Geographical Knowledge Research Articles

EDITORIAL NOTE Vol. 61 (12/2024) RA’E GA – THE GEOGRAPHIC SPACE UNDER ANALYSIS

RA’E GA – THE GEOGRAPHIC SPACE UNDER ANALYSIS is pleased to present to the national and international scientific community the third volume of 2024 (V.61 – 12/2024 - DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5380/raega.v61i1), which encompasses articles covering various topics related to Geographic knowledge and other areas of scientific expertise. This edition of the Journal maintains the publication flow in English and Portuguese. This change aimed to preserve the Papers construction structure of the texts and increase access for different readers. RA’E GA extends its gratitude to the authors, the editorial team, section editors, and reviewers, especially those who contributed to this volume, as well as the Program for Support of Periodical Scientific Publications at UFPR. All these activities are crucial for the advancement of Brazilian scientific research and have been instrumental in ensuring the quality of this current volume.

Attila nutritus in Engadi or the knowledge of late antique historical geography in mediaeval Hungarian chronicles

The 10th chapter of the Chronica de Gestis Hungarorum written by Simon of Kéza contains a puzzling phrase: Attila (...) nutritus in Engadi. So far, no attempt has been made to explain it. According to the authors of the following article, Simon took it from the Latin translation of the Onomasticon of Eusebius of Caesarea (d. 339) by St. Jerome. In all likelihood, Simon gained access to Jerome’s codex during his trip to southern Italy. It is necessary to distinguish three stages of the rise and change of the scholarly tradition about Attila as the ancestor of the Arpad dynasty and the Huns as the ancestors of the Hungarians: 1) Attila is viewed as the ancestor of Almos and Arpad; 2) Aquila in the Hungarian-Polish Chronicle as the founder of the Hungarian state, which was an attempt at a Christian rationalization of the story of the Turul, an ethnogenetic story about the Hungarians and their dynasty; 3) the inclusion of the Huns in Hungarian history by Simon of Kéza while removing Attila from among the ancestors of the dynasty. The mention of Engaddi (attesting to Simon's knowledge of the latin topography of Palestine, ultimately derived from Eusebius of Caesarea) likens him to the biblical David showing that, like the great warrior-king of Judah and Israel, Attila was the preeminent ruler of the Huns, i.e. the Hungarians, and at the same time legitimizes him, placing him, and, not least, his people, in the horizon of the world of Mediterranean civilization.

Schema Retrieval for Korean Geographic Knowledge Base Question Answering Using Few-Shot Prompting

Geographic Knowledge Base Question Answering (GeoKBQA) has garnered increasing attention for its ability to process complex geographic queries. This study focuses on schema retrieval, a critical step in GeoKBQA that involves extracting relevant schema items (classes, relations, and properties) to generate accurate operational queries. Current GeoKBQA studies primarily rely on rule-based approaches for schema retrieval. These predefine words or descriptions for each schema item. This rule-based method has three critical limitations: (1) poor generalization to undefined schema items, (2) failure to consider the semantic meaning of user queries, and (3) an inability to adapt to languages not used in the predefined step. In this study, we present a schema retrieval model by using few-shot prompting on GPT-4 Turbo to address these issues. Using the SKRE dataset, we searched for the best prompt in terms of enabling the model to handle Korean geographic questions across various generalization levels. Notably, this method outperformed fine-tuning in zero-shot scenarios, underscoring its adaptability to unseen data. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to develop a schema retrieval model for GeoKBQA that purely utilizes a language model and is capable of processing Korean geographic questions.

AS HERODOTUS SAYS: DIRECT AND INDIRECT USE OF HERODOTUS’S HISTORIES IN STRABO’S GEOGRAPHY

This paper aims to show that the geographer Strabo used the historian Herodotus directly in his Geography and valued his geographical knowledge more than previously thought. The paper examines nineteen instances where Strabo explicitly quotes Herodotus, which suggests these may be direct quotations and indicates Strabo had direct access to Herodotus’ Histories when composing these passages. This is confirmed primarily through direct quotations that Strabo designates with ὡς Ἡρόδοτός φησι(ν) (“as Herodotus says”) and similar expressions. There is a reason to believe that in most such instances Strabo directly used and quoted Herodotus rather than relying on intermediary sources. Most of the instances analyzed here refer to geographical and ethnographic matters, with a focus on rivers. A significant number of these instances, as many as ten, pertain to Book 1 of Herodotus’s Histories, which suggests that Strabo frequently consulted this particular book.

