User-friendly Mapping Research Articles

MapGPT: an autonomous framework for mapping by integrating large language model and cartographic tools

ABSTRACT The mapping process generally involves intricate operations, such as symbol design, layout design, and text annotation, demanding a high level of professional expertise. The high requirement for map producers hinders the promotion and widespread adoption of mapping. Consequently, researchers are concentrating on techniques to automate and enhance the intelligence of the mapping process. For example, some studies attempt to train deep learning models for mapping, including methods like map style transfer. However, these approaches typically treat the entire map as a global input and generate a new map as output, lacking the flexibility to consider and control detailed elements within a map. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a large language model-based intelligent mapping framework, termed MapGPT, which can be used for mapping by considering the map as an integration of various map elements. Specifically, multiple professional mapping tools are designed in MapGPT, and each tool is designed to control a corresponding map element. With these tools, a large language model is used to first understand the demand of users based on mere natural language descriptions, and subsequently automatically invoke appropriate tools in sequence to generate a map. Furthermore, by utilizing a memory component to store interaction information, users can interact with MapGPT through conversation to adjust map elements such as color and position. In conclusion, MapGPT offers user-friendly mapping experience, showing potential to be a mapping assistant for professional map producers. A comprehensive demonstration of this framework is provided in a visual case study video, accessible at https://github.com/AGI-GIS/MapGPT.

E-Waste Facility Locator using Integrated Map Interface

The E-Waste (Electronic Waste) Facility Locator application utilizes the user's current location to help find a nearby e-waste disposal center. The application features a user-friendly map interface that allows the user to select an e-waste facility based on their preferences. The user can either go to the facility to dispose of the e-waste or request the facility to pick up the waste at their doorstep. The entire system is managed by a system admin. Overall, the E-waste Facility Locator app helps users dispose of electronic waste responsibly, reducing pollution and conserving resources.

Mapping invasive alien plants through citizen science: shortlisting species of concern for the Nilgiris

Species introduced from elsewhere are known as alien species. They may be introduced as crop plants or ornamental plants, or for timber. A small proportion of introduced species can become invasive thereby spreading at the cost of native species and habitats, negatively affecting biodiversity, food security, and human wellbeing. Despite the growing recognition of the threat of invasive alien species, we still lack information about the distribution and abundance of species widely accepted to be invasive. To address this information gap regarding invasive alien species distributions, we initiated a pilot citizen science effort to create an atlas of invasive plants in the Moyar-Bhavani landscape of the Nilgiri District. We aimed, through this pilot effort, to develop and test user-friendly mapping protocols and develop an interface for citizen scientists to use. Ultimately, we hope to create a model that can be scaled up to large conservation landscapes, such as the Western Ghats, the central Indian Highlands, and the Himalaya.

Phenotypic maps for precision medicine: a promising systems biology tool for assessing therapy response and resistance at a personalized level.

In this perspective we discuss how tumor heterogeneity and therapy resistance necessitate a focus on more personalized approaches, prompting a shift toward precision medicine. At the heart of the shift towards personalized medicine, omics-driven systems biology becomes a driving force as it leverages high-throughput technologies and novel bioinformatics tools. These enable the creation of systems-based maps, providing a comprehensive view of individual tumor's functional plasticity. We highlight the innovative PHENOSTAMP program, which leverages high-dimensional data to construct a visually intuitive and user-friendly map. This map was created to encapsulate complex transitional states in cancer cells, such as Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition (EMT) and Mesenchymal-Epithelial Transition (MET), offering a visually intuitive way to understand disease progression and therapeutic responses at single-cell resolution in relation to EMT-related single-cell phenotypes. Most importantly, PHENOSTAMP functions as a reference map, which allows researchers and clinicians to assess one clinical specimen at a time in relation to their phenotypic heterogeneity, setting the foundation on constructing phenotypic maps for personalized medicine. This perspective argues that such dynamic predictive maps could also catalyze the development of personalized cancer treatment. They hold the potential to transform our understanding of cancer biology, providing a foundation for a future where therapy is tailored to each patient's unique molecular and cellular tumor profile. As our knowledge of cancer expands, these maps can be continually refined, ensuring they remain a valuable tool in precision oncology.

