Geospatial Systems Research Articles

IWGS 2015 workshop report

The ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on Geostreaming (IWGS) was held for the sixth time in conjunction with the 23rd ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (ACMGIS 2015). The workshop has been a successful event that attracted participants from both academia and industry. The workshop addressed topics that are at the intersection of data streaming and geospatial systems. The workshop fostered an environment where geospatial researchers can benefit from the advances in geosensing technologies and data streaming systems.

The 5th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on GeoStreaming, Dallas, Texas, USA - November 4, 2014

The ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on Geostreaming (IWGS) was held for the fifth time in conjunction with the 22nd ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (ACMGIS 2014). The workshop has been a successful event that attracted participants from both academia and industry. The workshop addressed topics that are at the intersection of data streaming and geospatial systems. The workshop fostered an environment where geospatial researchers can benefit from the advances in geosensing technologies and data streaming systems.

Geospatial Reasoning Ability: Definition, Measurement and Validation

An understanding of geospatial reasoning ability (GRA) is essential to human–computer interaction research, as many recent consumer and commercial technologies require an ability to interpret complex geospatial data. Individuals, as well as government, commercial, and military organizations, use such technologies regularly. For instance, consumer technologies including online mapping services and in-vehicle navigation systems are increasingly prevalent. Business leaders rely on geospatial data when making strategic and operational decisions. Military strategists leverage geospatial systems during mission planning and battlefield operations. Although there has been research into the significance of user characteristics when making decisions using geospatial data, there is conflicting evidence on the impact of GRA on the decision-making process. This article suggests applying a multidimensional measure of GRA to facilitate a better understanding of such interactions. Furthermore, this article proposes a new measurement instrument developed through a rigorous scale development procedure and validated through an exploratory (n = 300) analysis.

Remote Sensing of Selected Winter and Spring Host Plants of Tarnished Plant Bug (Heteroptera: Miridae) and Herbicide Use Strategies as a Management Tactic

Remote sensing was used in a series of experiments over a three-year period to obtain spectral reflectance data for studying differences in vegetation indices between grasses, broadleaf plants, and grass/broadleaf plant mixtures. Selected non-crop winter and spring host plants of tarnished plant bug, Lygus lineolaris, were planted in field-plot experiments. Multispectral reflectance data were aerially acquired with both a Real-Time Digital Airborne Camera System (RDACS) sensor and Geospatial Systems (Duncan Tech) MS-2100 multispectral camera. The following six vegetation indices of spectral reflectance were evaluated in this study: normalized difference vegetation index, ratio vegetation index, green normalized difference vegetation index, green vegetation index, green ratio vegetation index, and Ashburn vegetation index. Vegetation indices calculated with imagery data for the grasses and broadleaves differed significantly; there appeared to be more discriminating differences between vegetation indices for grasses and broadleaf plants when the indices were based on a combination of green and near infrared or green and red spectral bands than when the indices were based on red and near infrared spectral bands. Insect data from these studies confirm that tarnished plant bug prefers broadleaf host plants, but can use Italian ryegrass for food and reproduction. The narrow temporal window of host suitability for Italian ryegrass may limit its significance. Herbicide destruction of broadleaf host plants in early spring prevented the tarnished plant bug population increases that occurred in untreated plots. Findings of this study would be useful in site-specific vegetation management decisions in programs such as the prototypical area-wide tarnished plant bug management experiment conducted in the Delta region of Mississippi.

Adoption of Geospatial Systems towards evolving Sustainable Himalayan Mountain Development

Abstract. Natural resources dependence of mountain communities, rapid social and developmental changes, disaster proneness and climate change are conceived as the critical factors regulating sustainable Himalayan mountain development. The Himalayan region posed by typical geographic settings, diverse physical and cultural diversity present a formidable challenge to collect and manage data, information and understands varied socio-ecological settings. Recent advances in earth observation, near real-time data, in-situ measurements and in combination of information and communication technology have transformed the way we collect, process, and generate information and how we use such information for societal benefits. Glacier dynamics, land cover changes, disaster risk reduction systems, food security and ecosystem conservation are a few thematic areas where geospatial information and knowledge have significantly contributed to informed decision making systems over the region. The emergence and adoption of near-real time systems, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), board-scale citizen science (crowd-sourcing), mobile services and mapping, and cloud computing have paved the way towards developing automated environmental monitoring systems, enhanced scientific understanding of geophysical and biophysical processes, coupled management of socio-ecological systems and community based adaptation models tailored to mountain specific environment. There are differentiated capacities among the ICIMOD regional member countries with regard to utilization of earth observation and geospatial technologies. The region can greatly benefit from a coordinated and collaborative approach to capture the opportunities offered by earth observation and geospatial technologies. The regional level data sharing, knowledge exchange, and Himalayan GEO supporting geospatial platforms, spatial data infrastructure, unique region specific satellite systems to address trans-boundary challenges would go a long way in evolving sustainable Himalayan livelihoods.