Willingness to Pay in Tourism and Its Influence on Sustainability

Financial support for environmental causes is more urgent than ever before. Thus, understanding consumer willingness to pay (WTP) for tourism is vital for policymakers, businesses, and researchers. This bibliometric study examined the trend of research on willingness to pay and tourism using 428 articles published in the Scopus indexed database between 1994 and 2023. The articles were extracted using the keywords “Willingness to pay tourism”. A Microsoft Excel sheet was used in the descriptive analysis, and a VOSviewer version 1.6.20 was used for the citation and co-occurrence analysis. The study found that willingness to pay is a complex aspect of environmental economics and tourism behaviour that is shaped by various aspects. Amongst other things, willingness to pay is shaped by aspects such as tourist biogeography, amongst others is the level of environmental awareness, environmental sensitivity, and education. In many respects, it is shaped by demographic factors such as age, gender, income bracket, and area of origin. Even though the major thrust of willingness to pay was anchored on sustainability and environmental protection, recent events in the mold of climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and technological innovation have played major roles in shaping tourists’ behaviour. Given the emerging thrust and focus, there is a need to respond to geographic knowledge gaps in tourism hotspots to understand how this will shape tourism sustainability from a Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) perspective going forward. In doing so, it will be critical to ensure continued fostering and understanding of how tourists’ willingness to pay for tourism destinations can lead to better design, marketing, and managed services to create memorable experiences that drive consumer loyalty.

The Utilization of Maps in Geographic Citizen Science: A Preliminary Analysis of Usability and User Experience Issues and Opportunities

The rapid proliferation of geospatial technologies and the widespread utilization of Web and mobile maps by nonexpert audiences spurred new perspectives and research paradigms within geography. One area affected by this transformation is citizen science, where geospatial technologies facilitated its more widespread use and revolutionized the way scientific knowledge is coproduced, especially in the environmental context. Geographic citizen science is widely used to support the collection and analysis of geolocated scientific data, extend existing geographic data coverage, and enable communities to address local issues. The inherent complexity of geospatial interfaces and data is widely recognized and there is a wealth of geographic research focusing on improving human–map interactions, with less emphasis, nevertheless, given to citizen science. Not only do these applications have their unique characteristics, but inclusiveness is paramount, which further adds to these complexities. Through an investigation of 229 geographic citizen science applications, we provide an overview of how geographic interfaces are currently employed in citizen science. We then evaluate a selection of applications to identify critical usability barriers, which might have a detrimental impact on the overall user experience and the success of these projects. Among others, we found that geographic citizen science applications need to better support visual thinking and leverage participants’ geographic knowledge. We subsequently provide a set of recommendations for map design and functionality and identify opportunities for future geovisualization research.

The training of some geography-specific competences. Applications on the theme ”Iceland”

The study study analyzes the impact of specific learning activities that are using student-centered methods, focusing on various aspects of Iceland. In the sixth grade, the lesson on the topic „Iceland” features an activity called "Famous Icelandic Places," based on a teaching game. In the ninth grade, an activity related to glacial relief is described, in which storytelling is combined with the use of images. In the tenth grade, a case study on the development of tourism in Iceland is presented, along with an activity regarding the Cod War, which employs the jigsaw method. These activities highlight the importance of students grasping the specificity and uniqueness of Iceland within Europe. This country provides an optimal context for students to acquire knowledge (northern lights, geysers, fumaroles, solfataras, active volcanoes, basalt columns, geothermal energy, ice caps, rifts) and specific competencies in geography. The results of the study indicate that the learning activities were effective.