Short-term forecast of Karenia brevis trajectory on the West Florida Shelf

Blooms of the toxic dinoflagellate Karenia brevis, also known as harmful algal blooms (HABs) or red tides, occur almost annually on the west coast of Florida, killing fish and other marine life, threatening public health and adversely impacting local economies. Mitigating such effects requires improved red tide forecast capabilities on the West Florida Shelf. A short-term Lagrangian trajectory forecast tool is developed to help federal, state, and local end users monitor and manage red tides on the west coast of Florida. The forecast products are based on the West Florida Coastal Ocean Model (WFCOM) and the Tampa Bay Coastal Ocean Model (TBCOM) nowcast/forecast systems. Observed K. brevis cell count data are uploaded daily into the models to generate 3.5-day forecasts of the bloom trajectories both on the shelf and in the estuaries. The tracking tool displays modeled bloom trajectories at the surface and near-bottom with five categories of cell concentrations (each approximately representing an order of magnitude difference in concentration). More general and user-friendly maps are also produced to provide red tide advisories along the coast, including those integrated with satellite imagery.

Image Denoising with Control over Deep Network Hallucination

Deep image denoisers achieve state-of-the-art results but with a hidden cost. As witnessed in recent literature, these deep networks are capable of overfitting their training distributions, causing inaccurate hallucinations to be added to the output and generalizing poorly to varying data. For better control and interpretability over a deep denoiser, we propose a novel framework exploiting a denoising network. We call it controllable confidence-based image denoising (CCID). In this framework, we exploit the outputs of a deep denoising network alongside an image convolved with a reliable filter. Such a filter can be a simple convolution kernel which does not risk adding hallucinated information. We propose to fuse the two components with a frequency-domain approach that takes into account the reliability of the deep network outputs. With our framework, the user can control the fusion of the two components in the frequency domain. We also provide a user-friendly map estimating spatially the confidence in the output that potentially contains network hallucination. Results show that our CCID not only provides more interpretability and control, but can even outperform both the quantitative performance of the deep denoiser and that of the reliable filter, especially when the test data diverge from the training data.

A strontium isoscape of Italy for provenance studies

We present a novel database of biological and geological 87Sr/86Sr values (n = 1920) from Italy, using literature data and newly analysed samples, for provenance purposes. We collected both bioavailable and non-bioavailable (i.e. rocks and bulk soils) data to attain a broader view of the Sr isotope variability of the Italian territory. These data were used to build isotope variability maps, namely isoscapes, through Kriging interpolations. We employed two different Kriging models, namely Ordinary Kriging and Universal Kriging, with a geolithological map of Italy categorized in isotope classes as external predictor. Model performances were evaluated through a 10-fold cross validation, yielding accurate 87Sr/86Sr predictions with root mean squared errors (RMSE) ranging between 0.0020 and 0.0024, dependent on the Kriging model and the sample class. Overall, the produced maps highlight a heterogeneous distribution of the 87Sr/86Sr across Italy, with the highest radiogenic values (>0.71) mainly localized in three areas, namely the Alps (Northern Italy), the Tuscany/Latium (Central Italy) and Calabria/Sicily (Southern Italy) magmatic/metamorphic terrains. The rest of the peninsula is characterized by values ranging between 0.707 and 0.710, mostly linked to sedimentary geological units of mixed nature. Finally, we took advantage of the case study of Fratta Polesine, to underscore the importance of choosing appropriate samples when building the local isoscape and of exploring different end-members when interpreting the local Sr isotope variability in mobility and provenance studies. Our user-friendly maps and database are freely accessible through the Geonode platform and will be updated over time to offer a state-of-the-art reference in mobility and provenance studies across the Italian landscape.

