Urban Geographic Information System Research Articles

Usage of clustering algorithms for automating route planning in transportation routing tasks

This scientific paper explores the comprehensive evaluation of clustering results applied to the geographical settlements of Ukraine. Diverse clustering methods, including K-means, DBSCAN, Agglomerative, Spectral, and Birch, were employed to analyze the spatial distribution of settlements. The assessment of each clustering method involved the application of relevant quality criteria, contributing to a thorough understanding of their performance in the context of Ukrainian settlements. The findings from this study offer valuable insights into the strengths and limitations of each clustering approach, facilitating informed decision-making in the selection of an appropriate method based on specific geographical characteristics. Additionally, the paper provides practical recommendations for optimizing the input data utilized in the clustering process, enhancing the overall efficacy of settlement analysis methodologies. This research contributes to the advancement of clustering techniques tailored to geographical datasets, with potential implications for urban planning, regional development, and geographic information systems.

A Single Data Extraction Algorithm for Oblique Photographic Data Based on the U-Net

In the automated modeling generated by oblique photography, various terrains cannot be physically distinguished individually within the triangulated irregular network (TIN). To utilize the data representing individual features, such as a single building, a process of building monomer construction is required to identify and extract these distinct parts. This approach aids subsequent analyses by focusing on specific entities, mitigating interference from complex scenes. A deep convolutional neural network is constructed, combining U-Net and ResNeXt architectures. The network takes as input both digital orthophoto map (DOM) and oblique photography data, effectively extracting the polygonal footprints of buildings. Extraction accuracy among different algorithms is compared, with results indicating that the ResNeXt-based network achieves the highest intersection over union (IOU) for building segmentation, reaching 0.8255. The proposed “dynamic virtual monomer” technique binds the extracted vector footprints dynamically to the original oblique photography surface through rendering. This enables the selective representation and querying of individual buildings. Empirical evidence demonstrates the effectiveness of this technique in interactive queries and spatial analysis. The high level of automation and excellent accuracy of this method can further advance the application of oblique photography data in 3D urban modeling and geographic information system (GIS) analysis.

Semantic enrichment of building functions through geospatial data integration and ontological inference

The comprehensive definition of buildings in urban spatial databases (SDBs) and geographic information systems (GISs) is crucial for city management, considering their essential role in cities. Modern urban geospatial applications such as smart cities need a rich-information infrastructure, relying upon urban SDBs and GISs, powered by multiple data sources. In this respect, many geospatial techniques are available for acquiring geometric data of buildings, but their semantic definitions require extra effort. Today, volunteered geographic information (VGI) platforms are assumed to be alternative geospatial data sources and their integration with official datasets provides a new opportunity for the enrichment of urban geospatial datasets. In this context, geospatial semantic web technologies can contribute to the semantic enrichment process. This study presents a methodology for enriching various building datasets using GIS and geospatial semantic web technologies, enabling an enhanced definition of building functions. The proposed method makes use of an OpenStreetMap (OSM) dataset to obtain missing semantic information about building features. The enrichment process was implemented by transferring OSM point of interest (POI) values to associated OSM building features through the application of semantic web rule language (SWRL) rules. Furthermore, the same process was also applied to two additional official datasets at different levels of detail (TOPO1K and TOPO25K), which were subsequently incorporated into the geospatial ontology. The resulting geospatial ontology offers new opportunities for functional definition and logical rule-making for buildings, with the potential to uncover new classes and insights. In addition, it allows for the definition of terms and explanations in multiple languages, covering most of the OSM values used worldwide for selected tags to define building functions.

Remote sensing traffic scene retrieval based on learning control algorithm for robot multimodal sensing information fusion and human-machine interaction and collaboration.

