Databases and Information Systems Commons^™

Unearthing The Past: A Comprehensive Study Of Natural And Anthropogenic Changes At An Archaeological Site Through Hydrogeologic Connectivity Utilizing Gis, Mehlich Ii Phosphorus Extractant, And Ph, Dana L. F. Herren

Theses

This thesis aims to thoroughly analyze the Mehlich II Phosphorus Extractant and pH levels at the Bains Gap Village Site in Anniston, AL., while examining the impact of various environmental factors and human activities on them. Phosphorus is often used in archaeology as an indicator of human activity. Soil core samples were collected to analyze anomalies in phosphorus levels.

To establish any relationships, phosphorus and pH levels from soil cores were correlated with findings from past excavation units and features. The potential effects of hydrogeologic connectivity on soil phosphorus and pH levels were investigated. Geospatial technologies were used to manage …

Big Data Applications And Challenges In Giscience (Case Studies: Natural Disaster And Public Health Crisis Management), Amir Masoud Forati

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the application and significance of user-generated big data in Geographic Information Science (GIScience), with a focus on managing natural disasters and public health crises. It explores the role of social media data in understanding human-environment interactions and in informing disaster management and public health strategies. A scalable computational framework will be developed to model extensive unstructured geotagged data from social media, facilitating systematic spatiotemporal data analysis.The research investigates how individuals and communities respond to high-impact events like natural disasters and public health emergencies, employing both qualitative and quantitative methods. In particular, it assesses the impact of socio-economic-demographic …

Geospatial Data Integration Middleware For Exploratory Analytics Addressing Regional Natural Resource Grand Challenges In The Us Mountain West, Shannon Albeke, Nicholas Case, Samantha Ewers, Jeffrey Hamerlinck, William Kirkpatrick, Jerod Merkle, Luke Todd

I-GUIDE Forum

This paper describes CyberGIS-based research and development aimed at improving geospatial data integration and visual analytics to better understand the impact of regional climate change on water availability in the U.S. Rocky Mountains. Two Web computing applications are presented. DEVISE - Derived Environmental Variability Indices Spatial Extractor, streamlines utilization of environmental data for better-informed wildlife decisions by biologists and game managers. The WY-Adapt platform aims to enhance predictive understanding of climate change impacts on water availability through two modules: “Current Conditions” and “Future Scenarios”. It integrates high-resolution models of the biophysical environment and human interactions, providing a robust framework for …

Reducing Uncertainty In Sea-Level Rise Prediction: A Spatial-Variability-Aware Approach, Subhankar Ghosh, Shuai An, Arun Sharma, Jayant Gupta, Shashi Shekhar, Aneesh Subramanian

I-GUIDE Forum

Given multi-model ensemble climate projections, the goal is to accurately and reliably predict future sea-level rise while lowering the uncertainty. This problem is important because sea-level rise affects millions of people in coastal communities and beyond due to climate change's impacts on polar ice sheets and the ocean. This problem is challenging due to spatial variability and unknowns such as possible tipping points (e.g., collapse of Greenland or West Antarctic ice-shelf), climate feedback loops (e.g., clouds, permafrost thawing), future policy decisions, and human actions. Most existing climate modeling approaches use the same set of weights globally, during either regression or …

“I Think I Discovered A Military Base In The Middle Of The Ocean”—Null Island, The Most Real Of Fictional Places, Levente Juhasz, Peter Mooney

GIS Center

This paper explores Null Island, a fictional place located at 0° latitude and 0° longitude in the WGS84 (World Geodetic System 1984) geographic coordinate system. Null Island is erroneously associated with large amounts of geographic data in a wide variety of location-based services, place databases, social media and web-based maps. Whereas it was originally considered a joke within the geospatial community, this article will demonstrate implications of its existence, both technological and social in nature, promoting Null Island as a fundamental issue of geographic information that requires more widespread awareness. The article summarizes error sources that lead to data being …

Osm Science - The Academic Study Of The Openstreetmap Project, Data, Contributors, Community, And Applications, A. Yair Grinberger, Marco Minghini, Levente Juhasz, Godwin Yeboah, Peter Mooney

GIS Center

This paper is an Editorial for the Special Issue titled “OpenStreetMap as a multidisciplinary nexus: perspectives, practices and procedures”. The Special Issue is largely based on the talks presented in the 2019 and 2020 editions of the Academic Track at the State of the Map conferences. As such, it represents the most pressing and relevant issues and topics considered by the academic community in relation to OpenStreetMap (OSM)—a global project and community aimed to create and maintain a free and editable database and map of the world. In this Editorial, we survey the papers included in the Special Issue, grouping …