Highlights from IWGS 2013: the 4th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on GeoStreaming

The ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on Geostreaming (IWGS) was held for the third time in conjunction with the 21st ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (ACM GIS 2013). The workshop has been a successful event that attracted participants from both academia and industry. The workshop addressed topics that are at the intersection of data streaming and geospatial systems. The workshop fostered an environment where geospatial researchers can benefit from the advances in geosensing technologies and data streaming systems.

Building Model as a Service to support geosciences

Modeling is a fundamental methodology for simulating the past, understanding the present and predicting the future of the geospatial systems and phenomena. However, modeling in the geospatial science poses several challenges, including complex model setup, repetition in model setup, requirement for large, scalable computing resources, and management of a large amount of model output. To address these challenges, we propose Model as a Service (MaaS) by leveraging the latest advancement of cloud computing. MaaS enables various geoscience models to be published as services, and these services can be accessed through a simple web interface. MaaS automates the processes of configuring machines, setting up and running models, and managing model outputs. The computing resources are automatically provisioned by MaaS in a cloud environment. A proof-of-concept MaaS prototype is presented using a global climate change model (ModelE). Experimental results show that the MaaS prototype significantly simplifies model setup, accelerates model simulation and enhances model output by providing a web-based, on-demand, scalable modeling environment.

Adopting cloud computing to optimize spatial web portals for better performance to support Digital Earth and other global geospatial initiatives

A spatial web portal (SWP) provides a web-based gateway to discover, access, manage, and integrate worldwide geospatial resources through the Internet and has the access characteristics of regional to global interest and spiking. Although various technologies have been adopted to improve SWP performance, enabling high-speed resource access for global users to better support Digital Earth remains challenging because of the computing and communication intensities in the SWP operation and the dynamic distribution of end users. This paper proposes a cloud-enabled framework for high-speed SWP access by leveraging elastic resource pooling, dynamic workload balancing, and global deployment. Experimental results demonstrate that the new SWP framework outperforms the traditional computing infrastructure and better supports users of a global system such as Digital Earth. Reported methodologies and framework can be adopted to support operational geospatial systems, such as monitoring national geographic state and spanning across regional and global geographic extent.

Highlights from IWGS 2012

The ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on Geostreaming (IWGS) was held for the third time in conjunction with the 20th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (ACM GIS 2012). The workshop has been a successful event that attracted participants from both academia and industry. The workshop addressed topics that are at the intersection of data streaming and geospatial systems. The workshop fostered an environment where geospatial researchers can benefit from the advances in geosensing technologies and data streaming systems.

Review of Geospatial Data Systems' Support of Global Change Studies

Aims: Global change studies need to manipulate large volume of observation and prediction data, most likely from multiple sources. From the researchers’ perspective, the whole research process consists of the follow stages: data discovery, data access, data processing, data analysis and result dissemination. The aim of paper is to review the state-of-the-art of geospatial data systems to reveal the way towards a better support of global change studies. Methodology: This paper reviews the capabilities of exemplar geospatial data systems. It further analyzes the needs of manipulating large volume of diverse data when performing global change studies. By comparing the available capabilities with the real needs, this study shows the strengths and limitations of existing data systems when supporting global change studies. Results: The analysis shows that data systems are helpful for researchers to fulfill data discovery and access, while most of them do not provide further functionalities to cover other stages in the whole research process. This suggests that a new generation of data systems is highly needed to provide efficient and enough support for scientists to perform global change studies. Instead of simply moving data from sources to researchers’ local archives, it will enable more on-line data manipulation functionality and the interoperability of data and systems. Review Article British Journal of Environment & Climate Change, 2(4): 421-436, 2012 422 Conclusion: Traditional geospatial data systems are designed to operate locally without built-in interoperability and sharing capabilities. Such systems are operated under the paradigm of “everything-locally-owned-and-operated”. Conducting global change studies using such a system requires moving a large volume of data from providers’ sites to researchers’ site. Such a system does not provide strong support for the entire research process. Since climate research requires manipulating a huge volume of complex and diverse multi-source data, a new paradigm of “everything-shared-over-the-Web” is promising when designing a new generation of geospatial data systems, which are standard-based, interoperable, and sharable, for global change studies.