Improving the geography curriculum: analysis of learning outcomes and the possibility of application of powerful knowledge principle

In this paper, we have conducted an analysis of learning outcomes in the geography curriculum for high schools (gymnasiums) in the Republic of Srpska (Bosnia and Herzegovina). Our aim was to identify the deficiencies in individual knowledge dimensions and levels of cognitive processes within defined outcomes. Subsequently, we applied the principle of powerful geographical knowledge to explore the potential for improving geography curriculum for high schools in contrast to the existing traditional curriculum. We used the revised Bloom’s taxonomy as an analysis tool. We employed a qualitative approach and theory-driven content analysis, utilizing researcher triangulation in the analysis process. The results revealed that the existing geography curriculum predominantly emphasizes factual knowledge and lower levels of cognitive processes. We then connected Maude’s powerful geographical knowledge types with the cognitive and knowledge dimensions of the revised Bloom’s taxonomy. We used the revised Bloom’s taxonomy to make judgements about powerful knowledge. Based on these connections, as well as the other prerequisites for applying the principle of powerful knowledge, we considered the possibility of developing a Future 3 curriculum for high schools in the Republic of Srpska and improving the traditional geography curriculum.

SceneKG: A Geo‐Scene Based Spatiotemporal Knowledge Representation Framework Considering Geo‐Processes

ABSTRACTCurrent geographic knowledge graph research mainly focuses on static knowledge coupling through analysis of web text and maps, but its knowledge expression model fails to incorporate knowledge mechanisms such as process evolution and interactions. The geo‐scene is a synthesis of various geographic elements which prescribes spatial, temporal, semantic, attribute, and interrelationships. It has demonstrated its utility in facilitating geocomputation, spatiotemporal simulation and reasoning related to geo‐process. Therefore, developing a geo‐scene‐based knowledge graph is significant to improve the ability of spatiotemporal knowledge representation and service. In this study, we first analyze the basic characteristics of geo‐scenes and try to emphasize the evolution of geo‐scenes through redefining the ontologies ‘event’, ‘process’ and ‘state’. To describe the dynamic nested structure of geo‐scenes, we propose a geo‐scene knowledge representation framework, and illustrate the representation of a geo‐scene and its inner relationships. Moreover, to keep the integrity, interaction and dynamic of geo‐scenes, we develop a event‐process centered geo‐scene knowledge organization method. Furthermore, we have tested the utility of our proposed representation by the Beijing 731 heavy rainstorm. The case study represents heavy rainstorm to demonstrate the complicated structure of the disaster scene, and the support for precipitation process simulation, early warning information organization, and disaster situation information query. The proposed representation provides an idea for the construction of geo‐dynamic knowledge graphs, encodes both static and dynamic geographic knowledge, makes explicit the evolution and interaction knowledge in geo‐scenes, and expands the application service of geo‐scene knowledge graph in the era of GeoAI.

Comparative Study of The Influence of Disaster Knowledge on Preparedness Attitudes in Dealing with Disasters in Geography and Public Health Education Students

Knowledge is the key factor and key to preparedness. Preparedness is one part of the disaster management process and in the concept of disaster that is developing today. The objectives of this study include: 1) To determine the level of disaster knowledge in Geography and Public Health Education students.2) To find out the comparison of preparedness attitudes in dealing with disasters between Geography Education and Public Health students.3) To know the difference in the influence of disaster knowledge on preparedness attitudes in dealing with disasters. The method used in this study is a quantitative method. The sampling technique used is the saturated sampling technique or total sampling. The data collection techniques in this study are through observation, questionnaires, interviews, and documentation. The data analysis technique uses percentage descriptive analysis, simple linear regression analysis to determine the influence of variable (X) on variable (Y) using the t and R2 test hypothesis test. The results of this study are: 1) The level of disaster knowledge of geography education and public health students is both in the high category, 2) The level of preparedness attitudes of geography and public health education students is both in the high category, 3) The results of hypothesis testing with the t-test and the determination coefficient test, there is a positive influence of disaster knowledge on the attitude of preparedness in dealing with disasters in geography education students and Public Health. This means that the higher the knowledge of disasters, the higher the preparedness attitude of residents in dealing with landslide disasters.