Colonial Markets, Consumers, And Trade: A Comparative Analysis Of Historic Ceramics From The Bluefields Bay Area, Westmoreland, Jamaica, Lacy Risner

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

The ceramic assemblages from a British colonial settlement in Bluefields Bay, Jamaica, provide a unique window into the market availability, exchange routes, and consumption patterns of the eighteenth century. This study compares the historic ceramics collected from two sites in Bluefields Bay to one another and to other intra-island (Jamaica), intraregional (Lesser Antilles), and international (North America) colonial and postcolonial sites to reveal patterns of individual and global ceramic consumption and distribution in the emergent capitalist networks and markets of the colonial era. Integrating small British colonial sites into the networks of other more extensive studies focusing primarily on plantations …

A Framework For And Design Of A Smart Academic Building Using Sensors, Citizen Participation, And Volunteered Geographic Information, Neelam Raigangar

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Population growth and migration patterns have shown an influx of residents from rural to urban environments. To deal with the problems caused by unprecedented urban influx, cities should plan to use technology in a smart and distinctive way. Tackling at the city scale is hard. But a set of smart buildings that are interconnected by technology will lead to smarter communities which are then interconnected to create a smart city. Smart lobby, building, community, or city is distinguished by its application of integrated software, hardware, and network technologies, along with access to real-time data enabling decision-making, facilitating tracing, tracking and …

Service Quality Monitoring In Confined Spaces Through Mining Twitter Data, Mohammad Masoud Rahimi, Elham Naghizade, Mark Stevenson, Stephan Winter

Journal of Spatial Information Science

Promoting public transport depends on adapting effective tools for concurrent monitoring of perceived service quality. Social media feeds, in general, provide an opportunity to ubiquitously look for service quality events, but when applied to confined geographic area such as a transport node, the sparsity of concurrent social media data leads to two major challenges. Both the limited number of social media messages--leading to biased machine-learning--and the capturing of bursty events in the study period considerably reduce the effectiveness of general event detection methods. In contrast to previous work and to face these challenges, this paper presents a hybrid solution based …

The Impact Of Urban Road Network Morphology On Pedestrian Wayfinding Behaviour, Debjit Bhowmick, Stephan Winter, Mark Stevenson, Peter Vortisch

Journal of Spatial Information Science

During wayfinding pedestrians do not always choose the shortest available route. Instead, route choices are guided by several well-known wayfinding strategies or heuristics. These heuristics minimize cognitive effort and usually lead to satisfactory route choices. Our previous study evaluated the costs of four well-known pedestrian wayfinding heuristics and their variation across nine network morphologies. It was observed that the variation in the cost of these wayfinding heuristics increased with an increase in the irregularity of the network, indicating that people may opt for more diverse heuristics while walking through relatively regular networks, and may prefer specific heuristics in the relatively …

How Does Socio-Economic And Demographic Dissimilarity Determine Physical And Virtual Segregation?, Michael Dorman, Tal Svoray, Itai Kloog

Journal of Spatial Information Science

It is established that socio-economic and demographic dissimilarities between populations are determinants of spatial segregation. However, the understanding of how such dissimilarities translate into actual segregation is limited. We propose a novel network-analysis approach to comprehensively study the determinants of communicative and mobility-related spatial segregation, using geo-tagged Twitter data. We constructed weighted spatial networks representing tie strength between geographical areas, then modeled tie formation as a function of socio-economic and demographic dissimilarity between areas. Physical and virtual tie formation were affected by income, age, and race differences, although these effects were smaller by an order of magnitude than the geographical …

Geocomputation 2019 Special Feature, Antoni Moore, Mark Gahegan

Journal of Spatial Information Science

No abstract provided.

Modelling Orebody Structures: Block Merging Algorithms And Block Model Spatial Restructuring Strategies Given Mesh Surfaces Of Geological Boundaries, Raymond Leung

Journal of Spatial Information Science

This paper describes a framework for capturing geological structures in a 3D block model and improving its spatial fidelity, including the correction of stratigraphic, mineralisation and other types of boundaries, given new mesh surfaces. Using surfaces that represent geological boundaries, the objectives are to identify areas where refinement is needed, increase spatial resolution to minimise surface approximation error, reduce redundancy to increase the compactness of the model and identify the geological domain on a block-by-block basis. These objectives are fulfilled by four system components which perform block-surface overlap detection, spatial structure decomposition, sub-blocks consolidation and block tagging, respectively. The main …

Big Issues For Big Data: Challenges For Critical Spatial Data Analytics, Chris Brunsdon, Alexis Comber

