Michael Goodchild

Biography

Until 2012 I held the Jack and Laura Dangermond Chair of Geography and was Director of UCSB’s Center for Spatial Studies. I received my BA degree from Cambridge University in Physics in 1965 and my PhD in Geography from McMaster University in 1969. My research and teaching interests focus on issues in geographic information science, including uncertainty in geographic information, discrete global grids, and volunteered geographic information. I directed or co-directed several large funded projects, including the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis, the Alexandria Digital Library, and the Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science. I was elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences in 2002, and Foreign Member of the Royal Society and Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy in 2010; and in 2007 I received the Prix Vautrin Lud. I have published over 550 books and articles. I moved to Seattle upon retirement in 2012, and currently hold part-time positions as Research Professor at Arizona State University and as Distinguished Chair Professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Research

I am interested in all aspects of geographic information systems, science, and technology. Accuracy and uncertainty are important issues in all of these areas, and involve the theoretical frameworks of fractals, geostatistics, and spatial statistics. I am interested in discrete global grids, a set of methods for representing variation over the curved surface of the Earth and implemented in tools such as Google Earth. I am interested in volunteered geographic information and in other paradigms for the production of geographic information. I am also interested in wayfinding and in urban mobility, including the long-term impacts of connected and autonomous vehicles.

Selected Publications

M.F. Goodchild (2020) Beyond Tobler’s hiking function. Geographical Analysis 52(4): 558-569. DOI: 10.1111/gean.12253
M.F. Goodchild, A.S. Fotheringham, P. Kedron, and W.W. Li (2020) Introduction: Forum on reproducibility and replicability in geography. Annals of the American Association of Geographers. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2020.1806030
P. Kedron, W.W. Li, A.S. Fotheringham, and M.F. Goodchild (2020) Reproducibility and replicability: Opportunities and challenges for geospatial research. International Journal of Geographical Information Science. DOI: 10.1080/13658816.2020.1802032
W.W. Li, M. Batty, and M.F. Goodchild (2020) Real-time GIS for smart cities. International Journal of Geographical Information Science 34(2): 311-324. DOI: 10.1080/13658816.2019.1673397
J. Dangermond and M.F. Goodchild (2019) Building geospatial infrastructure. Geo-spatial Information Science 23(1): 1–9. DOI: 10.1080/10095020.2019.1698274
M.F. Goodchild (2020) Mapping language in the age of GIS. In S.D. Brunn and R. Kehrein, editors, Handbook of the Changing World Language Map. Springer
H. Guo, M.F. Goodchild, and A. Annoni, editors (2020) Manual of Digital Earth. Springer Open. DOI: 10.1007/978-981-32-9915-3
M.F. Goodchild (2019) Geography and GIScience: an evolving relationship. Canadian Geographer. DOI: 10.1111/cag.12554
M.F Goodchild and P.A. Longley (2019) Geographic information science. In M. Fischer, editor, Handbook of Regional Science. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-36203-3_61-1
M.F. Goodchild (2019) Preface: Special Issue on Discrete Global Grid Systems. Cartographica 54(1): 1–3