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This volume presents the accepted papers for the 4th International Conference onGridandCooperativeComputing(GCC2005),heldinBeijing,China,during November 30 – December 3, 2005.The conferenceseries of GCC aims to provide an international forum for the presentation and discussion of research trends on the theory, method, and design of Grid and cooperative computing as well as their scienti?c, engineering and commercial applications. It has become a major annual event in this area. The First International Conference on Grid and Cooperative Computing (GCC2002)received168submissions.GCC2003received550submissions,from which 176 regular papers and 173 short papers were accepted. The acceptance rate of regular papers was 32%, and the total acceptance rate was 64%. GCC 2004 received 427 main-conference submissions and 154 workshop submissions. The main conference accepted 96 regular papers and 62 short papers. The - ceptance rate of the regular papers was 23%. The total acceptance rate of the main conference was 37%. For this conference, we received 576 submissions. Each was reviewed by two independent members of the International Program Committee. After carefully evaluating their originality and quality, we accepted 57 regular papers and 84 short papers. The acceptance rate of regular papers was 10%. The total acc- tance rate was 25%.

This book presents a state-of-the-art overview of ongoing GIScience research that has been presented at the 10th Conference of the Association of Geographic Information Laboratories for Europe (AGILE), held in Aalborg, Denmark. Included are 27 fully peer-reviewed papers not only covering basic GIScience research themes, but also ongoing research on technological advancements, as well as applied research on environmental modeling and management.

This book analyzes unexpected preference query results for three problems: causality and responsibility problems, why-not and why questions, and why-few and why-many questions. Further, it refines preference queries and discusses how to modify the original preference query based on different objectives, in order to obtain satisfying results. This highly informative and carefully presented book provides valuable insights for researchers, postgraduates and practitioners with an interest in database usability.

This book provides a major forum for the technical advancement of knowledge management and its applications across diversified domains. Pursuing an interdisciplinary approach, it focuses on methods used to identify and acquire valid, potentially useful knowledge sources. Managing the gathered knowledge and applying it to multiple domains including health care, social networks, data mining, recommender systems, image processing, pattern recognition and predictions using machine learning techniques is the major strength of this book. Effective knowledge management has become a key to the success of business organizations, and can offer a substantial competitive edge. So as to be accessible to all scholars, this book combines the core ideas of knowledge management and its applications in numerous domains, illustrated in case studies. The techniques and concepts proposed here can be extended in future to accommodate changing business organizations’ needs as well as practitioners’ innovative ideas.

The 2nd Workshop on Web Services, E-Business, and the Semantic Web (WES) was held during June 16–17, 2003 in conjunction with CAiSE 2003, the 15th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering. The Internet is changing the way businesses operate. Organizations are using the Web to deliver their goods and services, to find trading partners, and to link their existing (maybe legacy) applications to other applications. Web services are rapidly becoming the enabling technology of today’s e-business and e-commerce systems, and will soon transform the Web as it is now into a distributed computation and application fra- work. On the other hand, e-business as an emerging concept is also impacting software - plications, the everyday services landscape, and the way we do things in almost each domain of our life. There is already a body of experience accumulated to demonstrate the difference between just having an online presence and using the Web as a stra- gic and functional medium in e-business-to-business interaction (B2B) as well as marketplaces. Finally, the emerging Semantic Web paradigm promises to annotate Web artifacts to enable automated reasoning about them. When applied to e-services, the paradigm hopes to provide substantial automation for activities such as discovery, invocation, assembly, and monitoring of e-services. But much work remains to be done before realizing this vision.

This book was inspired by the revolution in geographical information systems during the late 1970s and 1980s which introduced to many the concept of computer-based information systems for spatially referenced data. The map, the aerial photograph and the satellite image were wedded to a database of textual information through the rapidly developing technology of powerful graphics workstations. This brought the skills of the geographer to a wide range of disciplines and specialists. But this book is not about the basic concepts of geographical information systems themselves. It is not about hardware or software per se, nor the integral concepts of geo-referenced data handling built into such systems; these are to be found in a growing number of introductory texts on the subject. Instead the focus of this book is on of geo-information management. the much wider issues While an understanding of the systems, their capabilities and limitations is necessary, of greater importance to the long term application of geographical understanding to problem solving is the wider context of information handling. Spatial data are becoming increasingly important in understanding the issues that confront the world. Chapter 1 is a discussion of the general issues which relate to management and information systems. It concludes with review of spatial decision support systems which are of increasing importance to the GIS community.

Locate your place in the exciting field of GIS In existence since 1962, Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are really coming into their own today. And not just in your car's GPS system or your cell phone's tracking capabilities. GIS is finding applications throughout science, government, business, and industry, from regional and community planning, architecture, and transportation to public health, crime mapping, and national defense. Michael DeMers's Fundamentals of Geographic Information, Fourth Edition brings an already essential text up to date, capturing the significant developments in the field and responding to the needs of a diverse set of readers, from geographers to students in a host of other fields. If you are a non-geographer or new to GIS, get a quick introduction to the "lay of the land" of GIS through the new "Spatial Learner's Permit" section. Then join in the excitement of discovery with GIS databases as you absorb the such concepts and skills as digital geographic data and maps, GIS data models, spatial analysis, measurement and classification, cartographic modeling, and GIS design. Responding to both the needs and technical skills of today's students, this Fourth Edition: * Makes concepts accessible to students from a wide range of backgrounds * Offers more practical and relevant coverage of GIS design and implementation * Reflects the latest changes in GIS applications * Examines in greater depth the underlying computer science behind GIS * Uncovers the most recent developments on GIS research * Expands coverage of the increasingly robust literature on cartographic visualization * Includes Web-based labs and links to current and updated dataset resources Taking an open-ended, hands-on approach that gets you to ask your own questions about the underlying concepts, the Fourth Edition helps you not only master the basics but acquire the active problem-solving skills that are a key component of success in the GIS industry.

'The chapters in this book explore in detail the choices regarding both the structure and administration of the property tax, drawing on the extensive knowledge the authors have acquired in studying property taxes around the world. The chapters provide a wide-ranging treatment of the design choices and administrative tasks, both in terms of the breadth of design options and administrative tasks covered and the depth of the discussion. The authors describe the range of design choices, discuss the associated issues and the advantages and disadvantages for each, and present the criteria to help choose among the options.’ From the book’s Foreword by David L. Sjoquist, Professor of Economics and Dan E. Sweat Scholar Chair in Educational and Community Policy, Georgia State University Property taxation is a key element in providing a solid foundation and a stable funding source for basic public services. Developing and implementing a property tax system is a complex task. This complexity is compounded by the diversity of legal, cultural and historical contexts of policymakers and tax administrators. The World Development Report (1999-2000), Entering the 21st Century puts fiscal decentralization at the top of the development agenda. This makes local taxation - and especially the property tax option - of critical importance to both tax and land policy, as well as the broader development agenda. A Primer on Property Tax: Administration and Policy provides the reader with an analysis of issues surrounding property tax, including economics, law, public finance, decentralisation, valuation, GIS and property tax reform. A key strength of the book lies in the vast international experience of the authors and the book will provide for the first time material which is topical, cutting-edge and highly relevant to many of the disciplines involved in property taxation. The authors examine the criteria applied to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of property tax, discuss the main valuation methods and the economic principles underpinning them and review the legal and administrative aspects of property tax worldwide.