In light of advancing socio-economic development and urban infrastructure, urban traffic congestion and accidents have become pressing issues. High-resolution remote sensing images are crucial for supporting urban geographic information systems (GIS), road planning, and vehicle navigation. Additionally, the emergence of robotics presents new possibilities for traffic management and road safety. This study introduces an innovative approach that combines attention mechanisms and robotic multimodal information fusion for retrieving traffic scenes from remote sensing images. Attention mechanisms focus on specific road and traffic features, reducing computation and enhancing detail capture. Graph neural algorithms improve scene retrieval accuracy. To achieve efficient traffic scene retrieval, a robot equipped with advanced sensing technology autonomously navigates urban environments, capturing high-accuracy, wide-coverage images. This facilitates comprehensive traffic databases and real-time traffic information retrieval for precise traffic management. Extensive experiments on large-scale remote sensing datasets demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of this approach. The integration of attention mechanisms, graph neural algorithms, and robotic multimodal information fusion enhances traffic scene retrieval, promising improved information extraction accuracy for more effective traffic management, road safety, and intelligent transportation systems. In conclusion, this interdisciplinary approach, combining attention mechanisms, graph neural algorithms, and robotic technology, represents significant progress in traffic scene retrieval from remote sensing images, with potential applications in traffic management, road safety, and urban planning.

Large-scale individual building extraction from open-source satellite imagery via super-resolution-based instance segmentation approach

Building footprint is a primary dataset of an urban geographic information system (GIS) database. Therefore, it is essential to establish a robust and automated framework for large-scale building extraction. However, the characteristic of remote sensing images complicates the application of the instance segmentation method based on the Mask R-CNN model, which ought to be improved toward extracting and fusing multi-scale features. Moreover, open-source satellite image datasets with wider spatial coverage and temporal resolution than high-resolution images may exhibit different coloration and resolution. This study proposes a large-scale building extraction framework based on super-resolution (SR) and instance segmentation using a relatively lower-resolution (>0.6 m) open-sourced dataset. The framework comprises four steps: color normalization and image super-resolution, scene classification, building extraction, and scene mosaicking. We took Hyogo Prefecture, Japan (19,187 km2) as a test area and extracted 1,726,006 (29.12 km2) of the 3,301,488 buildings (32.46 km2), where the number of buildings and footprint area increased by 3.0 % and 5.0 % respectively. The result indicated that the color normalization and image super-resolution could improve the visual quality of open-source satellite images and contribute to building extraction accuracy. Moreover, the improved Mask R-CNN based on Multi-Path Vision Transformer (MPViT) backbone achieved F1 scores of 0.71, 0.70, 0.81, and 0.67 for non-built-up, rural, suburban, and urban areas, respectively, which is better than those of the baseline model and other mainstream instance segmentation approaches. This study demonstrates the potential of acquiring acceptable building footprint maps from open-source satellite images, which has significant practical implications.

Urban Flood Risk Assessment in Zhengzhou, China, Based on a D-Number-Improved Analytic Hierarchy Process and a Self-Organizing Map Algorithm

Flood risk assessment is an important tool for disaster warning and prevention. In this study, an integrated approach based on a D-number-improved analytic hierarchy process (D-AHP) and a self-organizing map (SOM) clustering algorithm are proposed for urban flooding risk assessment. The urban flood inundation model and geographic information system (GIS) technology were used to quantify the assessment indices of urban flood risk. The D-AHP approach was adopted to determine the weights of the indices, which effectively makes up for the shortcomings of the AHP in dealing with uncertain evaluation information (such as fuzzy and incomplete information). In addition, the SOM clustering algorithm was applied to determine the flood risk level. It is a data-driven approach that avoids the subjective determination of a flood risk classification threshold. The proposed approach for flood risk assessment was implemented in Zhengzhou, China. The flood risk was classified into five levels: highest risk, higher risk, medium risk, lower risk, and the lowest risk. The proportion of the highest risk areas was 9.86%; such areas were mainly distributed in the central and eastern parts of the Jinshui District, the eastern part of the Huiji District, and the northeastern part of the Guancheng District, where there were low terrain and serious waterlogging. The higher risk areas accounted for 24.26% of the study area, and were mainly distributed in the western and southern parts of the Jinshui District, the southern part of the Huiji District, the middle and eastern parts of the Zhongyuan District, the northeastern part of the Erqi District, and the northwestern part of the Guancheng District, which consisted of economically developed areas of dense population and buildings, matching well with historical flooding events. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach, traditional approaches for risk assessment were compared. The comparison indicated that the proposed approach is more reasonable and accurate than the traditional approaches. This study showed the potential of a novel approach to flood risk assessment. The results can provide a reference for urban flood management and disaster reduction in the study area.

