1,720,956 research outputs found
Assessing the motivators and barriers of interorganizational GIS data sharing for address data in South Africa
Get PDFDissertation (MIT)--University of Pretoria, 2012.Address data within geographic information systems (GIS) is used as reference data to link personal and administrative information, thus making it possible to locate and deliver goods and services to eligible persons. Preferably, every country must develop and maintain a single national address database (NAD) to eliminate data redundancy and provide a common point of reference across the board. In South Africa, the challenge is that there are separate address databases, which are developed and maintained by various public and private organizations – with little or no cooperation on data sharing. Currently, the establishment of a Committee for Spatial Information (CSI) which is tasked with the implementation of the South African Spatial Data Infrastructure (SASDI) and the publication of the South African Address Standard (SANS 1883) offer organizations an opportunity to collaborate towards the creation of a single address dataset. This research posits that the implementation of a successful data sharing initiative depends on the understanding of motivators and barriers of organizations participating in it. The research applied the case study method – with a semi-structured questionnaire – to assess the issues that motivate or obstruct GIS data sharing among three address organizations in South Africa. The results identified significant motivators that underlie the data sharing activities, e.g. reduced cost of data collection, improved data quality; and equally identified significant barriers that make organizations reluctant to enter into a data sharing initiative, e.g. data copyright and ownership, high staff-turnover, and lack of financial and technical resources. Although the case studies focused on address data in South Africa, the research findings can equally apply to other spatial datasets and are relevant for the successful implementation of the South African Spatial Data Infrastructure (SASDI).Computer ScienceUnrestricte
An investigation into the classification of river environments using GIS : the case of KwaZulu-Natal rivers.
Get PDFThesis (M.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2005.According to the National Water Act No. 36 of 1998 (DWAF 1999), classification of the water resources in South Africa is the initial step towards the implementation of protection or management programmes. This study reviews different methods and systems of classifying river environments, in order to recommend a convenient, efficient and flexible classification
scheme for describing the conditions of river environments. To meet this challenge, the study proposes the use of Geographical Information System (GIS) as a tool to link different controlling variables of river environments and thereafter analyse their spatial relationships. The study supports the use of GIS in river environment classification, with special emphasis on its functionalities that make it possible to explore and manipulate data interactively and easily. The GIS allows the user a flexible way to analyse the geomorphologic and ecological controlling variables of the river system. Thus , it enables different arrangements of these controlling variables for a number of classification purposes. The methodology used involves the GIS (database) analyses and map analyses to explore the relationships between
geomorphologic and ecological controlling-variables of the river ecosystem.
A case study of the KwaZulu-Natal Rivers demonstrates that valuable information for river environments could be derived from available geomorphologic and ecological datasets using methods of analyses within the GIS. In addition, the case study illustrates that it is possible to develop a working classification scheme for a particular purpose. The developed
classification scheme can be improved by considering influential factors such as, the use of up-to-date datasets, consistent projection parameters and relevant scale
Address data sharing : organizational motivators and barriers and their implications for the South African spatial data infrastructure
Get PDFAn address is a common reference for a multitude of information. In South Africa, multiple address datasets are developed and maintained by various public and private organizations with little or no cooperation on data sharing. We identified motivators and barriers for address data sharing in South Africa through case studies of three typical organizations, which prepare, distribute and use address data. The most significant motivators are improved data quality and an expected return on investment for better decision-making and service delivery. However, the quality of data produced by organizations participating in a data sharing initiative needs to be clearly described and evaluated, in order to avoid prejudiced perceptions of poor quality; and expectations about the timing and value of the expected return on investment from an SDI need to be managed to avoid losing support from stakeholders. Even if organizations have the best data sharing intentions and agreements in place, high staff turnover, which is a considerable problem in South Africa, can jeopardize data sharing. Technical barriers, such as common definitions, models and formats, are less significant and can be overcome by implementing appropriate standards. Public-private partnerships are not given enough consideration in South African data sharing initiatives. Our findings have significant implications for the recently established Committee for Spatial Information (CSI), which is tasked with the implementation of the South African Spatial Data Infrastructure (SASDI), but they are also of interest to other countries and for other spatial datasets.http://ijsdir.jrc.ec.europa.eu
Results of three case studies for assessing motivators and barriers of address data sharing in South Africa
Get PDFThis paper reports on Malete Daniel Sebake’s research for his Master of Information Technology (M.IT), supervised by Dr. Serena Coetzee from the University of Pretoria.The value of GIS data in the functioning of both public and private organizations has increased enormously, to the extent that it is difficult to imagine a modern organization without the use of GI technologies. Currently, organizations use GIS data, especially spatial address data, to locate their customers and to deliver products and services to their doorsteps. In South Africa, the spatial address data are found in separate address databases, which are maintained by different organizations, with minimal or no cooperation among them. Contrary to research evidence pointing to the benefits of organizations sharing spatial data, most organizations still show inability and reluctance to participate in spatial data sharing initiatives; thus perpetuating the costly duplication of efforts in data handling and storage. The authors used a case study approach to assess the issues that motivate or obstruct GIS data sharing among three address organizations in South Africa. This paper presents the results of the three cases, and their implications on the interorganizational GIS data sharing initiatives as they occur in spatial data infrastructures (SDIs), particularly the South African SDI. It is our hope that these findings pertaining to motivators or barriers for interorganizational GIS data sharing (as it was applied to the three cases) will provide valuable lessons to guide organizations to develop and implement successful data sharing initiatives.The Council for Geoscience in South Africa financially supported the M.IT studies.http://www.sajg.org.zanf201
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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