Geographic Information System Science Research Articles

Unlocking the Potential of Digital, Situation-Aware Nudging for Promoting Sustainable Mobility

The context ultimately decides on mobility options and thus shapes mobility behavior. Nudges are an increasingly used strategy for promoting sustainable modes of everyday mobility. However, in most cases, the design of nudges and the triggers for issuing these interventions neglect the user's specific context and are thus less relevant to the recipient. Digital nudges communicated through mobile devices offer situation awareness, which is facilitated by geographic information systems (GIS). Using the geographic reference as the “primary key” allows for connecting the current location information of recipients with static and real-time environmental data that define the contextual situation. We describe a framework for triggering situation-aware nudges and provide a functional proof-of-concept. Through linking concepts from behavioral economics and psychology with methods from GIS science and Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI), we illuminate new opportunities for promoting sustainable mobility.

Choosing GIS graduate programs from afar: Chinese students' perspectives

AbstractWith the increasing demands for geospatial analytics in industry and academia, the need for Geographic Information Systems/Science (GIS) education is on the rise. A growing number of departments in geography have launched or expanded their GIS graduate programs. However, the factors influencing students choosing GIS programs have not been examined yet. In this study, we looked at Chinese students applying for overseas GIS programs and examined factors influencing their decision‐making. We distributed the survey in GISphere, one of the largest GIS international student communities, and 84 valid questionnaires were returned. We analyzed the spatial and demographic patterns of Chinese students applying for overseas GIS programs. We identify five main factors that affect their choices of GIS programs: (1) education quality and awareness, (2) physical, social, and political environments, (3) improved employment prospects, (4) personal recommendations, and (5) the application process. Our study offers implications for the development of GIS graduate programs. We anticipate that the conclusions drawn from this research will benefit and advance geography and GIS education globally.

Spatiotemporal impacts of climate change and human activities on water resources and ecological sensitivity in the Mekong subregion in Cambodia.

Water resources in the Mekong subregion in Cambodia (MSC) have experienced dramatic changes in past decades, threatening regional ecosystem quality and sustainable development. Thus, it is important to explore the spatiotemporal impacts of climate change and human activities on water resources and ecological sensitivity. This study proposed an effective framework including spatiotemporal analysis of land use/cover change (LUCC) and ecological sensitivity assessment by combining remote sensing (RS) and geographic information system/science (GIS). An optimized feature space and a machine learning classification algorithm were constructed to extract four typical land cover types in the MSC from 1990 to 2020. An ecological sensitivity evaluation system, including four sub-sensitivities calculated by twelve indicators, was then constructed. The results suggest that severe shrinkage of water resources occurred before 2006, decreasing by 21.68%. The correlation between water resources and climate conditions displays a high to low level as human activity becomes involved. A significant spatiotemporal evolutionary pattern of ecological sensitivity was observed under the impact of external interference. Generally, the largest proportion of MSC belongs to the lightly sensitive level, which is mainly concentrated in the lower reaches, with an average of 33.93%. The highly sensitive area with a significant value in ecological protection has a slightly downward trend from 23.72 in 1990 to 22.55% in 2020.

Alueiden välinen työssäkäynti ja työperäinen monipaikkainen asuminen Suomessa

Työperäisen monipaikkaisuuden on huomattu yleistyvän samalla, kun työn tekemisen muodot ja työsuhteet moninaistuvat, etätyöskentely lisääntyy ja työn aika- ja paikkasidonnaisuus heikkenevät. Yksinkertaisimmillaan monipaikkaisuus tarkoittaa sitä, että henkilöllä on useampi kuin yksi asuin- tai oleskelupaikka. Tässä tutkimuksessa keskitytään työperäiseen monipaikkaisuuteen, jolla on arvioitu olevan vaikutuksia työvoiman saatavuuteen, työmatkustamisen määrään ja kustannuksiin sekä työmatkustamisesta aiheutuviin päästöihin ja siihen kuluvaan aikaan. Monipaikkaisuus on kuitenkin pitkälti virallisen tilastoinnin tavoittamattomissa. Tutkimuksen tavoitteena on syventää työssäkäyntitilastointiin perustuvaa käsitystä työssäkäynnin maantieteellisestä rakenteesta erityisesti alueiden välisen työssäkäynnin ja työperäisen monipaikkaisen asumisen näkökulmasta sekä arvioida, kuinka laaja ilmiö monipaikkainen työssäkäynti on Suomessa. Paikkatietoanalyyttinen tutkimus perustuu Suomen Ympäristökeskuksen tilastoruutupohjaisen (250×250m) yhdyskuntarakenteen seurantajärjestelmän (YKR) työmatkatietoihin, eli asuin- ja työpaikkojen sijainteihin ja niiden välisiin etäisyyksiin. Tämä mahdollistaa työssäkäynnin maantieteellisten rakenteiden tutkimisen tilastollisiin analyyseihin verrattuna tarkemmilla mittakaavoilla ja hallinnollisten aluerajausten lisäksi myös toiminnallisia alueluokituksia käyttäen. Tutkimus tunnistaa alueelliseen ja paikalliseen työssäkäyntiin, alueiden väliseen pendelöintiin sekä pitkän matkan työssäkäyntiin eli potentiaaliseen työperäiseen monipaikkaisuuteen kytkeytyviä rakenteita. Työssäkäyntietäisyyksiä tarkastellaan kaupunki-maaseutuluokituksen pohjalta ja kuntien työssäkäyntivirtojen verkostokeskeisyyttä tarkastellaan verkostometriikan avulla.