Reflecting on the powers, possibilities and constraints of geography curricula in England, Finland and Sweden

ABSTRACT National curriculum statements found within the Official Recontextualising Field (ORF) provide an insight into how geography as a school subject is conceptualized in a country’s education system. National curricula can shape teachers’ agency in curriculum making and what, how and where children and young people study and learn geography. This paper engages with the lower secondary national geography curriculum for England, Finland and Sweden. We examine the structure and nature of the national geography curricula in each country, before drawing on the threefold arrangement of geographical knowledge as a tool for the analysis of the curricula. Our analysis found that deep and descriptive world knowledge forms the largest proportion of all three national curricula documents, and we argue that this can lead to a potentially limited conceptualization of geographical knowledge and representation of geography. We also suggest that the threefold arrangement could more actively engage with political dimensions when considering futures, and that there should be greater attention paid to the histories and geographies of the discipline (geography) in school geography.

Word2Scene: Efficient remote sensing image scene generation with only one word via hybrid intelligence and low-rank representation

To address the numerous challenges existing in current remote sensing scene generation methods, such as the difficulty in capturing complex interrelations among geographical features and the integration of implicit expert knowledge into generative models, this paper proposes an efficient method for generating remote sensing scenes using hybrid intelligence and low-rank representation, named Word2Scene, which can generate complex scenes with just one word. This approach combines geographic expert knowledge to optimize the remote sensing scene description, enhancing the accuracy and interpretability of the input descriptions. By employing a diffusion model based on hybrid intelligence and low-rank representation techniques, this method endows the diffusion model with the capability to understand remote sensing scene concepts and significantly improves the training efficiency of the diffusion model. This study also introduces the geographic scene holistic perceptual similarity (GSHPS), a novel evaluation metric that holistically assesses the performance of generative models from a global perspective. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed method outperforms existing state-of-the-art models in terms of remote sensing scene generation quality, efficiency, and realism. Compared to the original diffusion models, LPIPS decreased by 18.52% (from 0.81 to 0.66), and GSHPS increased by 28.57% (from 0.70 to 0.90), validating the effectiveness and advancement of our method. Moreover, Word2Scene is capable of generating remote sensing scenes not present in the training set, showcasing strong zero-shot capabilities. This provides a new perspective and solution for remote sensing image scene generation, with the potential to advance the development of remote sensing, geographic information systems, and related fields. Our code will be released at https://github.com/jaycecd/Word2Scene.

Geographical ignorance: The vital role of geographic knowledge for decision-makers

The ongoing environmental, social, and cultural problems in today’s world indicate that geographic knowledge (GK) is not given sufficient importance by decision-makers. On the other hand, decision-makers, when making crucial decisions that impact competitiveness, economic well-being, and environmental stability, face significant risks and potential costs due to gaps in GK and a lack of awareness. In this context, this article presents a theoretical investigation that underscores how GK can assist decision-makers in achieving success in their decisions. We characterize GK with a mindset emphasizing the complex spatial system connections and the significant role of space in decision-making processes. The article discusses this topic at the local-regional, national, and international scales. As a result, we argue that addressing the knowledge gaps of decision-makers is impactful in enhancing their capacity to understand the mutual relationships among environmental dynamics at various scales and enables the synthesis of economic, political, social, and cultural mechanisms within human society. Considering the support of theory for empirical studies, we hope that this study will also support empirical research related to planning. Overcoming challenges requires a holistic approach that not only equips decision-makers with GK but also enables its effective implementation throughout the planning process.

Counter‐Mapping, Counter‐Histories, and Insurgencies of Subjugated Knowledges in the Fisher Struggle for Ennore Creek

AbstractThe Ennore wetlands in North Chennai, India were once dense with diverse habitats and interwoven histories. Many of these histories began to unravel from the 1960s onwards, when state‐sponsored heavy industry began encroaching into and polluting the wetlands. Local fishers, whose lives, livelihoods, and cultural worlds were ignored by these changes, fought back in a campaign to reclaim and restore the wetlands. This paper analyses how the Save Ennore Creek Campaign and Ennore fishers used counter‐mapping strategies to reveal the state's wilful suppression of fisher knowledge and worldviews using maps and plans. It draws from decolonial and ignorance studies literatures to analyse the campaign's counter‐maps as cartographic, performative, and affective insurrections of subjugated knowledges and counter‐histories that un‐made the state's maps and plans, exposed the state's knowledge as wilful ignorance and spotlighted geographical knowledge from the margins as a way of remaking reality and opening up possibilities of alternative futures for the creek and its communities.

