323,092 research outputs found
CITIZEN SCIENCE for WATER QUALITY MONITORING APPLYING FOSS
No full textCitizen science is an efficient tool for data collection for scientific projects. In the framework of SIMILE Interreg Italy-Switzerland project, the citizen's contribution to monitor the quality of lakes water has been envisaged. In the initial phase of this research, state of art of citizen science and water quality monitoring was investigated. The analysis of past and current projects, governed by different organizations and communities, pointed out a variety of tasks that can be accomplished by citizens. In these studies, authors stressed suitability of smartphones for the fulfilment of various assignments given to citizens. Due to that, in this research, different smartphone applications for water quality monitoring were tested and analyzed. Despite the fact that many applications for water quality monitoring are freely available, none of them is open source. Hence, this paper is proposing the design of a new application, for the purposes of SIMILE project, that will be free and open source, addressing not just users but also developers giving them a possibility for customization and improvement
OSGEO UN COMMITTEE EDUCATIONAL CHALLENGE: A USE CASE of SHARING SOFTWARE and EXPERIENCE from ALL over the WORLD
No full textThe paper presents the outcomes of an Educational Challenge launched by the OSGeo (Open Source Geospatial Foundation) United Nations (UN) Committee in 2018. The Committee promotes the development and use of open source software that meets UN needs and supports the aims of the UN. The Challenge supported the UN OpenGIS Initiative, a project "... to identify and develop an Open Source GIS bundle that meets the requirements of UN operations, taking full advantage of the expertise of mission partners including partner nations, technology contributing countries, international organizations, academia, NGOs, private sector". The UN OpenGIS Initiative is organized into working groups, called ĝ€Spirals'. The OSGeo UN Challenge called for the development of training material that can be used for training UN staff working on Spirals 1 and 3. Spiral 1 focuses on a new open source web platform for data collection and Spiral 3 is related to new functionalities needed by UN staff during their field operations. The material developed for the challenges is now openly available for anybody, reaching a wider audience than only UN staff members. This paper describes the challenges and the training material developed for them. Expertise from all over the world was pulled together in designing, mentoring and developing the material
Benchmarking of high-resolution land cover maps in Africa
No full textThis paper addresses the issue of increased validation demands due to growth in the production of land cover (LC) maps, especially those with large coverage and high-resolution. The inter-comparison of two high-resolution LC (HRLC) maps – GlobeLand30 for the year 2015 (GL30-2015) and S2 Prototype LC 20m map of Africa for 2016 (CCI Africa Prototype) – was done to estimate the degree to which they share the information, as this can serve as a benchmark of their accuracy. Since the two maps compared are independently classified, there is a higher probability that areas, where they share information, are correctly classified. CCI Africa Prototype and GL30- 2015 have not been yet validated for the whole of Africa and therefore benchmark accuracy can be used to better design the validation and to make it more efficient. Based on the pixel-by-pixel comparison of GL30-2015 and CCI Africa Prototype, the error matrix and accuracy indexes (Overall, User’s, and Producer’s accuracy) were derived. Overall accuracy on the continent level is estimated to be around 66%, which is not considered satisfactory. The low value of overall accuracy is mostly due to the low accuracy of classes Shrubland, Wetland, and Permanent ice and snow, as their User’s and Producer’s accuracies are below 0.4. On the opposite, benchmark accuracy is fairly high for Forest (0.68), Water bodies (0.86), and Bareland (0.93). Nevertheless, class benchmark accuracies are different from country to country, such as the Overall accuracy. Benchmark accuracy was not estimated for Cultivated, Grassland, and Artificial surface classes due to the large difference between User’s and Producer’s accuracies
Development of a Voice Virtual Assistant for the Geospatial Data Visualization Application on the Web
No full textVoice assistants can elevate interaction in geospatial data web platforms. This research
introduces a voice assistant in the BStreams platform and focuses on understanding user commands
in the geospatial domain. We developed a specialised geospatial discourse framework through
structured prototyping. A survey with 66 participants revealed prevalent English geospatial terminologies.
Using ChatGPT, we found the term suggestions aligned with survey results, with a notable
correlation (r = 0.81, p < 0.01) between the NPL model’s probability scores and term prevalence in
survey data. Our study also incorporated usability tests on the application, which uses tools like
Web Speech API, Leaflet, and Mapbox geocoding. Results from these tests reaffirm the potential of
voice assistants in enhancing geospatial data visualisation, though challenges persist in areas like
language understanding and domain knowledge. The paper advocates for further research to refine
the integration of voice technology in this domain
Openness and Community Geospatial Science for Monitoring SDGs - An Example From Tanzania
No full textThis chapter focuses on two aspects that enable the monitoring of the United Nations (UN) sustainable development goals (SDGs): openness and community geospatial science
Open geospatial software and data: A review of the current state and a perspective into the future
No full textAll over the world, organizations are increasingly considering the adoption of open source software and open data. In the geospatial domain, this is no different, and the last few decades have seen significant advances in this regard. We review the current state of open source geospatial software, focusing on the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) software ecosystem and its communities, as well as three kinds of open geospatial data (collaboratively contributed, authoritative and scientific). The current state confirms that openness has changed the way in which geospatial data are collected, processed, analyzed, and visualized. A perspective on future developments, informed by responses from professionals in key organizations in the global geospatial community, suggests that open source geospatial software and open geospatial data are likely to have an even more profound impact in the future
Low-fat angiomyolipoma of the liver studied with contrast-enhanced ultrasound and multidetector computed tomography.
No full textWe report the case of a 30-year-old woman with persistent pain at the right hypochondrium, relapsing fever, and normal serum tests. Ultrasound showed a hyperechoic inhomogeneous mass; following sulfur hexafluoride injection, uniform enhancement at 14-16s and rapid wash-out at 26s was found. Multidetector computed tomography showed an inhomogeneously hypodense mass, with no detectable negative density values, characterized by inhomogeneous enhancement at the arterial phase and wash-out at the portal phase. Histopathology demonstrated a hepithelioid angiomyolipoma with a poor fatty component. This diagnosis should always be considered in the presence of a very rapid wash-out after intravenous contrast injection. However, a hepatocellular carcinoma cannot be excluded and the final diagnosis of low-fat angiomyolipoma must be pathologically proved based on immunohistochemistry
- …