3D Urban design based on geographic information technologies

The urban geographic information system includes a wide range of different types of complex data collected from various sources and provides a solution for city planning, architectural and construction design. The complex structure of the city determines the complex nature of information models and data flows in them. In order to increase the efficiency of existing processes in various areas and directions of urban space planning the state-of-art digital technologies are widely used. The article describes geographic information system that forms a multi-level urban space modeling environment combining data from heterogeneous sources, so it make it possible to reduce time costs for designing and improvement of urban space. The implementation of such a system implies the use of modern digital technologies that capture the geographic information of objects and the development of algorithms for multi-criteria assessment of the generated alternatives for the location of urban objects and infrastructure facilities. The purpose of the work is to increase the efficiency of primary engineering and construction surveys based on geoinformation technologies, which are widely used to solve various problems including preventing environmental issues caused by industrial activity. One of the key features of the system is the accounting of underground utilities, which makes it possible to form a comprehensive assessment of the location of buildings and structures while ensuring accuracy that meets the requirements of engineering and construction surveys, due to modern photogrammetry methods, which resulted in a three-dimensional model of the city. Also, the multi-level nature of the model allows one to choose the location of objects, satisfying the conditions for the inclusion of new objects in the existing infrastructure in terms of the availability of utilities, as well as the context of the urban environment

Sustainability Assessment through Urban Accessibility Indicators and GIS in a Middle-Sized World Heritage City: The Case of Cáceres, Spain

The main objective of the research consists of quantifying the degree of sustainability of the city of Cáceres in terms of the inhabitant’s accessibility to public services through the use of GIS tools and urban indicators, taking into account two areas of study: The Historic Centre (PCH) and the city as a whole. The methodology applied is based on the criteria proposed by the Spanish Government derived from the Spanish Strategy for Urban and Local Sustainability (EESUL), which suggests suitable indicators for analysing urban environments. The degree of sustainability of the study areas, applied to the field of mobility and accessibility to public services, is evaluated through numerical calculations complementing the study with accessibility maps obtained using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tools. The results show that the city of Cáceres is sustainable in terms of accessibility to bus stops, organic waste containers, household waste recycling centre, schools and education, health centres, and public administration. However, bike parking coverage and lanes, clothes and oil collection, and sports centres need to be further enhanced. In conclusion, there is little disparity in the results between the PCH and the city as a whole, not influenced by the fact that one of the areas is a consolidated historic area. This research has allowed some gaps in the topic to be addressed. However, the main limitation of this methodology consists in the need to have a considerable amount of initial starting data to be able to carry out the research. Finally, the sustainability analysis using urban indicators is considered a valuable source of information for the local manager, becoming a real planning tool in medium-sized cities.

Multilevel urban geographic information system models for overground and underground design

The urban geographic information system includes a wide range of different types of complex data collected from various sources. Objects described vary from industrial to ecological as city itself being tied to environment also affects nature. Preventing pollution and other emergency situations caused by industrial and human activity in general is both topical and burning that is widely recognized so there is need for a comprehensive study of the possibilities to develop geographic information system in order to increase efficiency of city design. The purpose of the article is to develop urban geographic information system that provides a solution to the problem and also helps to reduce city planning costs as a system representing city on different levels and obtaining all the necessary information in one source. Urban geographic information system developed with the latest digital technologies allows to make city planning more flexible to technical, economical, social and other changes. Three-dimensional visualization is one of the up-to-date ways to expand geographic information system functionality and this paper gives information of the subject area: research on nowadays data models and data processing methods was conducted. And on this basis urban geographic information system extended data model including underground infrastructure level was offered and possible approaches to increase efficiency of data processing in it were formed. The three-dimensional model provides a solution for complex underground and overground design with digital technologies on a basis of geographic information system that includes multilevel data organization.