Applying the Land Use Portfolio Model with Hazus to analyse risk from natural hazard events

This paper describes and demonstrates the integration of two geospatial decision-support systems for natural-hazard risk assessment and management. Hazus is a risk-assessment tool developed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to identify risks and estimate the severity of risk from natural hazards. The Land Use Portfolio Model (LUPM) is a risk-management tool developed by the U.S. Geological Survey to evaluate plans or actions intended to reduce risk from natural hazards. We analysed three mitigation policies for one earthquake scenario in the San Francisco Bay area to demonstrate the added value of using Hazus and the LUPM together. The demonstration showed that Hazus loss estimates can be input to the LUPM to obtain estimates of losses avoided through mitigation, rates of return on mitigation investment, and measures of uncertainty. Together, they offer a more comprehensive approach to help with decisions for reducing risk from natural hazards.

Data and metadata management automation for an effective approach to sharing environmental data

In the market of geospatial systems there are several applications that handle data. Some of these components are oriented towards managing and storing data, map visualizations, and data streams, while other components are oriented towards data description and the creation of metadata. Neither of these applications offers users an overview of the process leading to the data creation up to its export to the end user. In the existing literature there are attempts to automate metadating - the term given to descriptions of data. Some companies are also trying an approach that allows, by means of workflow systems, the automation of the creation of a geospatial dataset. As a result, users of geospatial data are increasingly looking for a more structured process of managing geospatial data and metadata, and any tool that handles this process is likely to find reasonable success within this community. Public entities, mainly local ones, are often called on to deal with regulations that require web systems that reveal parameters of any given territory to users/citizens. Likewise, research organizations, especially those dealing with the environment, increasingly find themselves analyzing spatial data. Difficulties that arise when handling such data can be overcome using the approach we are proposing, which involves using a single tool that handles all the necessary steps in exporting spatial data. In this paper we present several methodologies used to manage geospatial data and metadata by means of GeoInt, a middleware tool developed at CNR-IIA that manages geospatial data produced in different research projects. GeoInt is a middleware program offering basic services that permit users to define both data and metadata. It allows users to manage map servers, and allows them to control the download and sharing processes. This research illustrates the ways in which GeoInt has been improved to minimize metadata editing by its users.

Fostering geospatial thinking in science education through a customisable smartphone application

AbstractEnhanced capabilities of modern smartphones offer the potential to design tools that support new forms of teaching and learning. Increased access to mobile‐networked environments and geospatial systems provide opportunities for developing new educational experiences that support a geospatial approach to science, fostering new ways of thinking about science. However, designing effective innovative educational mobile applications remains a challenge. Applications need to be accessible to teachers that are not tech‐savvy as well as those that are, foster active learning pedagogies, enable flexible and creative use, as well as fit within the curriculum. This paper describes a smartphone application developed together with pre‐service science teachers, designed to be customisable by teachers while supporting a geospatial approach to science education. The design process and trial illustrate application use, how it supports a geospatial approach to science education and raises issues around mobile technologies, teacher pedagogies and adoption.

A study of factors that influence the accuracy of content-based geospatial ranking systems

Visual patterns found in geospatial images are complex, dynamic and difficult to be articulated by human analysts; let alone building a computational model to understand the intertwining semantics in the images. Advancements in image collection and pre-processing have led to a need for identifying the factors that affect content-based geospatial retrieval systems. In this article, we study the factors that influence the semantic assignment precision when varying semantic space complexity and training set size. We test their influence using different data mining algorithms. Our findings provide some new insights for future research in training image retrieval systems under various conditions related to semantic mixture, feature space overlapping and size of training data set.

Highlights from IWGS 2011: the 2nd ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on GeoStreaming

The ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on Geostreaming (IWGS) was held for the second time in conjunction with the 19th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (ACM GIS 2011). The workshop has been a successful event that attracted participants from both academia and industry. The workshop addressed topics that are at the intersection of data streaming and geospatial systems. The workshop fostered an environment where geospatial researchers can benefit from the advances in geosensing technologies and data streaming systems.

