International Journal of Spatial Data Infrastructures Research (Joint Research Centre of the European Commission)
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Beyond Spatial Data Infrastructures there are no SDIs – so what
Get PDFWhat might Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) look like in 2016? The paper envisions the future of SDI strategically as having three characteristics. First, SDI may loose its distinctiveness and its spatial functionalities become integral part of information infrastructure in general. Second, information infrastructures – including SDIs – may become an institutional property of governance beyond the narrow and traditional limits of the state. Third, the design, implementation and use of information infrastructure are likely to be different at different levels of governance because space is conceived of differently at these levels. Understanding these complex relationships between governance at different levels and the role of information infrastructure requires a genuine socio-technical science in its own right beyond the traditional realm of positivism. Contours are indicated of a needed research practice bringing together the conventional GIScience community, scholars of information systems and those from social sciences (including sociologists and scholars of public administration) into ‘communities of practice’
Taking off to the Third Dimension, Schematization of Virtual Environments
Get PDFVirtual environments are increasingly popular in different areas in both research and industry. However, interaction with these environments is challenging, posing a variety of difficulties to human users. In this paper, we explore how well known principles of abstraction and information reduction for 2D spatial representations, which we term schematization, can be transferred to the 3D representations of virtual environments in order to ease interaction and to increase their utility
Citizens as Voluntary Sensors: Spatial Data Infrastructure in the World of Web 2.0
Get PDFMuch progress has been made in the past two decades, and increasingly since the popularizing of the Internet and the advent of the Web, in exploiting new technologies in support of the dissemination of geographic information. Data warehouses, spatial data libraries, and geoportals have proliferated, and today’s users of geographic information have a wealth of potential sources that can be searched for suitable data sets. Standards have been established, issues of syntactic interoperability have been largely addressed, and rich descriptions are available in metadata to allow the suitability of a given data set to be assessed. Table digitizers used to be an essential asset for any spatial data center in the days when most sources of geographic information were in the form of paper maps, and skill in digitizing was a major part of any introduction to geographic information systems (GIS). Today, however, users rely heavily on digital sources, and virtually all digitizing is heads-up on-screen
Application of Geographically Weighted Regression to Investigate the Impact of Scale on Prediction Uncertainty by Modelling Relationship between Vegetation and Climate
Get PDFScale-dependence of spatial relationship between vegetation and rainfall in Central Sulavesi has been modelled using Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and rainfall data from weather stations. The modelling based on application of two statistical approaches: conventional ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, and geographically weighted regression (GWR). The analysis scales ranged from the entire study region to spatial unities with a size of 750*750 m. The analysis revealed the presence of spatial non-stationarity for the NDVI-precipitation relationship. The results support the assumption that dealing with spatial non-stationarity and scaling down from regional to local modelling significantly improves the model’s accuracy and prediction power. The local approach also provides a better solution to the problem of spatially autocorrelated errors in spatial modelling
Multi-view SDI Assessment Framework
Get PDFWhen developing Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) initiatives it is increasingly important to assess their outcomes in order to justify the resources spent on those infrastructures. Many researchers throughout the world have been struggling with the issue of assessing SDIs. The task is difficult due to complex, dynamic and constantly evolving nature of SDI. As SDI can be treated as a Complex Adaptive System, the assessment should include strategies for evaluating those kinds of systems. One strategy is to use multiple assessment approaches and methods. The general evaluation research and experience provide additional motives for adopting such a strategy. We present the multi-view framework for assessing SDI initiatives around the world, and argue that the strength of this assessment design lies in its flexibility, its multidisciplinary view on SDI and a reduced bias in the assessment results. The multi-view framework contains methods that not only evaluate SDI performance, but also deepen our knowledge about SDI functioning, and may assist in its development. The article presents the assessment framework and describes its theoretical grounding in complexity theory and evaluation research. The application of the framework is beyond the scope of this paper
Legend Design on The Web: Creating Accurate Styles
Get PDFThis paper presents the main characteristics of on-demand mapping on the web and focus on the existing tools which propose to a user to specify his styles. Most of on-demand maps applications do not help the users in the map design process. Customisation options exist, but the user may not reach a correct and satisfying result. Our purpose is to assist users in their map design process and especially in creating accurate styles in order to conceive satisfying legends. We propose a man-machine dialogue between users and a system that holds cartographic expertise. This dialogue relies on creation strategies in order to satisfy both user’s (tastes and needs) and system’s (cartographic rules) constraints
GI Policies in Norway and England: Are they within the Spirit of Recent EU Directives?
