Matt Duckham

Professor Matt Duckham

Professor

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Professor in Geospatial Sciences, with expertise in spatial computing, GeoAI, and geovisualization.

Overview

Matt is a Professor in Geographic Information Science in the School of Science, RMIT University. Prior to moving to RMIT University in 2015, he was Professor of Geographic Information Science at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He moved to Melbourne in 2004 from the NCGIA (National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis) at the University of Maine, USA. He was the recipient of a prestigious ARC (Australian Research Council) Future Fellowship (2010-2014).

His research is in the area of distributed spatial computing with uncertain spatial data, with applications to transportation and health, defense, emergency management, and environmental monitoring.

 matt duckham being interviewed at conference

Matt Duckham, Director Information in Society Enabling Impact Platform (EIP)

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Industry experience

Past industry collaborations include work with:

  • DSTG (Defence Science and Technology Group)
  • EMV (Emergency Management Victoria)
  • Victorian Government (Department of Environment, Land, Water, and Planning, DELWP, and VicRoads)
  • IBM Research Australia
  • Geoscience Australia
  • FrontierSI
  • OSGB (Ordnance Survey of Great Britain)
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Research

Matt's research focuses on the area of Geographic Information Science, particularly in connection with distributed and robust computation and visualisation with uncertain spatial and spatiotemporal information, within the domain of mobile, location aware, and sensor-enabled systems.

Research keywords

GeoAI; Spatial computing, algorithms, and databases; knowledge graphs and ontology engineering; Qualitative spatial reasoning; GI science.

Research output summary

45+

Publications

$3.5 million

Grants

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Supervisor interest areas

  • Movement analytics
  • Location privacy
  • Reproducible research
  • Geovisualisation
  • Indigenous data sovereignty

Supervisor projects

  • Evaluating Visualisation for Emergency Decision-Making under Uncertainty
  • Geospatially Enabled Scientific Workflows for Reproducible Environmental Modelling and Decision Support
  • Rapid movement analytics for checkpoint data
  • Building a Geo-Event Question Answering (GeoEvent QA) System

Feature publications

GIS: A Computing Perspective (3rd Edition)

CRC Press: Boca Raton, FL.

Duckham, M., Sun, Q., and Worboys, M. (2022).

Efficient generation of simple polygons for characterizing the shape of a set of points in the plane

Pattern recognition 41 (10), 3224-3236

Duckham, M., Kulik, L., Worboys, M., Galton, A. (2008).

Real-time estimation of wildfire perimeters from curated crowdsourcing

Scientific reports 6 (1), 1-10

Zhong, X., Duckham, M., Chong, D., Tolhurst, K. (2016).

Key publications by year

  • Cerutti, V., Bellman, C., Both, A., Duckham, M., Jenny, B., Lemmens, R., and Ostermann, F. (2021). Improving the reproducibility of geospatial scientific workflows: The use of geosocial media in facilitating disaster response In: Journal of Spatial Science, 66(3):383–400.
  • Li, M., Bao, Z., Choudhury, F., Samet, H., Duckham, M., and Sellis, T. (2021). Aoi-shapes: An efficient footprint algorithm to support visualization of user-defined urban areas of interest In: ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems, 11(3– 4):1–32.
  • Tao,Y., Both,A., Silveira,R.I., Buchin,K., Sijben,S., Purves,R.S., Laube,P., Peng, D., Toohey, K., and Duckham, M. (2021). A comparative analysis of trajectory similarity measures In: GIScience & Remote Sensing, 58(5):643–669.
  • Worboys, M. and Duckham, M. (2021). Qualitative-geometric “surrounds” relations between disjoint regions In: International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 35(5):1032–1063.

  • Duckham, M. and Ho, S. (2020). Indigeneity and spatial information science In: Journal of Spatial Information Science, 2020(21):71–82.
  • Radosevic, N., Duckham, M., Liu, G.-J., and Sun, Q. (2020). Solar radiation modeling with Knime and Solar Analyst: Increasing environmental model reproducibility using scientific workflows. In: Environmental Modelling and Software, 132(104780).
  • Cheong, L., Kinkeldey, C., Burfurd, I., Bleisch, S., and Duckham, M. (2020). Evaluating the impact of visualization of risk upon emergency route-planning In: International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 34(5):1022–1050.
  • Briggs, C., Burfurd, I., Duckham, M., Guntarik, O., Kerr, D., McMillan, M., and San Martin Saldias, D. (2020). Bridging the geospatial gap: Data about space and indigenous knowledge of place In: Geography Compass. 14 (11) e12542

  • Clark, K., Duckham, M., Guillemin, M., Hunter, A., McVernon, J., O’Keefe, C., Pitkin, C., Prawer, S., Sinnott, R., Warr, D., and Waycott, J. (2019). Advancing the ethical use of digital data in human research: challenges and strategies to promote ethical practice In: Ethics and Information Technology, 21(1):59–73.

