INTER-AMERICAN WORKSHOP ON ENVIRONMENTAL DATA ACCESS

GILBERTO CÂMARA

Gilberto Câmara, Earth Observation Co-ordination, National Institute for Space Research - INPE, Brazil. Av. dos Astronautas 1758, São José dos Campos - SP - Brazil, CEP 12201-970. Phone +55-12-345-6499, fax +55-19-345-6468, e-mail gilberto@dpi.inpe.br.

Gilberto is Co-ordinator for Earth Observation at INPE. He was the Head of the Image Processing Division from 1991 to 1996. Gilberto's research interests include: geographical information science, design and implementation of geographical information systems, spatial databases, spatial analysis and remote sensing image processing. He has published more than 80 full papers on refereed journals and scientific conferences in Brazil and abroad, mostly dealing with the various aspects of spatial information science and engineering.

He acted as Project Co-ordinator for the SGI and SPRING systems, which are Brazil's most significant efforts at GIS technological development. SPRING is available on the Internet (www.dpi.inpe.br/spring), and more than 30.000 users have downloaded it.

Gilberto also was the manager of the MicroMagics and METVIEW (INPE/ECMWF's Meteorological Visualisation and Processing System) systems. In 1997 he spent one year at ECMWF (European Weather Centre) in Reading, England, as part of the development of the METVIEW system. He is currently co-cordinator (together with Max Egenhofer of University of Maine/USA) of a joint NSF-CNPq project on "Interoperable Geographical Information Systems".

He was the deputy co-ordinator of the GEOTEC project, a major effort on the area of GIS research in Brazil (1995-1997). He has been three times Chair of SIBGRAPI- the Brazilian Symposium on Computer Graphics and Image Processing (1989, 1992 and 1998), and has served as Chairman of the Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Image Processing of the Brazilian Computer Society from 1991 to 1996. He is a consultant of the most important Brazilian funding agencies (FAPESP, FINEP, CAPES and CNPq). He teaches three courses ("Introduction to GIS", "Spatial Analysis", "Geographical Databases") as part of INPE's graduate programs in Remote Sensing and Computer Science.

Gilberto is also very active in the dissemination of GIS and remote sensing technology in Brasil, is a frequent speaker at user conferences and government-sponsored panels, and has given tutorials in various aspects of GIS in Brazilian conferences ("GIS Brasil", Remote Sensing Symposium, SIBGRAPI). He writes a bi-monthly column on the "InfoGeo" magazine (the only brazilian periodical devoted to GIS).

TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT OF GIS SOFTWARE

  1. SGI (MS/DOS): 1984-1991
    Description: GIS and Image processing software for MS-DOS PCs. Rôle: Project Coordinator. Development effort: 100 man-years; Results: The SITIM/SGI system was installed in more than 100 Remote Sensing and GIS labs in Brasil.

  2. SPRING (Linux and Windows): 1992-2001
    Description: Object-oriented GIS and Image Processing Software freely available on the Internet. Role: Project Coordinator (1992-1996) and data modelling. Duration: 1992-present. Development effort: 150 man-years; Results: More than 30000 copies of SPRING downloaded from Internet site (http://www.dpi.inpe.br/spring).

  3. TerraLib (Linux and Windows): 2001-present
    Description: Open Source GIS and Image Processing software library (available in http://www.terralib.org). Rôle: Systems Architect, Dynamical models. Duration: 2001-present. Development effort: 40 man-years.
SELECTED RECENT PAPERS
  1. Câmara, G., M. A. Casanova, U. M. d. Freitas, J. P. C. Cardeiro and L. Hara (1996). A presentation language for GIS cadastral data. In: N. Pissinou (ed), Fourth ACM Workshop on Advances in Geographic Information Systems - ACM GIS, Washington, D.C. ACM Press, pp.139 - 146
  2. Câmara, G., R. Souza, U. Freitas and J. Garrido (1996). "SPRING: Integrating Remote Sensing and GIS with Object-Oriented Data Modelling." Computers and Graphics 15(6): 13-22.
  3. Câmara, G, R. Thomé, U. Freitas and A. Monteiro (1999). Interoperability In Practice: Problems in Semantic Conversion from Current Technology to OpenGIS. In: A. Vckovski, K. E. Brassel and H.-J. Schek (ed), Interoperating Geographic Information Systems, Second International Conference, INTEROP'99, Zurich. Berlin, Springer. Lecture Notes on Computer Science 1580
  4. Câmara, G., A. M. Monteiro, J. Paiva, J. Gomes and L. Velho (2000). "Towards a unified framework for spatial data models." Journal of the Brazilian Computing Society 7(1): 17-25.
  5. Câmara, G., and A. M. Monteiro (2001). "Geocomputation Techniques for Spatial Analysis: Is it the case for Health Data?" Cadernos de Saúde Pública 17(5): 1059-1081
  6. Câmara, G., M. Egenhofer, F. Fonseca and A. Monteiro (2001). What´s In An Image? In: D. Montello (ed), Spatial Information Theory: Foundations of Geographic Information Science. International Conference, COSIT 2001. Santa Barbara, CA., Springer. Lecture Notes on Computer Science 2205: 474-487.
  7. YAMAMOTO,M.; CÂMARA, G.; LORENA, L.A.N. "Tabu Search Heuristic for Point-Feature Cartographic Label Placement". GeoInformatica, 6(1):77-89, 2002.
  8. FONSECA, F.; EGENHOFER, M.; AGOURIS, P.; CÂMARA, G. "Using Ontologies for Integrated GIS". Transactions on GIS, 6(3), 2002.
  9. FONSECA, F.; EGENHOFER, M.; DAVIS, C.; CÂMARA, G. "Semantic Granularity in Ontology-Driven Geographic Information Systems". Annals of Mathematical and Artificial Intelligence, 36(1-2):131 - 151, 2002..
  10. G. CÂMARA, A. MONTEIRO, F. RAMOS, A. SPOSATI, D. KOGA. "Mapping Social Exclusion/Inclusion in Developing Countries: Social Dynamics of São Paulo in the 90's ". In: D. Jonelle, M. Goodchild (eds.), "Best Practices in GIS". Santa Barbara, CA, Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science, in press.

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