The SpatialGems 2020 workshop will be held in conjunction with the 2020 ACM SIGSPATIAL Conference online. A spatial gem is a brief description of fundamental approach for processing spatial data. At the workshop, participants will work together to edit all the accepted submissions for clarity and utility in preparation for including each paper in an ACM book called "Spatial Gems: Volume 1".

 

Examples of spatial gems are:

​

• Converting latitude/longitude coordinates into a locally Euclidean coordinate system

• Computing the mean and variance of speed from two noisy location measurements

• Tessellating the earth in a convenient, useful way

• Interpolating latitude/longitude data with a Gaussian process model

• Simplifying a latitude/longitude polygon while preserving its perimeter and area

• Matching two trajectories with dynamic time warping

• A working R-Tree in Python

• Spatial point data generators including uniform, normal, and clustered

• Computing the angles of the sun in the sky for any date/time and lat/long

​

A gem falls in the gap between something commonly found in textbooks and something that is the focus of a research paper. While a gem may have already been published as a small part of a paper, extracting it into a gem makes it much more likely to be found and used by others. Good gems will stay relevant for a long time. Each gem will be two to six pages long. Where appropriate, a good gem will include numerical examples so programmers can verify their implementations. 

​

There are example Gems from last year's workshop here.

​

The main part of the workshop will consist of the accepted participants reading and helping edit the other gems. This collaborative process will ensure that each gem meets a high standard of quality, For collaborative editing, we will require that each submitted gem exists as a LaTeX project on Overleaf.

​

Submissions are due 28 August 2020. See the submissions page for details.