Mark, David M. (1947-)

A pioneer in geographic information science (GIScience) research, David Mark played a formative role in establishing the cognitive and linguistic foundations of the discipline. His early work on topographic data modeling also included seminal contributions to the development of triangulated irregular networks (TINs) and algorithmic flow modeling. He authored or coauthored more than 220 papers and played an instrumental role in establishing several national organizations and conference series to promote GIScience. A professor in the Department of Geography at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York (SUNY) since 1981, Mark received the University Consortium on Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) Researcher of the Year award in 2004 and was appointed SUNY Distinguished Professor in 2007.

Mark received his BA and PhD degrees in geography at Simon Fraser University in 1970 and 1977 and an MA in geography at the University of British Columbia in 1974. As an undergraduate, he proposed a correction for statistical analysis of the orientation of sedimentary strata, which is still widely used in geological studies. While a master's student, Mark began work on the TIN model of topographic representation under the supervision of Thomas Poiker (formerly “Peu-cker”). His rigorous comparative analysis demonstrated the relative effectiveness of TINs and contributed to their widespread adoption in geographic information systems (GIS). Later work on topographic analysis yielded the well-known D8 flow routing algorithm, which eliminated spurious pits from digital elevation models.

In the 1980s, Mark's research began to focus on the fundamental properties of geographic features and their representation. Papers on the fractal nature of geographic phenomena summarized for geographers the importance of scale dependence in measurement and the utility of recursive partitioning schemes. This period also witnessed [Page 1856]the beginning of a long-lasting collaboration with the philosopher Barry Smith to investigate the ontological constraints of geographic categorization. Questions of how people experience, cognize, and communicate with respect to spatial phenomena led to co-organization of a workshop in 1990 in Las Navas, Spain, which is often considered the birthplace of the cognitive and linguistic threads of GIScience.

Throughout the 1990s, Mark contributed to the emerging field of GIScience a series of reasoned investigations on spatial relations and experiential, cognitive, and formal models of geographic space. A 1995 paper titled “Naïve Geography” added a new dimension to the discipline, demonstrating that the commonsense view of the world could itself be a coherent and fruitful subject of scientific inquiry. Focusing on the particular domain of landforms, Mark pioneered the new field of ethno-physiography and is currently involved in a project to document and compare terms used by the Yind-jibarndi and Navajo cultures to describe natural elements of the landscape.

An important aspect of Mark's career has been his talent for facilitating cross-disciplinary collaboration through the organization of workshops, conferences, centers, and funded projects. In 1988, he was a member of the team that established the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA), and he became director of the Buffalo NCGIA site in 1995. Mark was instrumental in the founding of the UCGIS in 1991 and served as one of its first presidents. Under his guidance, the Las Navas workshop spawned the highly successful ongoing Conference on Spatial Information Theory (COSIT) series. He was also program cochair of the first two GIScience conferences in 2000 and 2002. Perhaps his biggest success, however, was the establishment in 2000 of the first and only National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (NSF IGERT) program in GIScience, which to date has funded 62 PhD students in seven disciplines.

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