Tools for gaining new knowledge and for decision support.
       Stimulated by rapid development in location-based services,
     site specific approaches to land management, farming and conservation

To support spatial simulations, models are evolving from:
empirical, spatially averaged, static

to

process-based, distributed, dynamic

Challenges:

• data intensive - large heterogeneous data sets
• complex spatial interactions
• high level of uncertainty and difficult validation

Compare Physics : predictions at the electronic level are with 6-12 digits accuracy
and Geosciences: 50% differences between measurements and model could be satisfactory