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The purpose of this paper is to search for the geopolitical implications of the East Sea, relate them to the conflicts surrounding the name of the sea, and find some solutions of the problem. Such factors as the locational characteristics as the meeting place of communist and capitalist powers, the emergence of the East Sea Rim as a development axis, and the political interests and antagonism between the countries, have influenced on the geopolitics of this region, and had it extended to the controversial issues of territory, economic zone and sea name. To this, distinctive politics of toponymy has been added, which has induced the naming problem to remain unsolved. In consideration of the status quo of the arguments on the name East Sea/Sea of Japan, three possible solutions are suggested; agreeing on a new name, using dual names, and separating sea areas and naming each of them. Any of these solutions should be preceded by the political decisions of the countries concerned.

The purpose of this paper is to survey the old western maps in possession of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France made a list of these maps which depict the East Sea. We consulted world maps and Asia maps and regional maps on China, Japan and Korea published before 1850. Many maps were copies of the previous edition and many maps copied some authentic cartographers’ maps. We excluded some maps made by second rate imitators and maps for children. Finally, we considered 204 maps for the name of East Sea. Firstly, ‘Mer Orientale’ or ‘Mer de la Chine’ were given to the sea around this area in the 16th and 17th centuries. But in the late 17th century, Jean Niehoff depict this body of water as ‘Mare Coreum(Korean sea)’. In the 18th century map making was directed by French cartographers. The concept of Oriental Sea began to change in this century. It became to indicate Sea of Korea or East Sea.. The Delisle family was a dominant cartography connection. This connection depict East Sea as ‘Mer de Corée’ for about 100 year. More than 58% of the maps depicted East Sea as ‘Mer de Corée’. Some German cartographers such as Hass and Seutter depict this sea as ‘Mer Orientale Minvs’ which means ‘Minor Oriental Sea’. But after La Perouse’s exploration of pacific area, the name of Sea of Japan become major name of this sea. More than 90% of the maps used ‘Sea of Japan’ instead of ‘Sea of Korea’. The library has more than 80,000 maps and 10,000 atlases, so it was not possible to consult all the maps and atlases. Maps produced in later time outnumber naturally. We found that quantitative approach which counts the frequency of the ‘sea name’ in the maps is not scientific. Qualitative approach which considers importance of the maps is needed to enable further steps to a correct naming of the sea. So we should consider the importance of the map and its cartographer.

A place name plays an important role to represent locations of regions and their unique characteristics. However, a place name has not been managed effectively. This study proposed a method to improve the management of a place name through a management system and a place name map. First, problems in the current place name management system were addressed and reformation was suggested. Second, standardized method was suggested to represent a place name and its position effectively. Especially, a method how to combine place name database with digital map was proposed and further a place name digital map was created with the method.

‘Basic Principles of Korean Romanization’ has proposed a guide of English spelling of Korean geographical names. However, the specification of the notation rules and criteria in the Korean Romanization system has not been properly established in details. This has brought various non-standardized rules and types of English characters and its notation has been used in variety of printing materials such as maps, atlas and other related documents. Thus, this paper aims to propose appropriate alternatives of English spelling standardization for which the current notation systems of Korean geographical names are examined. To obtain these aims, this paper at first articulates current complicated circumstances of the geographical naming spelling from world atlases and online map sites. Next, as a compromised approach, the principles and goals of English notation are discussed to deliver pronunciation (sound) and sense (meaning) of Korean geographical names. In turn, this paper investigates a combined spelling approach of sound-borrowing (音借) and meaning-borrowing (訓借) in geographical names, which are based on the changes of traditional character-loan spelling (借字表記). Lastly, this paper proposes two alternatives to the particular principles and specific criteria for English notation and plural place names in standardization of geographical names.

A map symbolization specification stands for the rule and guidelines regarding the selection, definition, and representation of spatial features. As time goes, the map symbolization specification tends not to be able to reflect the actual properties of a rapidly changing modern society. As the national territories and the utility of the national maps are becoming more significant, the map symbolization specifications should be thoroughly and comprehensively improved as well. In this regard, we attempt to examine the existing map symbolization specifications and analyze the map specifications or mapping standards of advanced countries. By doing this, we suggest an improvement plan on the basis of the cartographic principles. Moreover, we provide the efficient maintenance and development plans from the short and long term perspectives. The results from this paper would be expected not only to provide more advanced map specifications and but also to enhance the aspect of user demand and reconsider the whole process and outcomes from national mapping. Also, our research would be expected to give a practical value to national mapping agency and related policy makers.