Framework for Graphical User Interfaces of Geospatial Early Warning Systems

An important component of Early Warning Systems (EWS) for man-made and natural hazards is the command and control unit’s Graphical User Interface (GUI). All relevant information of an EWS is concentrated in this GUI and offered to human operators. However, when designing the GUI, not only the user experience and the GUI’s screens are relevant, but also the frameworks and technologies that the GUI is built on and the implementation of the GUI itself are of great importance. Implementations differ based on their applications in different domains but the design and approaches to implement the GUIs of different EWS often show analogies. The design and development of such GUIs are performed repeatedly on some parts of the system for each EWS. Thus, the generic GUI framework of a geospatial EWS for tsunamis is introduced to enable possible synergistic effects on the development of other new related technology. The results presented here could be adopted and reused in other EWS for man-made and natural hazards.

IWGS 2010 workshop report

The ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on Geostreaming (IWGS) was held for the first time in conjunction with the 18th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS 2010). The workshop has been a successful event that attracted participants from both academia and industry. The workshop addressed topics that are at the intersection of data streaming and geospatial systems. The workshop fostered an environment where geospatial researchers can benefit from the advances in geosensing technologies and data streaming systems.

Geospatial encountering: Opportunistic information discovery in web-based GIS environments

Web-based geographical information systems have become ubiquitous in daily life. They include such familiar tools as Google Earth, Google Maps, and a plethora of geolocational mobile applications for smart phones. These geospatial web systems present new opportunities for users to discover information opportunistically, in unexpected and non-intentional ways. This paper examines one specific type of incidental information acquisition - information encountering (Erdelez, 1997) - as it may occur in geospatial web environments. Accordingly, this preliminary research brings together findings and frameworks developed within two diverse fields: a) human information behavior, and b) geographic information systems. The Information Encountering model serves as a conceptual framework for understanding how the distinctive characteristics of geospatial web applications impact the nature of information encountering episodes. Exploratory research was conducted via a focus group session. Users were found to engage regularly with a variety of geolocational systems and report frequent episodes of information encountering, but they also display difficulty recalling details of individual episodes. Findings suggest the need to develop tools to capture information encountering experiences in the field, at or close to the time they occur.

Controlling patterns of geospatial phenomena

Modeling spatially distributed phenomena in terms of its controlling factors is a recurring problem in geoscience. Most efforts concentrate on predicting the value of response variable in terms of controlling variables either through a physical model or a regression model. However, many geospatial systems comprises complex, nonlinear, and spatially non-uniform relationships, making it difficult to even formulate a viable model. This paper focuses on spatial partitioning of controlling variables that are attributed to a particular range of a response variable. Thus, the presented method surveys spatially distributed relationships between predictors and response. The method is based on association analysis technique of identifying emerging patterns, which are extended in order to be applied more effectively to geospatial data sets. The outcome of the method is a list of spatial footprints, each characterized by a unique "controlling pattern"--a list of specific values of predictors that locally correlate with a specified value of response variable. Mapping the controlling footprints reveals geographic regionalization of relationship between predictors and response. The data mining underpinnings of the method are given and its application to a real world problem is demonstrated using an expository example focusing on determining variety of environmental associations of high vegetation density across the continental United States.

Evaluating User Experience of Experiential GIS

AbstractEvaluating user‐system interaction is important to develop effective and acceptable systems. Traditionally, geospatial systems are evaluated in terms of usability with emphasis on completing application tasks and goals. This focus ignores the non‐functional aspects that separate systems with similar usability and functionality, and complete a user's experience. An alternative and holistic user experience (UX) concept that encompasses functional (e.g. usability, ergonomics, etc.) and non‐functional (e.g. aesthetics, emotions, pleasure, cognitive stimulation, etc.) dimensions was adopted to evaluate an innovative Experiential GIS (EGIS). The EGIS is an immersive geospatial system that disengages the user from the real‐world and renders the user present in 3D geovirtual scenes with real‐time sensorimotor feedback. This system was assessed in a soil mapping application involving four collaborating soil scientists. The scientists had very positive reactions, common viewpoints and occasionally varying perceptions of EGIS and the geovirtual soil mapping technique. They viewed the system as intuitive, enjoyable and capable of improving the speed and quality of soil mapping, and identified the system's strengths as including co‐experiential knowledge construction and a ‘go anywhere’ capability that enabled access to physically inaccessible and trespass prohibited areas. The scientists' views were more varied about the role of EGIS in minimizing soil mapping labor and costs.