We are delighted to announce the 8th International Conference on GeoComputation from 1-3 August 2005 in Ann Arbor on the campus of the University of Michigan. The conference continues a successful series of meetings held in the UK, New Zealand, Australia, and the United States. Housing options are available on or near the campus, and events will be within walking distance of restaurants, pubs, and cultural centers. The conference timing allows international visitors to combine GeoComputation with the ESRI International User Conference from July 25-29, 2005 in San Diego, California. Papers are invited on all themes within the general field of GeoComputation, especially in the areas of:

New GeoComputational algorithms and architectures Complexity theory and methods applied in ecological, environmental, geographical, and urban studies Techniques for knowledge discovery and data mining in spatio-temporal databases Spatial modeling of discrete entities and events Simulation in spatial- and geo-statistical analysis Distributed and parallel designs and implementations for GeoComputation Evolutionary and neural computing for spatial applications Agent-based modeling of geographical systems Cellular automata (CA) for spatial modeling Space-Time Information Systems Spatial network modeling and analysis Accuracy, uncertainty, calibration, and validation issues of GeoComputational models Urban spatial simulation Theories of spatial information GRID application in Geocomputation Demographic and socioeconomic modeling Environmental and ecological informatics Health and medical informatics

Potential contributors are invited to submit extended abstracts (maximum 1500 words), which will be reviewed for inclusion in the conference program. Authors of accepted contributions will be invited to submit full papers for publication in a conference proceedings volume to be published on CD. The organizers are investigating the possibility of dedicated publications in book and journal forms for selected papers. The selected papers for dedicated publications include three categories:

original and unpublished basic research in GeoComputation reports of innovative GeoComputation applications in ecological, environmental, geographic, public health, socioeconomic, and urban studies reports of GeoComputational algorithms and architectures in new problem domains