Okay to discuss non-traditional GIS, 4D geospatial data technology questions here?

Question

In meteorology, hydrology, climate science and oceanography, petabytes of geospatial data are stored in NetCDF, HDF5 or GRIB files and distributed via technologies such as the OPeNDAP.org HYRAX server, PyDAP server or THREDDS Data Server. These servers all provide the OPeNDAP data service, and some supply WMS services, WCS services, SOS services, etc. Often the datasets are CF (Climate and Forecast Convention) http://cf-pcmdi.llnl.gov/documents/cf-conventions/1.6/cf-conventions.html compliant, which means that data extracted from these systems via OPeNDAP have unambiguous geospatial information sufficient to be ingested into traditional GIS or other goespatial applications.

Some questions related to these geospatial technologies have appears on stackoverflow, but I'm wondering whether they might be more appropriate here, as the gap seems to be closing between the traditional GIS community and the traditional 4D massive scientific data community.

I feel that asking these questions here would help bring these communities togther even more, which I think would be a good thing, but I don't want to annoy this group if I'm wrong.

So the question is: should this community start asking questions on gis.stackexchange, or continue on stackoverflow?

Answer 1

I would say that these kinds of questions are definitely within the scope of this site. As @blah238 has mentioned in the comment, we already have quite a few questions on these topics; More are welcome.

Answer 2

I would encourage such a development. I use Python and R mostly with the open-source libraries to process remote sensing datasets and some mesoscale weather/atmospheric modeling output and am always hesitating whether to post here or at Stackoverflow. Right now, the community here is a little overly swamped with questions about how to do X in ArcGIS, or sometimes QGIS. It could also benefit from growing a little.

So +1 for all sorts of geospatial computational science from me.

Answer 3

This "answer" is tangential, almost to the point of being off-topic, but here goes anyway: There's long standing dissatisfaction, here and in the computing/science/professional world at large with the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) moniker being expanded to include sibling disciplines like Remote Sensing, Surveying, and 4D, among others. The discontent is likely nearly as old as the term itself, and largely justified.

That said in spite of much effort being put in to finding alternative umbrella terms, none have taken hold. Case in point, geomatics. First used circa 1969, semantically it does everything asked of it. A short, memorable term that doesn't conflict with anything prior and whose definition encompasses all of the above, yet:

• geomatics: 0 questions on our site after 3 years as pointed out by Andre, there aren't any gis either. On the other hand gis 5101 results, and geomatics 15 results.
• the Wikipedia article is woefully incomplete (just compare to the corresponding gis and remote sensing pages)
• most spell-checkers don't know it
• and for twenty years 80%+ of the time I'm asked what my job title is (Geomatics Technician, then Analyst) I've needed to explain it. I don't even answer the phone any more with the name of our departmental unit. People know what GIS is by and large, even the general public, but ...Geomatics? Huh?

This is just a long way to get to the point: for better or ill, GIS is the closest thing I've seen to an umbrella term and we might as well use it they way most outside of our respective disciplines see it.

Answer 4

I believe "non-traditional" could be the keyword here.

Much has been (was?) debated about Geographic Information Systems and related areas (e.g. Remote Sensing, Cartography, Photogrammetry, Surveying) being more than just applications or technologies, but also a particular science.
One argument among others to support this claim is the fact that GIS deals with complex problems (in space and time), which could not be solved based on a non GIS approach.

IMO, these kind of data you are arguing is typically related to such complex environmental problems/situations where the integration with GIS is usually mandatory.

The fact questions like that are already being asked here (as stated by blah238 and Devdatta), makes me think community is wide open to receive many types of GIS-related issues (simple, complex, traditional, non-traditional, etc).