Journal of Spatial Information Science

In this paper we consider some of the issues of working with big data and big spatial data and highlight the need for an open and critical framework. We focus on a set of challenges underlying the collection and analysis of big data. In particular, we consider 1) inference when working with usually biased big data, challenging the assumed inferential superiority of data with observations, n, approaching N, the population n -> N. We also emphasise 2) the need for analyses that answer questions of practical significance or with greater emphasis on the size of the effect, rather than the …

Route Schematization With Landmarks, Marcelo De Lima Galvao, Jakub Krukar, Martin Noellenburg, Angela Schwering

Journal of Spatial Information Science

Predominant navigation applications make use of a turn-by-turn instructions approach and are mostly supported by small screen devices. This combination does little to improve users' orientation or spatial knowledge acquisition. Considering this limitation, we propose a route schematization method aimed for small screen devices to facilitate the readability of route information and survey knowledge acquisition. Current schematization methods focus on the route path and ignore context information, specially polygonal landmarks (such as lakes, parks, and regions), which is crucial for promoting orientation. Our schematization method, in addition to the route path, takes as input: adjacent streets, point-like landmarks, and polygonal …

Local Modelling: One Size Does Not Fit All, A. Stewart Fotheringham

Journal of Spatial Information Science

This editorial piece considers what happens when we abandon the concept that models of social processes have global application in favor of a local approach in which context or the influence of 'place' has an important role. A brief history of this local approach to statistical modelling is given, followed by a consideration of its ramifications for understanding societal issues. The piece concludes with futures challenges and prospects in this area.

Indigeneity And Spatial Information Science, Matt Duckham, Serene Ho

Journal of Spatial Information Science

Spatial information science has given rise to a set of concepts, tools, and techniques for understanding our geographic world. In turn, the technologies built on this body of knowledge embed certain ways of knowing." This vision paper traces the roots and impacts of those embeddings and explores how they can sometimes be inherently at odds with or completely subvert Indigenous Peoples' ways of knowing. However advancements in spatial information science offer opportunities for innovation whilst working towards reconciliation. We highlight as examples four active research topics in the field to support a call to action for greater inclusion of Indigenous …

Inferring Movement Patterns From Geometric Similarity, Maike Buchin, Carola Wenk

Journal of Spatial Information Science

Spatial movement data nowadays is becoming ubiquitously available, including data of animals, vehicles and people. This data allows us to analyze the underlying movement. In particular, it allows us to infer movement patterns, such as recurring places and routes. Many methods to do so rely on the notion of similarity of places or routes. Here we briefly survey how research on this has developed in the past 15 years and outline challenges for future work.

Why Are Events Important And How To Compute Them In Geospatial Research?, May Yuan

Journal of Spatial Information Science

Geospatial research has long centered around objects. While attention to events is growing rapidly, events remain objectified in spatial databases. This paper aims to highlight the importance of events in scientific inquiries and overview general event-based approaches to data modeling and computing. As machine learning algorithms and big data become popular in geospatial research, many studies appear to be the products of convenience with readily adaptable data and codes rather than curiosity. By asking why events are important and how to compute events in geospatial research, the author intends to provoke thinking into the rationale and conceptual basis of event-based …

Integrated Science Of Movement, Urska Demsar, Jed A. Long, Katarzyna Sila-Nowicka

Journal of Spatial Information Science

Recent technological advances in movement data acquisition have enabled researchers in many disciplines to study movement at increasingly detailed spatial and temporal scales. Yet there is little overlap in the sharing of methods and models between disciplines, despite similar research objectives and data models. Attempts to bridge this gap are leading towards the establishment of an overarching interdisciplinary science, termed the Integrated Science of Movement. Here we present opportunities and challenges of this process and outline the crucial role that GIScience as a discipline with a focus on space, place, and time can play in the integrated science of movement.

From Spatial To Platial - The Role And Future Of Immersive Technologies In The Spatial Sciences, Alexander Klippel

Journal of Spatial Information Science

Immersive technologies such as virtual and augmented reality have been part of the technology mindset in computer and geospatial sciences early on. The promise of delivering realistic experiences to the human senses that are not bound by physical reality has inspired generations of scientists and entrepreneurs alike. However, the vision for immersive experiences has been in stark contrast to the ability to deliver at the technology end; the community has battled nuisances such as cybersickness, tethers, and the uncanny valley for the last decades. With the 'final wave' of immersive technologies, we are now able to fulfill a long-held promise …

Thinking Spatial, Mohamed F. Mokbel

Journal of Spatial Information Science

The systems community in both academia and industry has tremendous success in building widely used general purpose systems for various types of data and applications. Examples include database systems, big data systems, data streaming systems, and machine learning systems. The vast majority of these systems are ill equipped in terms of supporting spatial data. The main reason is that system builders mostly think of spatial data as just one more type of data. Any spatial support can be considered as an afterthought problem that can be supported via on-top functions or spatial cartridges that can be added to the already …

Cartographic Generalization, Monika Sester

Journal of Spatial Information Science

This short paper gives a subjective view on cartographic generalization, its achievements in the past, and the challenges it faces in the future.