Get PDFThe removal of GI from their current ‘silo systems’ is a socio-political challenge based on intertwined regional and national policies, and the different policies and cultures of public sector information holders. These socio-political issues have created a web of complex access policies (e.g., pricing, copyright, and licensing agreements) that have in many cases negatively influenced access of GI. Therefore, for GI to be made more accessible there should be in place more transparent, formalised, non-conflicting and well-structured policies to regulate sharing and reuse. A number of European States have made considerable efforts to facilitate the sharing and reuse of GI. Recently, their efforts were boosted by the European Union through the issuing of two key Directives (PSI and INSPIRE) to facilitate the concept of reuse of Public Sector Information (PSI) and the sharing of Public Sector Geo-Information (PSGI) in the case of INSPIRE. The challenge then is to determine whether these Directives are effective in improving the quality of access to PSI across Europe. The success of the Directives can in part be measured by answering the following questions: Are the current and future access policies of member States in compliance with the letter of the Directives? And are they in compliance within the spirit of the Directives? In an attempt to answer the above questions the authors investigated and analysed key policies supporting the concept of sharing and the reusing of PSI/PSGI in five European jurisdictions. This paper discusses key findings of the investigation with respect to Norway and England. The paper presents the results of the investigation in the following manner: a discussion of the concept of sharing and reusing of PSGI, followed by a review of the key EU Directives that directly or indirectly govern access to PSGI, and a discussion on PSGI access policies in Norway and England. An analysis of these policies is then presented to illustrate whether or not they are within the spirit and letter of current EU Directives
Optimizing the Wood Supply Chain: Concept and Methods
Get PDFTraditional Wood Supply Chain Management has several shortcomings that limit the performance, like uncoordinated logistic operations. Thus we propose a Spatial Decision Support System that supports the operations planning within the Wood Supply Chain. The intended system comprises several aspects of GIScience and Operations Research. Among them there are Location Based Services and Web Services which both rely on standards. In order to solve the scheduling task within the Wood Supply Chain several theoretical models and solution methods originating from Operations Research are discussed. The architecture of the intended Spatial Decision Support System collects the concepts within one system
Automatic real-time interpolation of radiation hazards: a prototype and system architecture considerations
Get PDFIt is important to detect and monitor the development of radioactive releases in the atmosphere. In many European countries monitoring networks have been established to perform this task. In the Netherlands the National Radioactivity Monitoring network (NRM) was installed. Currently point maps are used to analyse the data from the NRM. Automatically generating maps in real-time would improve the interpretation of the data by giving the user a clear overview of the present radiological situation. In this paper we present a prototype system that automatically generates real-time maps of the NRM and presents the results in an interoperable way through a Web Map Service. The automatic interpolation is done using universal kriging in combination with an automatic variogram fitting procedure. The focus of the discussion is on mathematical and operational issues and architectural considerations on how to improve the interoperability and portability of this prototype system
SDI ontology and implications
Get PDFI examine key SDI concepts: ‘information’, ‘decision processes’, ‘people’, ‘management systems’, ‘social structure’ and ‘information technology’. I attempt to make explicit commonly held assumptions about the nature of these concepts, the ways they contribute to a ‘construction’ view of SDI implementation and their apparent disconnectedness with the realities in the developing world.
I suggest alternative understandings of these key concepts that lead to a ‘cultivation’ perspective for SDI design and implementation. A ‘cultivation’ perspective is more likely to help us understand how human actors strike and sustain a dynamic balance between global uniformity and local contextual solutions in SDI design and implementation, especially in developing regions