Urban growth management is essential for sustainable urban growth. To manage urban growth, monitoring physical urban built-up area is a task of great significance. Although image classifications using satellite imagery are among the conventional methods for detecting urbanized area, they requires very tedious and hard work, especially if time-series remote sensing data have to be processed. In this paper, we propose an effective urbanized area detecting method based on normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and normalized difference built-up index (NDBI). To verify the proposed method, we extract urbanized area using two methods; one is conventional supervised classification method and the other is proposed method. Experiments shows that two methods are consistent with 98.1% in 1998, 99.3% in 2000, namely the consistency of two methods is very high. Because the proposed method requires no more process without band operations, it can reduce time and effort. Compared with the supervised classification method, the proposed combination method of vegetation indices can serve as quick and efficient alternatives for mapping urbanized area.

This study aims to design Meteorological Resource Information System (MRIS) based on Web 2.0. To develop MRIS, this study focus on three aspects: (1)To develop Database services which can provide spatial and statistical information, (2)To develop User eXperience-oriented RIA web services, and (3)To make an user participation and meteorological resource contents creation environment by providing KML web publish service. Wind power and solar power raw dataset were employed in MRIS design and construction. As a result, actual database and web services were evaluated based on Web2.0 paradigm. Meteorological resource spatial and statistical information and RIA services drawn by this study will be useful for location analysis, decision support, and various applications.

Geographical information can play an important role in developments of user-centered applications for mobile computing. Although an increasing number of Smartphone applications working with maps are now provided, very few have been reported to GIS colleagues. In addition to recent studies on the Smartphone applications for tourism and bus guidance, a more personalized application combining user’s own information with internet maps will be also necessary in terms of the personal mobile GIS. This paper proposed a method for utilizing personal contexts like location, time, and schedule in combination with map services on the Smartphone. We implemented a Smartphone application that communicates with the native Calendar application and the GPS module in order to visualize the location and time of user’s schedule on the Google Maps. Our application is based on the Android operating system that possesses considerable potential as an open-source software. In addition to the geovisualization of personal schedules, it includes the presentation of traffic information around the user and the functions for place retrieval via geocoding. The Java codes in our application were packaged in the form of a library so that it can be extensible to other Android applications using the Calendar, GPS, and Goolge Maps.

New address system, which will be officially applied in 2012 in Korea, is not linked with the national spatial data infrastructure in spite of a key information in location identification. In addition, because all kinds of regional boundaries including the administrative boundaries have not been systematically constructed, the problems such as the limitation of utilization of national base map, budget waste, and low efficiency are coming to the fore. For this reason, strategic connection with new address data and systematic construction of all kinds of regional boundaries are needed as framework data of national spatial data infrastructure. In this study we analyze and propose as follows: First, we analyze the data model of centerline of road which connects various regional information with address information as framework data in overseas countries. Second, we analyze the current domestic DB construction states with respects to the framework data of national spatial data infrastructure, new address information, and all kinds of regional boundaries information. Third, we propose the DB construction method which connects the regional information with address information by using the centerline of road.

Developing a database for human-oriented information system requires effective integration of various geographic information. In this context, this study discussed mainly two parts: 1) basic rules for data model and 2) the methods for an extensible database with temporality and ontology. The basic rules for data model of the integrated database included suggestions for data modeling, DB normalization, and data integrity. For temporal expansions of the integrated database, TimeStamp and TimeSPAN objects were proposed to manage temporal change of geographic information. To combine the GIS database with ontology, RDF object in a DBMS was suggested as an alternative to the XML-based RDF structure for effective maintenance of DBMS and ontology. The methods suggested in this paper would provide fundamentals to build large databases that require frequent update.

In this research, it is discussed how to develop ontology for the human-oriented geographic information. Ontology modeling methodology is applied to develop the knowledge base, using the collected geographic information which is related to the other data as a reusable dataset. Ontology is also developed for the semantic search based on the user’s experience and the previously developed scenario. Cheju-Do is the case study region to apply ontology of the human-oriented geographic information. Ontology modeling is applied and the classes and relationships among collated dataset are developed and ontology instance is created and the semantic search system is developed for case study region.

Under the notion that geographic Information is crucial to increase competitiveness in this globalizing era, the study attempted to design a framework to classify the information. To begin with, we defined Human-oriented Geographic Information (HGI) and clarified its purpose. And then, we set forth the basic principles in making a classifcation framework and methods and detail processes to determine components within the framework. Referencing various classification frameworks in many countries allows us to propose a full classification framework. The full framework was applied to JeJu Island to show how it works. The result demonstrates HGI classification framework should be flexible and include new geographic item or incidence to show unique characteristics of each region.