  • Both, A., Duckham, M., and Worboys, M. (2018). Identifying surrounds and engulfs relations in mobile and coordinate-free geosensor networks In: ACM Transactions on Spatial Algorithms and Systems, 4(2):Article 6.
  • Tao, Y., Both, A., and Duckham, M. (2018). Analytics of movement through check-points In: International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 32(7):1282– 1303.

  • Woodgate, P., Coppa, I., Choy, S., Phinn, S., Arnold, L., and Duckham, M. (2017). The Australian approach to geospatial capabilities; positioning, earth observation, infrastructure and analytics: Issues, trends and perspectives In: Geo-Spatial Information Science, 20(2):109–125.
  • Zhong, X. and Duckham, M. (2017). An efficient incremental algorithm for generating the characteristic shape of a dynamic set of points in the plane In: International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 31(3):569–590.

  • Cheong, L., Bleisch, S., Kealy, A., Tolhurst, K., Wilkening, T., and Duckham, M. (2016). Evaluating the impact of visualization of wildfire hazard upon decision- making under uncertainty In: International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 30(7):1377–1404.
  • Long, Z., Duckham, M., Li, S., and Schockaert, S. (2016). Indexing large geographic datasets with compact qualitative representation In: International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 30(6):1072–1094.
  • Zhong, X., Duckham, M., Chong, D., and Tolhurst, K. (2016). Real-time estimation of wildfire perimeters from curated crowdsourcing In: Scientific Reports, 6(24206). doi:10.1038/srep24206.
  • Zhong, X. and Duckham, M. (2016). Characterizing the shapes of noisy, non- uniform, and disconnected point clusters in the plane In: Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 57:48–58.
  • Wang, J., Duckham, M., and Worboys, M. (2016). A framework for models of movement in geographic space In: International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 30(5):970–992.
  • Zhong, X., Kealy, A., and Duckham, M. (2016). Stream Kriging: Incremental and recursive ordinary Kriging over spatiotemporal data streams In:  Computers & Geosciences, 90(Part A):134–143.
  • Yeoman, J. and Duckham, M. (2016). Decentralized detection and monitoring of convoy patterns In: International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 30(5):993–1011.
  • Duckham, M. (2015). GI expertise In: Transactions in GIS, 19(4):499–515.
  • Jeong, M.-H., Duckham, M., and Bleisch, S. (2015). Graphical aids to the estimation and discrimination of uncertain numerical data In: PLoS ONE, 10(10):e0141271.

  • Jeong, M.-H. and Duckham, M. (2015). Efficient, decentralized detection of qualitative spatial events in a dynamic scalar field In: Sensors, 15(9):21350–21376.
  • Li, S., Long, Z., Liu, W., Duckham, M., and Both, A. (2015). On redundant topological constraints In: Artificial Intelligence, 225:51–76.

  • Bleisch, S., Duckham, M., Galton, A., Laube, P., and Lyon, J. (2014). Mining candidate causal relationships in movement patterns In: International Journal of Geo- graphical Information Science, 28(2):363–382.
  • Jeong, M.-H., Duckham, M., Kealy, A., Miller, H., and Peisker, A. (2014). Decentralized and coordinate-free computation of critical points and surface networks in a discretized scalar field In: International Journal of Geographic Information Science, 28(1):1–21.

  • Both, A., Duckham, M., Laube, P., Wark, T., and Yeoman, J. (2013). Decentralized monitoring of moving objects in a transportation network augmented with check- points In: The Computer Journal, 56(12):1431–1449.
  • Jeong, M.-H. and Duckham, M. (2013). Decentralized querying of topological relations between regions monitored by a coordinate-free geosensor network. In: Geoinformatica, 17(4):669–696.
  • Sadeq, M., Duckham, M., and Worboys, M. (2013). Decentralized detection of topological events in evolving spatial regions. In: The Computer Journal, 56(12):1417– 1431.