Identification of Arboreal Vegetation and Potential Areas in the Commercial Center of Capitão Poço, Brazil

Green spaces are urban spaces that bring man and nature closer together, positively influencing the quality of life of the population. The planning of green spaces is essential in urban areas and Geographic Information Systems (GIS’s) are tools capable of assisting in the identification, management and monitoring of these spaces. The objective of the work was to map the urban vegetation and carry out a survey of potential areas for parks and green areas in the commercial center from the municipality of Capitão Poço - PA. The study was carried out in the commercial center from Capitão Poço, PA - Brazil by obtaining images from the Google Earth software and photointerpreted with the aid of the QGIS software. Finally, the current and potential tree green areas were identified in the georeferenced images. The survey of green areas in the commercial center identified that only 4.74% of the total area contains tree vegetation, in addition to 53% of this vegetation being found around the mother church and the municipal square of Alvorada. For potential green areas, it was found that the commercial center has 5,873.5% more potential areas in relation to current tree vegetation. In this sense, it is observed that the commercial center from the municipality of Capitão Poço contains a low proportion of areas with arboreal vegetation and a high potential for the implantation of parks, forests and other types of green areas.

Measuring inter-neighborhood disparities by tribal origin and academic achievement: Case of Bousaâda, Algeria

The phenomenon of inter-neighbourhood disparities is taking on worrying proportions in the city of Boussa?da. The quantitative study of disparities provides us with alarming figures on the social and spatial dimensions. Our research has shown a negative correlation between the indices of residential segregation and school success rates, specifically with a strong residential segregation through the overcrowded peripheral neighbourhoods, and a low level of school facilities. The study of inter-neighbourhood disparities in the city of Boussa?da, affirmed a strong residential segregation with 0.780 as the value of the segregation index and ghettos evaluated at 6 on the scale of Poulssen. The other result at the level of school facilities with indices of zonal aptitude varying between 0.41 and 1.02 on the neighbourhoods of ?Maitar and Sidi Slimane? on a scale of 0 to 5. These figures are alarming for local authorities and require a search for social diversity and a re-evaluation of the methods of decision making for the allocation of school facilities based on socio-economic data and a level of facilities comparable to a national average. Its objectives are the result of combining social and spatial indicators in a square matrix by Saaty's AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) method. It is in this complex urban context that geographic information systems (GIS) can be used as a decision support tool, with a dashboard that displays in real time the situation of the different districts of the city, by means of disparity indices.

Environmental management for urban development around river valleys using a conceptual model

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Urban river valleys are so important with regard to their benefits and functions, including air temperate, microclimate creating, landscape, fresh water supplement. Urban development over considering environmental issues, population density, constructions, solid waste or effluent discharging, especially in quantitative and qualitative river boundaries and land taking of their beds, are significant reasons to decline cities functions and ecosystems degradation. So, natural ecosystems should be restored and a thorough strategic planning is necessary for their conservations. METHODS: With regards to managerial aspects involving ecological, spatial, economic, socio-cultural, and managerial- executive dimensions integrated management model has been recommended for Farahzad River Valley in Tehran city as a case study via Urban River Survey and Geographic Information System. Finally, effective and efficient strategically management plan was suggested by implementing SWOT, QSPM and Analytical Hierarchy Process.RESULTS: Amongst 12 identified strategies regulation settings, “correlation between green space and the surrounding park”, and “preventing the increase of residential” and “the expansion of recreation” are prioritized as most significant strategies, scores have been calculated 5.616, 5.589, and 5.375 on QSPM matrix or 0.256, 0.192, and 0.133 by AHP method, respectively.CONCLUSION: in overall, systemically, multi dimensional and holistic decision of river valleys environmental management is a magnificent example that provides essential tools to urban planners. Environmental and ecological approaches of the model are counted as a main key of succession to sustainable development achievement and its advantage to other past studies.

