Numerous authors have presented ontology building tools that have all been developed as part of academic projects and that are usually adaptations of more generic tools for geo‐spatial applications. While we trust that these tools do their job for the special purpose they have been built, the GIScience user community is still a long way away from off‐the‐shelf ontology builders that can be used by GIS project managers. In this article, we present a comparative study of ontology building tools described in some twenty peer‐reviewed GIScience journal articles. We analyze them from the perspective of two application domains, crime analysis and transportation/land use. For the latter, we developed a database schema, which is substantially different from the three main templates commonly used. The crime analysis application uses a rule base for an agent‐based model that had no precursor. In both cases, the currently available set of tools cannot replace manual coding of ontologies for use with ESRI‐based application software. Based on these experiences, we outline a requirements list of what the tools described in the first part of the article are missing to make them practical from an applications perspective. The result is an R&D agenda for this important aspect of GIScience.
The need to regulate environmental problems is of ever-increasing urgency. Yet the complexity of environmental dynamics challenges any regulatory scheme. We use this essay to describe and assess some of these challenges. We deploy the terms scope and scale as analytic tools in this effort. We define and elaborate on these terms and then use them to analyze three especially critical dilemmas in environmental regulation: the fit between environmental dynamics and legal categories, the relationship between legal and nonlegal dynamics in structuring human impacts on the environment, and the relationship between environmental law and environmental justice.
Amidst disproportionate climate-related harms and inadequate responses, affected groups have turned to legal mobilization. This paper analyzes socio-ecological complexity and territorial limits as themes of enduring relevance in official responses to the Inuit Circumpolar Council’s and Maldives’ foundational legal claims that climate change violates human rights, considering these against the backdrop of evolving understanding of responsibility for climate-related harm in scientific, political, and public discourse. The claims demonstrated that when legal analysis integrates scientific and traditional knowledge, climate change can be seen as violating rights internationally, and identifiable actors as culpable. Respondents disagreed, citing the complexity of climate-related harm, which combines multiple human actors, environmental processes, probability, prediction, and extraterritorial impact. Unresolved gaps between these interpretations raise doubts about law’s relevance to growing global inequities of climate change and other processes that mix people, places, and things. Este artículo analiza la complejidad socioecológica y los límites territoriales como temas de importancia permanente en las respuestas oficiales a las reclamaciones legales fundacionales del Consejo Circumpolar Inuit y de las Maldivas, que afirman que el cambio climático viola derechos humanos. Se consideran esas respuestas sobre el trasfondo de la comprensión paulatina en el discurso científico, político y público de la responsabilidad por los daños relacionados con el clima. Las demandas demostraron que, cuando el análisis jurídico integra el saber científico y el tradicional, se puede considerar el cambio climático como violador de derechos internacionales, y a los agentes identificables como culpables. Los críticos se mostraron en desacuerdo, aludiendo a la complejidad del daño relacionado con el clima. Los vacíos sin resolver entre esas interpretaciones arrojan dudas sobre la relevancia del derecho en cuanto a crecientes desigualdades globales sobre cambio climático y otros procesos que comprenden a personas, lugares y cosas.
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