Ellen Churchill Semple: Navigating a Patriarchal Discipline

Ellen Churchill Semple is a notorious figure in the geographical realm whose complicated legacy renders her place within a historiography of geography uncertain. While Semple is hailed as the first female geographer, it is also widely acknowledged that her work is tainted with racism. Contemporary scholars wish to erase her contributions, declaring that they would “prefer to forget” her infamous text Influences of Geographic Environment in which she claimed that physical geography determined human behaviour. Mona Domosh complicates this desire to erase Semple from memory by advocating for a feminist historiography of geography. Through foregrounding the contributions that women have made to the development of geographic knowledge, Domosh challenges the exclusion of women from accounts of the discipline’s past. This paper therefore addresses the question: Should Semple be included in a feminist historiography of geography? Furthermore, was Semple a feminist? To interrogate this, I reimagine Pearson’s take on violent women. Just as Atwood describes a woman’s disbelief at her ability to cause harm in the opening quote, Pearson centres the misperception that women are simply compassionate caregivers and victims of their circumstances – the ‘myth of female innocence’. This is useful for exploring Semple’s role in epistemological violence where her data interpretations brought negative consequences for certain groups. An intersectional lens is crucial for examining the connections between race, class, and gender which shaped the experiences of Semple and those she deemed ‘inferior’. The structure-agency debate emerges, asking whether individuals are entirely socialised by structures or can act autonomously. I take a relational approach to acknowledge the interrelatedness of social processes and argue that Semple both actively challenged and perpetuated patriarchy. Firstly, this paper outlines Semple’s theoretical contributions and other key insights provided by contemporary female geographers which are useful for assessing Semple’s impact today. Secondly, Semple’s infiltration of male-dominated space is examined to demonstrate her resistance to traditional gender expectations. Thirdly, her imperial entanglements are traced to illustrate her perpetuation of the patriarchal state. Finally, a contemporary manifestation of the Semple dilemma is considered. I conclude that by today’s standards of intersectional feminism Semple is not a feminist role model, however she can be considered an early feminist for her active reconfiguration of an all-male discipline. Ultimately, I advocate for the critical inclusion of Semple’s work in a feminist historiography of geography. This project of decoding knowledge to understand the influence of cultural forces offers a step towards decolonising the academy.

A Practice of City-scale 3D Geographic Entity Representation and Application in China: The Smart Chongqing City Centre

Abstract. The Chinese photogrammetry industry is currently experiencing a significant revolution driven by digital intelligence technologies. Traditional city-scale 3D modelling, typically reconstructed from oblique photogrammetry or laser points, is facing increasing limitations in refined expression, real-time rendering, machine recognition, data sharing, and interoperability due to its large data volume and mesh structure. These limitations make it difficult to meet the substantial demands of spatial analysis, simulation, and prediction. The concept of geographic entities, which are machine-recognizable spatial data structures, is anticipated to provide a competitive solution for these challenges. This work employs 3D scene modelling and geographic knowledge graphs to construct geographic entities with semantic relationships at city-scale, addressing the limitations encountered in the application of traditional mesh/point-based 3D models. A case study in Chongqing city centre demonstrates the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed approach and its potential applications in simulation, prediction, early warning, and feedback for urban planning and smart city management.