Josis' 10th Anniversary Special Feature: Part Two, Benjamin Adams, Somayeh Dodge, Ross Purves

Journal of Spatial Information Science

No abstract provided.

How Does Land Cover Classification In Google Earth Engine Compare With Traditional Methods Of Land Cover Classification? What Are The Tradeoffs?, Carlos Sebastian Reyes

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The project focuses on comparing land cover classification of traditional methods such as ArcGIS with newer ones such as Google Earth Engine (GEE) as well as discussing any potential tradeoffs. Two studies were performed in both platforms, the first involved analyzing land cover change in the Middle Rio Grande (MRG) region of southern New Mexico, far west Texas, and northern Chihuahua, Mexico. The MRG study focused on urban and agricultural change in the region using two different classification methods. The second study focused on creating a post-hurricane damage assessment (PDA) with the goal of developing an automated method of estimating …

Snow-Albedo Feedback In Northern Alaska: How Vegetation Influences Snowmelt, Lucas C. Reckhaus

Theses and Dissertations

This paper investigates how the snow-albedo feedback mechanism of the arctic is changing in response to rising climate temperatures. Specifically, the interplay of vegetation and snowmelt, and how these two variables can be correlated. This has the potential to refine climate modelling of the spring transition season. Research was conducted at the ecoregion scale in northern Alaska from 2000 to 2020. Each ecoregion is defined by distinct topographic and ecological conditions, allowing for meaningful contrast between the patterns of spring albedo transition across surface conditions and vegetation types. The five most northerly ecoregions of Alaska are chosen as they encompass …

Cartographic Vandalism In The Era Of Location-Based Games—The Case Of Openstreetmap And Pokémon Go, Levente Juhasz, Tessio Novack, Hartwig H. Hochmair, Sen Qiao

GIS Center

User-generated map data is increasingly used by the technology industry for background mapping, navigation and beyond. An example is the integration of OpenStreetMap (OSM) data in widely-used smartphone and web applications, such as Pokémon GO (PGO), a popular augmented reality smartphone game. As a result of OSM’s increased popularity, the worldwide audience that uses OSM through external applications is directly exposed to malicious edits which represent cartographic vandalism. Multiple reports of obscene and anti-semitic vandalism in OSM have surfaced in popular media over the years. These negative news related to cartographic vandalism undermine the credibility of collaboratively generated maps. Similarly, …

Establishing An Information System For Documenting Valuable Buildings By Using Gis In Egypt, Mona Mahrous Abdel Wahed

Emirates Journal for Engineering Research

Valuable heritage buildings are the history of nations, and history forms the identities of these nations. Many of these buildings are exposed to deterioration, destruction and distortion. Therefore, it is essential to protect and maintain these buildings to protect history. Effective documentation of valuable buildings is necessary to guide and assist stakeholders in making decisions regarding valuable buildings. Documentation requires robust and scientific methods. Therefore, it is important to utilize new technology in general and geographic information system GIS in particular in documenting valuable buildings. GIS has the potential to contribute and deal with valuable buildings at various stages and …

A Hidden Markov Model For Matching Spatial Networks, Benoit Costes, Julien Perret

Journal of Spatial Information Science

Datasets of the same geographic space at different scales and temporalities are increasingly abundant, paving the way for new scientific research. These datasets require data integration, which implies linking homologous entities in a process called data matching that remains a challenging task, despite a quite substantial literature, because of data imperfections and heterogeneities. In this paper, we present an approach for matching spatial networks based on a hidden Markov model (HMM) that takes full benefit of the underlying topology of networks. The approach is assessed using four heterogeneous datasets (streets, roads, railway, and hydrographic networks), showing that the HMM algorithm …

Evaluating Existing Manually Constructed Natural Landscape Classification With A Machine Learning-Based Approach, Rok Ciglic, Erik Strumbelj, Rok Cesnovar, Mauro Hrvatin, Drago Perko

Journal of Spatial Information Science

Some landscape classifications officially determine financial obligations; thus, they must be objective and precise. We presume it is possible to quantitatively evaluate existing manually constructed classifications and correct them if necessary. One option for achieving this goal is a machine learning method. With (re)modeling of the landscape classification and an explanation of its structure, we can add quantitative proof to its original (qualitative) description. The main objectives of the paper are to evaluate the consistency of the existing manually constructed natural landscape classification with a machine learning-based approach and to test the newly developed general black-box explanation method in order …