Jerome E. Dobson

A Regional Screening Procedure for Land Use Suitability Analysis

Increasing opposition to proposed energy facilities and regulatory delays in licensing have created a pressing need for a comprehensive and objective method to select potential sites. This paper discusses the results of a research project designed to develop and apply an automated regional screening procedure to identify the land use suitability of every land parcel within any candidate region. Although the current project involves energy facilities, the procedure itself should have general capabilities of application to other types of facilities and land uses. It is intended that siting criteria for any particular land use may be examined from the standpoint of several independent siting objecties. The ones examined in this project emphasize engineering, ecological, and socioeconomic considerations. This paper describes, first, the requirments of a regional screening procedure and, second, an applicaton of the Land Use Screening Procedure (LUSP) to northern Maryland. The application is structured to determine the types of siting issues that LUSP is capable of addressing and the extent to which it can be used to identify candidate areas (large areas from which specific sites can be chosen after highly detailed analyses).

The Panopticon's Changing Geography

Over the past two centuries, surveillance technology has advanced in three major spurts. In the first instance the surveillance instrument was a specially designed building, Benthams Panopticon; in the second, a tightly controlled television network, Orwells Big Brother; today, an electronic human‐tracking service. Functionally, each technology provided total surveillance within the confines of its designated geographical coverage, but costs, geographical coverage, and benefits have changed dramatically through time. In less than a decade, costs have plummeted from hundreds of thousands of dollars per watched person per year for analog surveillance or tens of thousands of dollars for incarceration to mere hundreds of dollars for electronic human‐tracking systems. Simultaneously, benefits to those being watched have increased enormously, so that individual and public resistence are minimized. The end result is a fertile new field of investigation for surveillance studies involving an endless variety of power relationships. Our literal, empirical approach to panopticism has yielded insights that might have been less obvious under the metaphorical approach that has dominated recent scholarly discourse. We conclude that both approaches—literal and metaphorical—are essential to understand what promises to be the greatest instrument of social change arising from the Information Revolution. We urge public and scholarly debate—local, national, and global—on this grand social experiment that has already begun without forethought.

Cartographic Symbols for Humanitarian Demining

Abstract A new standard set of cartographic symbols for landmine hazards and mine actions (e.g., clearances, hazard reductions, mine risk education (MRE), and technical surveys) in humanitarian demining activities is proposed, as well as a five-step approach that was utilised to develop the symbol set and that may be applied to the design of related map symbols in digital mapping environments. To promulgate the new symbol set, the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining and the American Geographical Society recently sponsored workshops in New York, NY, and Reston, VA. Workshop attendees, including key representatives from international organisations, private firms, and NGOs, indicated great enthusiasm for a future global standard.

Big Brother has evolved.

Tracking someones movements can now be done cheaply and easily, and there are few restrictions on who can monitor whom, says Jerome E. Dobson.

The Flatness of U.S. States

Does perception match reality when people judge the flatness of large areas, such as U.S. states? The authors conducted a geomorphometric analysis of the contiguous United States, employing publicly available geographic software, Shuttle Radar Topography Mission () elevation data, and a new algorithm for measuring flatness. Each 90‐meter cell was categorized as not flat, flat, flatter, or flattest, and each state was measured in terms of percentage flat, flatter, and flattest as well as absolute area in each category. Ultimately, forty‐eight states plus the District of Columbia were mapped and ranked according to these values. Keywords: flatness, U.S. states, slope, Kansas, Florida.

Aquaterra Incognita: Lost Land Beneath The Sea

The author proposes scientific recognition of an existing, previously undefined and unnamed global feature. Aquaterra is suggested as the new name for the lands that were alternately exposed and inundated as ice sheets advanced and retreated over the past 120,000 years. The vertical amplitude of sea level change amounts to 130 meters, and the aggregate global area of aquaterra equates to the continent of North America. The time period coincides with the total span during which modern humans are known to have existed.

Geography's American Constituency: Results from the AGS Geographic Knowledge and Values Survey.

Does geography have an American constituency? Setbacks for the discipline at all levels of education over the past 65 years would suggest that geography is universally unpopular in the United States, but is that really true? The American Geographical Society (AGS) polled adult US residents on their understanding of the discipline itself and appreciation for geography and geographic education. Responses to the AGS Geographic Knowledge and Values Survey overwhelmingly indicate that a strong pro-geography constituency does exist, though at present it can only be proven within a specific cohort consisting of adult US residents who are more female, more educated, and less ethnically and racially diverse than the overall population. Respondents in this cohort overwhelmingly support expanded geographic education within the US, but overall knowledge regarding key geographic concepts and the discipline itself is weak. The results have policy implications for all education levels and strengthen the case for increased funding of geographic education.

Geography's Second Twilight: The James R. Anderson Distinguished Lecture in Applied Geography

Jerome E. Dobson, professor emeritus, University of Kansas; president of the American Geographical Society; and recipient of the 2014 James R. Anderson Medal of Honor in Applied Geography, discusses his career in the context of Americas academic purge of geography. Highlights include his time as a Jefferson Science Fellow with the National Academies and U. S. Department of State. Dobson has been recognized with two lifetime achievement awards for his pioneering work in geographic information systems (GIS) and as Alumnus of 2013 at Reinhardt University. His contributions include the paradigm of automated geography, his instrumental role in originating the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis, and his leadership of the LandScan Global Population Database, the de facto world standard for estimating populations at risk. His recent research includes testing a new system for mapping minefields; designing and promulgating the current world standard for cartographic representation of landmines, minefields, and mine actions; and leading six AGS Bowman Expeditions.