Significant achievements in geospatial information science through original research work

He has worked extensively to bring the GIS and Computer Science communities closer together, publishing in both types of journals. He is known in a variety of countries for his work on Voronoi diagrams, both in algorithmic development and in their application to a wide variety of Geo-informatics disciplines: geology, forestry, engineering, etc. He has been active in promoting the concept of interactive mapping and decision support systems, as well as the management of dynamic and 3D data, and simulation techniques. He has had particularly strong research collaboration with China, having been involved with researchers there for fifteen years.

His best-known research has been concerned with Voronoi diagrams as a fundamental spatial model for many GIS application areas. He has also published a variety of papers on problems of interactive spatial display, dynamic and kinetic simulation of spatial processes, Spatial Decision Support Systems and spatial data structures.

Prof. Gold was involved in the development of two large Canadian research endeavours in Geo-informatics. In 1990 he was appointed the Senior Researcher of an Industrial Research Chair funded by the Quebec Forest Industry and the Canadian National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC). The second project was the establishment, with two other researchers, of the ongoing GEOIDE (“GEOmatics for Informed DEcisions”) Network of Centres of Excellence in Geomatics in 1998-9, also funded by NSERC.This was a major coup for Geo-informatics: only three were established across all disciplines.

From 2004-2007 Professor Chris Gold, held the post of “Marie Curie Chair” with the GIS Research Group at the University of Glamorgan. These professorial appointments are a mechanism to highlight personal achievements of world-class researchers by offering them top-level appointments in Europe, to support career development and international recognition. His Chair duties included organizing European and international conferences and workshops on spatial data visualization, and he travelled extensively giving seminars and workshops. His 30 years of research and many publications have been devoted to the development of appropriate spatial models for various aspects of GIS, and his work in promoting Voronoi diagrams as a fundamental tool for spatial analysis has been widely recognised and used. Four of his past research students now hold academic posts.