Geographic Information System & Spatial Analysis

A geographic information system (GIS) is a system designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present spatial or geographic data. GIS applications are tools that allow users to create interactive queries (user-created searches), analyze spatial information, edit data in maps, and present the results of all these operations. GIS (more commonly GIS science) sometimes refers to geographic information science (GIS science), the science underlying geographic concepts, applications, and systems. GIS can refer to a number of different technologies, processes, techniques and methods. It is attached to many operations and has many applications related to engineering, planning, management, transport/logistics, insurance, telecommunications, and business. For that reason, GIS and location intelligence applications can be the foundation for many location-enabled services that rely on analysis and visualization.

Leveraging correlation across space and time to interpolate geophysical data via CoKriging

ABSTRACTManaging geophysical data generated by emerging spatiotemporal data sources (e.g. geosensor networks) presents a growing challenge to Geographic Information System science. The presence of correlation poses difficulties with respect to traditional spatial data analysis. This paper describes a novel spatiotemporal analytical scheme that allows us to yield a characterization of correlation in geophysical data along the spatial and temporal dimensions. We resort to a multivariate statistical model, namely CoKriging, in order to derive accurate spatiotemporal interpolation models. These predict unknown data by utilizing not only their own geosensor values at the same time, but also information from near past data. We use a window-based computation methodology that leverages the power of temporal correlation in a spatial modeling phase. This is done by also fitting the computed interpolation model to data which may change over time. In an assessment, using various geophysical data sets, we show that the presented algorithm is often able to deal with both spatial and temporal correlations. This helps to gain accuracy during the interpolation phase, compared to spatial and spatiotemporal competitors. Specifically, we evaluate the efficacy of the interpolation phase by using established machine-learning metrics (i.e. root mean squared error, Akaike information criterion and computation time).

AN OVERVIEW OF THE LOCATION OF AIRPORTS USING GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEM

A geographic information system (GIS) is a system designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present spatial or geographic data. The acronym GIS is sometimes used for geographic information science (GIS science) to refer to the academic discipline that studies geographic information systems and is a large domain within the broader academic discipline of geoinformatics. GIS can provide the airport management staff with visual pavement information and powerful analysis tool. Meanwhile, the spatial information managed by GIS can ensure the accumulation of valid attribute data of airport. Based on the principle and general implementation process of GIS and the characteristics of airport pavement management, this paper describes the implementation process of GIS in Airport planning and design. To organize the spatial entities effectively, some layers are set according to the characteristics of spatial entities. The spatial database is established, and then the function design of the GIS software is presented including map exploring, map locating, spatial query, rendering style of map and output of map. Finally, in this paper, an overview of locating airports using GIS studied.

A framework for sharing and integrating remote sensing and GIS models based on Web service.

Sharing and integrating Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographic Information System/Science (GIS) models are critical for developing practical application systems. Facilitating model sharing and model integration is a problem for model publishers and model users, respectively. To address this problem, a framework based on a Web service for sharing and integrating RS and GIS models is proposed in this paper. The fundamental idea of the framework is to publish heterogeneous RS and GIS models into standard Web services for sharing and interoperation and then to integrate the RS and GIS models using Web services. For the former, a “black box” and a visual method are employed to facilitate the publishing of the models as Web services. For the latter, model integration based on the geospatial workflow and semantic supported marching method is introduced. Under this framework, model sharing and integration is applied for developing the Pearl River Delta water environment monitoring system. The results show that the framework can facilitate model sharing and model integration for model publishers and model users.