A Method for Constructing an Urban Waterlogging Emergency Knowledge Graph Based on Spatiotemporal Processes

Urban waterlogging is one of the major “diseases” faced by cities, posing a great challenge to the healthy and sustainable development of cities. The traditional geographic knowledge graph struggles to capture dynamic changes in urban waterlogging over time. Therefore, the objective of this study is to analyze the time, events, properties, geographic objects, and activities associated with urban waterlogging emergency responses from the geographic spatial and temporal processes perspective and to construct an urban waterlogging emergency knowledge graph by combining top-down and bottom-up approaches. We propose a conceptual model of urban waterlogging emergency response ontology based on spatiotemporal processes by analyzing the basic laws and influencing factors of urban waterlogging occurrence and development. Secondly, we describe the construction process of the urban waterlogging emergency response knowledge graph from knowledge extraction, knowledge fusion, and knowledge storage. Finally, the knowledge graph was visualized using 159 urban waterlogging events in China from 2020–2022, with a quality assessment indicating 81% correctness, 65.5% completeness, and 95% data conciseness. The results show that this method can effectively express the spatiotemporal process of an urban waterlogging emergency response and can provide a reference for the spatiotemporal modeling of the knowledge graph.

Gauging, enriching and applying geography knowledge in Pre-trained Language Models

To employ Pre-trained Language Models (PLMs) as knowledge containers in niche domains it is important to gauge the knowledge of these PLMs about facts in these domains. It is also an important pre-requisite to know how much enrichment effort is required to make them better. As part of this work, we aim to gauge and enrich small PLMs for knowledge of world geography. Firstly, we develop a moderately sized dataset of masked sentences covering 24 different fact types about world geography to estimate knowledge of PLMs on these facts. We hypothesize that for this niche domain, smaller PLMs may not be well equipped. Secondly, we enrich PLMs with this knowledge through fine-tuning and check if the knowledge in the dataset is infused sufficiently. We further hypothesize that linguistic variability in the manual templates used to embed the knowledge in masked sentences does not affect the knowledge infusion. Finally, we demonstrate the application of PLMs to tourism blog search and Wikidata KB augmentation. In both applications, we aim at showing the effectiveness of using PLMs to achieve competitive performance.

Adriano Balbi and the definition of oceans, seas and ‘Open Mediterraneans’: The dialogue between geography and cartography with Evangelista Azzi

In the first half of the 19th century, Adriano Balbi (1782–1848) was one of the greatest geographers in Italy and Europe, having an extremely vast and constantly updated scientific output. He tried to keep up with new discoveries of ‘unknown and unexplored' territories. His work influenced geographers and cartographers, who used it as a source. Evangelista Azzi (1793–1848), a cartographer and military topographer from Parma Duchies, produced a wide corpus of school maps. His Mappamondo (1838) was conceived as an enormous wall map (2 × 4 mt), that summarised the geographical, historical and ethnographic knowledge of the time, as an encyclopaedic work. To collect data, he used contemporary geographical and cartographic works, including those of Adriano Balbi, having a close epistolary relationship with him. Balbi understood the importance of a cartographic restitution of his works and supported Azzi transferring numerous notions to him. Among these were the seas and oceans, which in the world map are named according to Balbi's works. The Mappamondo is the first map where the Balbi's definition of ‘Open Mediterraneans’ appears. The paper's primary objective is to identify the dialogue between geographers and cartographers in conveying a common narrative of the seas. Considering Azzi's cartographies as the visual synthesis of Balbi's geographical proposals, the paper explores a direct transposition of knowledge from text to map. Finally, the metaphor of water and liquid worlds lends itself well to observing the dynamism of small pre-unitary Italian actors that dialogued on global issues, going beyond state borders and moving within a common Risorgimento context.

INTEGRATED LEARNING IN TEACHING MODERN GEOGRAPHY

This article deals with the role of integrated education in the context of teaching modern geography. The integration of geographical knowledge with elements of other scientific disciplines serves as a key mechanism for developing students' in-depth knowledge of complex phenomena of the modern world. The advantages of this approach include the formation of critical thinking, the development of analytical skills and the application of knowledge in real-world scenarios. Examples of successful integrated lessons covering topics such as cartography, natural area, and biosphere are given. The article also examines the problems and prospects of the introduction of integrated education in geographical education, and also emphasizes its importance for preparing students for the difficult tasks of the present time.