Impact of safe drinking water and clean fuels on health and wellbeing in Pakistan: A spatial analysis

Access to safe drinking water and clean fuels remains a setback for low- and middle-income countries. It has substantially impacted people's health and wellbeing worldwide and its improvement would enhance the economic development of any country. In this study, we constructed four versions of the District Health Index (DHI) each with a different set of indicators by adopting the Urban Health Index (UHI) framework and Geographic Information System (GIS) tools to (i) determine the effect of safe drinking water and clean fuels on districts wellbeing, (ii) measure the impact of safe drinking water and clean fuels on disparities/inequalities (disparity ratios and disparity slopes) concerning DHI scores and, (iii) examine the role of safe drinking water and clean fuels in the spatial relationship among contiguous districts in terms of DHI scores. Results of the study indicated that on average, only 17.72 and 18.29 percent of people in each district had access to safe water and clean fuel respectively. Less accessibility towards these indicators reduced the mean score of the Pakistan district's health from 0.37 to 0.25. The inclusion of safe water widened the disparity ratio and diminished the disparity slope. Spatial analysis revealed that Pakistan's district health status was spatially correlated with contiguous districts. Global Moran's I scores confirmed the declined spatial dependence, when safe drinking water indicator was included in composite index. Most of the districts were concentrated in high-high (HH) and low-low (LL) quadrants. A spatial cluster of low-low (deprived/unhealthy) districts in Baluchistan confirmed that comparatively, Baluchistan is the most deprived province which needs government attention and policy maker's prioritizations.

Contextualising a heritage assessment toolkit at the pre-planning stage of the historic urban landscape approach: the case of Mrauk-U, Myanmar

ABSTRACT Although the historic urban landscape (HUL) approach has been highly focused on values connecting conservation and development, contextualising the approach in relation to local heritage discourses and the dynamics of heritage governance still requires more adaptive assessment tools. Mrauk-U in Rakhine State, Myanmar, was selected as a case study. Through the method of participatory historical map translation (PHMT), the spatial evolution of the city was reproduced to identify the key elements of the landscape structure as urban heritage. These elements were converted into space vector layers in the urban geographical information system (GIS) and underwent a three-step assessment using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) method to visualise the morphological patterns of their heritage value, availability and vulnerability. The results indicated that a holistic conservation strategy should be adopted to build a dynamic heritage management framework and that priority should be given to solving military conflict and preventing flood.

A generic framework for improving the geopositioning accuracy of multi-source optical and SAR imagery

To date, numerous Earth observation datasets from different types of satellites have been widely used in photogrammetric fields, including urban 3D modelling and geographic information systems. The development of small satellites has provided a new way to obtain repeated observations in a short period. However, compared with that of standard satellite imagery, the geometric performance of imagery from small satellites is relatively poor, restricting their photogrammetric applications. Traditional methods can improve the accuracy of optical images with the addition of well-distributed ground control points (GCPs), which require considerable financial and human resources. The collection of multi-view datasets is an alternative method for geometric processing without GCPs, but relies heavily on the stability and revisit period of satellite platforms. Therefore, this paper presents a framework for improving the geopositioning accuracy of multi-source datasets obtained from optical and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites, and a novel heterogeneous weight strategy is proposed based on an analysis of the geometric error sources of SAR and optical images. The geometric performance of multi-source optical imagery from the Jilin-1 (JL-1) small satellite constellation is evaluated and analysed first, and then Gaofen-3 (GF-3) SAR images are calibrated based on statistical analysis for the production of virtual control points (VCPs). Based on our proposed heterogeneous weight strategy, multi-source optical and SAR images are integrated to improve the geopositioning accuracy. Experimental results indicate that our proposed model can achieve the best performance compared with other popular models, producing an accuracy of approximately 3 m in planimetry and 2 m in height, thereby providing a generic way to synergistically use multi-source remote sensing data.

VVS: Fast Similarity Measuring of FoV-Tagged Videos

In this article, we propose a novel method that can measure the similarity of FoV-tagged videos in two dimensions. Recently many researchers have focused on measuring the similarity of FoV-tagged videos. The similarity measurement of FoV-tagged videos plays an important role in various societal applications, including urban road networks, traffic, and geographic information systems. Our preliminary work introduced the Largest Common View Subsequences (LCVS) algorithm for computing the similarity of FoV-tagged videos. However, LCVS requires a high computational cost for calculating common viewable regions between two FoV-tagged videos. To handle this limitation, we propose the largest View Vector Subsequence (VVS) algorithm for reducing the computational cost of FoV-tagged videos. VVS uses the movement distances and the viewable direction distances to support the simplified vector-based similarity measurement. We demonstrate the superiority of our approach by comparing it with the Longest Common Subsequences (LCSS) and our prior work (LCVS). Our experimental results show that VVS outperforms the prior work in terms of the computational cost and enhances the versatility and stability of the similarity measurement.

