The 1st ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on Developing and Benchmarking Autonomous GIS Bots (GeoMachina 2024)

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About

Workshop Description


In a 2019 article “GeoAI: spatially explicit artificial intelligence techniques for geographic knowledge discovery and beyond”, we speculated about a potential GeoAI moonshot to develop an autonomous GIS analyst that can perform simple spatial data science tasks entirely by itself. We suggested that our community may benefit from a rallying around a common goal, also to better measure progress by developing a reproducible benchmark. We assumed that GI bots that can master common tasks performed by entry-level/junior GI analysts could be developed by 2030.


Given recent progress in AI and machine learning, and with the rise of foundation models we now believe that systems with an interaction style similar to ChatGPT may arrive sooner, maybe even in 2025. Such systems will be able to react to a user's written or spoken instructions and then independently search data, process data, perform multi-step GIS operations, and then provide appropriate visualizations back to the user together with an answer to the user's request. While still in their infancy, we are already seeing first prototypes in development using a combination of LLM and RAGs.


While these systems will truly bring spatial data science to the masses, developing autonomous GI bots is not without risks, and the increasing tendency to connect ChatGPT-like systems to IoT devices is worrying. We believe the best next step for our spatial data science and GeoAI communities is to develop a benchmark and competition series that supports experiments and fruitful competition around developing autonomous GIS bots while at the same time being guided by strong ethical guidelines and transparency. Hence, we want to understand better which tasks can already be performed right now with existing technology, which tasks require geo-specific bots and geo-foundation models, which workflows will require substantial human input for the years to come, and whether there are substantial roadblocks in reasoning and representation.

Call for papers

The workshop will provide an interactive forum to engage in discussions, shape the research directions, and disseminate state-of-the-art research on Autonomous GIS Bots. Example topics include, but are not limited to, the following:


  • Foundation models for automating spatial analysis workflows
  • Benchmark tasks and datasets to test Autonomous GIS agents
  • Ethical guidelines to develop Autonomous GIS agents
  • Debiasing knowledge graphs and geo-foundation models
  • Using Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) for data retrieval in GIS agents
  • Identifying shortcomings of existing foundation models
  • Geographic knowledge graphs
  • Open domain geographic question answering
  • Human In-the-loop
  • Neuro-symbolic GeoAI
  • Spatial data infrastructures supporting GeoAI-based GIS agents
  • Geo-Foundation models and autonomous GIS agents for education

Submission Type

The workshop seeks high-quality full (8-10 pages) and short (4 pages) research papers as well as vision statement (2 pages) that have not been published in other academic outlets and are not concurrently under peer review. Interested participants should submit a paper in the ACM format. Once accepted, at least one author is required to register for the workshop and the ACM SIGSPATIAL conference, as well as attend the workshop to present the accepted work which will then appear in the ACM Digital Library.


  • Full reserach paper: 8-10 pages
  • Short reserach/demo paper: 2-4 pages
  • Vision statement paper: 2 pages

Dates

  • Paper submission: 1st September, 2024
  • Decisions to authors: 20th September, 2024
  • Camera-ready versions : 4th October, 2024
  • Workshop day: 29th October, 2024

Submission link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=geomachina2024

Program


To be announced.

Workshop Organizers


Program Committee


To be announced.