Slide 2 of 29

• Seminar presented by Philip Sargent while seconded from Laser-Scan Ltd. to the Space Applications Institute, JRC (Ispra, Italy).
  

• Seminar prepared in response to discussion after a presentation on OO GIS (April 6th 1998) when it became clear that the new facilities that the audience wanted from a new-style GIS were largely temporal; rather than the more commonly known advantages of OO GIS.

Ice Sheets

Ice-sheet break-up is the fastest, largest temporal change in the Earth’s physical geography. 8000 sq.km of the Antarctica peninsula’s floating ice sheets have broken up in the past 50 years. The Larson B iceshelf alone lost 200 sq.km in the Summer of 1997-98 [New Scientist, 25 April 1998]. On a smaller scale, shipping needs iceberg monitoring integrated with meteorology (winds) , ocean currents and predictive models.

Philip.Sargent@computer.org