with thoughtful consideration of all factors including social, economic, environmental and ethical implications of information integration, in order to realize the its full potential without suffering the unintended consequences of uncontrolled technologies.

Uneven distribution of geospatial enablement across various fields of technology, disciplines and professions has stunted the broader positive impacts that would otherwise have been available to society. This workshop will serve to establish a community, a framework and a roadmap for advancing and accelerating 4D GeoConvergence covering complex geographies including urban environments and natural environments.

The workshop format will include keynote presentations and discussion sessions on a wide range of topics. The workshop outcome will include a formal report on 4D GeoConvergence.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.