Name Michael Goodchild Role Geographer | Awards Founder's Gold Medal | |
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Born February 24, 1944 (age 80) ( 1944-02-24 ) Occupation British-American Geographer Education University of Cambridge, McMaster University People also search for David William Rhind, Paul Longley, David J. Maguire Books Geographic Information Systems, Geospatial Analysis: A Compreh, Geographic Information Science a, Scale in Spatial Informatio, Crowdsourcing Geographic Knowledge | ||
Michael Frank Goodchild (born February 24, 1944) is a British-American geographer. He is an Emeritus Professor of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara. After nineteen years at the University of Western Ontario, including three years as chair, he moved to Santa Barbara in 1988, as part of the establishment of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis, which he directed for over 20 years. In 2008, he founded the UCSB Center for Spatial Studies.
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Education
Scholarship
His most influential work has involved research on Geographic Information Science (aka GIS or computer mapping). He is widely credited with coining "Volunteered Geographic Information" and is considered the world's foremost expert on the topic.
Caves and Karst
As a doctoral student at McMaster University, Goodchild rediscovered Castleguard Cave (20 kilometers long, the longest cave in Canada). His student Alan Glennon discovered an entrance and made significant discoveries to the Martin Ridge Cave System, Kentucky (51.8 kilometers long). Goodchild's dissertation advisor, Dr. Derek C. Ford, is a highly-influential Canadian geomorphologist and karst scientist.