  • Duckham, M., Nussbaum, D., Sack, J.-R., and Santoro, N. (2011). Efficient, decentralized computation of the topology of spatial regions In: IEEE Transactions on Computers, 60(8):1100–1113.
  • Laube, P., Duckham, M., and Palaniswami, M. (2011). Deferred decentralized movement pattern mining for geosensor networks In: International Journal of Geo- graphical Information Science, 25(2):273–292.

  • Sadiq, M. and Duckham, M. (2009). Integrated storage and querying of spatially varying data quality information in a relational spatial database In: Transactions in GIS, 13(1):25–42.

  • Duckham, M., Kulik, L., Worboys, M. F., and Galton, A. (2008). Efficient generation of simple polygons for characterizing the shape of a set of points in the plane. Pattern Recognition, 41:3224–3236.
  • Klippel, A., Worboys, M., and Duckham, M. (2008). Identifying factors of geo- graphic event conceptualization In: International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 22(2):183–204.

  • Klippel, A., Worboys, M. F., and Duckham, M. (2006). Geographic event conceptualization In: Cognitive Processing, 7(S1):S52–S54.
  • Worboys, M. F. and Duckham, M. (2006). Monitoring qualitative spatiotemporal change for geosensor networks In: International Journal of Geographic Information Science, 20(10):1087–1108.
  • Duckham, M., Lingham, J., Mason, K., and Worboys, M. F. (2006) Qualitative reasoning about consistency in geographic information. In: Information Sciences, 176(6):601–627.

  • Duckham, M. and Worboys, M. F. (2005). An algebraic approach to automated geospatial information fusion In: International Journal of Geographic Information Science, 19(5):537–557.
  • Kulik, L., Duckham, M., and Egenhofer, M. (2005). Ontology-driven map generalization In: Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, 16(2):3.

  • Worboys, M. F., Duckham, M., and Kulik, L. (2004). Commonsense notions of proximity and direction In: Spatial Cognition and Computation, 4(4):285–312.

  • Duckham, M., Kulik, L., and Worboys, M. F. (2003). Imprecise navigation. In: GeoInformatica, 7(2):79–94.

  • Duckham, M. (2002). A user-oriented perspective of error-sensitive GIS development In: Transactions in GIS, 6(4):179–194.

  • Duckham, M., Mason, K., Stell, J. G., and Worboys, M. F. (2001). A formal approach to imperfection in geographic information In: Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 25:89–103.
  • Duckham, M. (2001). Object calculus and the object-oriented analysis and design of an error-sensitive GIS In: GeoInformatica, 5(3):261–289.

  • Duckham, M. and Drummond, J. (2000). Assessment of error in digital vector data using fractal geometry In: International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 14(1):67–84.
  • Duckham, M., Drummond, J., and Forrest, D. (2000). Spatial data quality capture through inductive learning In: Spatial Cognition and Computation, 2(4):261–282.
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Grants

  • NEXUS: Explainable and Unified Spatial Reasoning and Sensor Fusion
    Duckham, Kealy, Moran, Salim, Vasardani
    Next Generation Technology Fund (NGTF) Defence Science and Technology Group (DSTG) (2020–2022)
  • RISER: Resilient Information Systems for Emergency Response
    Duckham, Kealy, Moran, Tolhurst, Vecchiola, Rawlinson, Smarr, Harris, von Kaenal
    ARC Linkage Projects (2012–2015)
  • From environmental monitoring to management: Extracting knowledge about environmental events from sensor data.
    Duckham, Kealy, Richter, Winter, Kininmonth, Klippel, Laube, Lyon, Medyckyj- Scott, Wark
    ARC Discovery Project (2012–2015)
  • Artificial intelligence meets wireless sensor networks: Filling the gaps between sensors using spatial reasoning.
    Renz, Duckham, Li
    ARC Discovery Project (2012—2015)
  • Talking about Place.
    Winter, Duckham, Kealy, Rajabifard, Baldwin, Cavedon, Stirling
    ARC Linkage Project (2010–2013)
  • Ambient spatial intelligence: Spatial analysis and event detection in environmental geosensor networks.
    Duckham
    ARC Future Fellowship (2010–2013)
  • Automatic fusion of geoinformation: The intelligent geo-mediator architecture (iGMA).
    Duckham
    ARC Discovery Project (2006–2009)
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Acknowledgement of Country

RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business - Artwork 'Luwaytini' by Mark Cleaver, Palawa.

aboriginal flag
torres strait flag

Acknowledgement of Country

RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business.