Recent Research Progress of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Regulation Policies and Technologies in Urban Low Altitude

With the rapid expansion in the number of Unmanned Aircraft Vehicles (UAVs) available and the development of modern technologies, the commercial applications of UAVs in urban areas, such as urban remote sensing (RS), express services, urban road traffic monitoring, urban police security, urban air shows and so on, have increased greatly. However, most UAVs, especially light and small civil UAVs, have been operating in low-altitude airspace, and a conflict may exist between increasing the number of UAVs and the limited low airspace. To promote low-altitude airspace resource development and to standardize the operation and management of UAVs in urban regions, some global laws and regulations and key technologies for urban low-altitude applications of UAVs have been implemented. This paper reviews the development of current policies and key technologies concerning safe and efficient operations of the light-and-small civil UAVs in low altitude in urban areas. Discussions are made progressively on measures and methods of airspace restriction, airspace structuring and air route planning in China primarily and the rest of world. After surveying the practical industry tests and the initial studies of air routes, the survey results indicate that the construction of air route networks is a scientific and effective measure to standardize and improve the efficiency of low-altitude UAV operations. From the view point of safety and efficiency, the most valuable direction for UAV regulation in urban regions involves deepening the research which largely relies on urban RS and Geographic Information System (GIS) technology, and application demonstrations of low-altitude public air route networks.

Analytical Study between Human Urban Planning and Geographic Information Systems: “The Case of the City of Casablanca”

Since the early 1910s, the city of Casablanca has experienced urban and civic expansion so that its population has become a regional center, but this expansion has not been achieved in an organized and equal manner. This has resulted in significant overlap between systematic and structured reconstruction and random reconstruction, and if the geographic researcher is able to study this transformation by observation in the field where he described the phenomena and visualized them with the naked eye, then urbanization of information systems is one of the methods of expression that allows him to study it successfully and more precisely. The study of the stages of urbanization that the city of Casablanca has gone through using urbanization of information systems will give actors and researchers a clear vision of how this expansion can be achieved, it’s positive and negative implications, and its prospects, and will thus help to prepare and manage the urban area of the city. This study period extended from 1910 to 2020, and we relied on a set of documents, satellite photos, aerial photos and old maps.

Rational maintenance and management of heating networks of the city

The solution of specific tasks of management and rational maintenance of energy systems of cities can be ensured by a constantly updated unified urban geographic information system. The article discusses the main possibilities of using geographic information systems to determine the reliability indicators of heat supply networks, increase their efficiency and manageability by the processes of their operation. The analysis of the technical condition of the heat network of the city of Voronezh, the statistics of accidents and repair work on sections of the pipeline. The main shortcomings of the existing reliability accounting system, which does not imply the process of managing repair and restoration work, are identified. The expediency of making operational decisions on the basis of up-to-date information on the condition of sections of the heating network in different areas of the city and different periods of installation and repair is proved. The necessity of creating a constantly updated, updated and updated database of all systems of the city of Voronezh using geographic information technologies is justified. The analysis of factors leading to the need for reconstruction of heat supply systems is carried out. It has been established that the most common reasons leading to the need for reconstruction of heat supply systems are: change in the number of connected consumers; change in flow, temperature or pressure in the heating network; mismatch of energy indicators of the system with modern requirements.

Urban Geographic Information System: Features of Implementation and Management

The goal of the research is to develop technological and software tools to create an urban geographic information system (UGIS). The research objectives are to develop the principles of creation of a single information space of the city and organize UGIS information resources. Moreover, the authors aim to develop UGIS conceptual architecture, principles of organization of UGIS geospatial data, as well as software, organization and technical support for creation and operation for UGIS. To address these objectives an expert survey method was used to define the conceptual architecture and UGIS software tools. Employees of municipal administration of Departments of Property and Land Relations, Departments of Construction Policy, as well as Chief Architects, were involved in the expert survey. According to the research results, an approach for building a UGIS based on single structured city-wide storage of base information resources has been developed. The conceptual architecture of the system and functions and means of its implementation have been proposed.