Flood Risk Communication Using ArcGIS StoryMaps

In Canada, flooding is the most common and costly natural hazard. Flooding events significantly impact communities, damage infrastructures and threaten public security. Communication, as part of a flood risk management strategy, is an essential means of countering these threats. It is therefore important to develop new and innovative tools to communicate the flood risk with citizens. From this perspective, the use of story maps can be very effectively implemented for a broad audience, particularly to stakeholders. This paper details how an interactive web-based story map was set up to communicate current and future flood risks in the Petite-Nation River watershed, Quebec (Canada). This web technology application combines informative texts and interactive maps on current and future flood risks in the Petite-Nation River watershed. Flood risk and climate maps were generated using the GARI tool, implemented using a geographic information system (GIS) supported by ArcGIS Online (Esri). Three climate change scenarios developed by the Hydroclimatic Atlas of Southern Quebec were used to visualize potential future impacts. This study concluded that our story map is an efficient flood hazard communication tool. The assets of this interactive web mapping tool are numerous, namely user-friendly mapping, use and interaction, and customizable displays.

Microwave Satellite Measurements for Coastal Area and Extreme Weather Monitoring

In this project report, the main outcomes relevant to the Sino-European Dragon-4 cooperation project ID 32235 “Microwave satellite measurements for coastal area and extreme weather monitoring” are reported. The project aimed at strengthening the Sino-European research cooperation in the exploitation of European Space Agency, Chinese and third-party mission Earth Observation (EO) microwave satellite data. The latter were exploited to perform an effective monitoring of coastal areas, even under extreme weather conditions. An integrated multifrequency/polarization approach based on complementary microwave sensors (e.g., Synthetic Aperture Radar, scatterometer, radiometer), together with ancillary information coming from independent sources, i.e., optical imagery, numerical simulations and ground measurements, was designed. In this framework, several tasks were addressed including marine target detection, sea pollution, sea surface wind estimation and coastline extraction/classification. The main outcomes are both theoretical (i.e., new models and algorithms were developed) and applicative (i.e., user-friendly maps were provided to the end-user community of coastal area management according to smart processing of remotely sensed data). The scientific relevance consists in the development of new algorithms, the effectiveness and robustness of which were verified on actual microwave measurements, and the improvement of existing methodologies to deal with challenging test cases.

CitiSafe – Interactive Crime Reporting

Crimes and emergencies require urgent responses from emergency services like police, fire services and medical services. These response services have a reporting system that is tedious. Most times reported incidents are not seen through properly. The victim or witness who reported the crime has no means to know the status or progress of their report. Efficient, easy and direct reporting along with immediate or minimal inputs are very crucial as lives may be at risk in the said cases. The proposed system aims to achieve these goals and provide a complete end-to-end solution for real-time crime reporting along with location tracking. The application will consist of an interactive and user-friendly map application for the public to inform the authorities about the crimes and emergencies in real-time. The interactive map will showcase all the nearby emergency services such as police stations, hospitals, etc. The crime or emergency will be reported in real-time along with location marked on the map. The emergency or crime can be reported with images or voice recordings as well. The appropriate authorities will receive the reports which will be available to them on a dashboard. The status of the response to a report can be monitored in real-time. The details of the reporting, tracking and response times will be recorded in the system.

Abstract IA08: Improving researcher accessibility to publicly available data through creative integration, geospatial visualization, and open data portals

Abstract The increased accessibility of population-level data made available by the government and public health and consumer agencies provides a unique opportunity for integrative data analysis, spatial visualization with much higher resolution to identify clusters of disease, and their correlation with geospatial, socioeconomic, and demographic predictors. However, interactive mapping and spatial analysis tools are underutilized by health researchers and decision-makers as a result of scarce training materials, few examples demonstrating their successful use, and poor mechanisms for sharing results generated by geovisualization. Further, in the wake of massive amounts of new data and analytical tool availability, consumers of cancer population health data, such as academic researchers and public health practitioners, are facing an ongoing transformation of practice resulting in the need for effective collaboration and sharing of resources within and across disciplinary and geographic boundaries. In this talk we will summarize three of our ongoing projects that leverage web-based technologies with the aim to reduce barriers to data sharing, promote simultaneous analysis of multiple datasets, and enable geovisualization of cancer outcomes and their interrelationships with social and spatial factors. The Disentangling Disparities Data Warehouse, or D3W, is a population-based data resource that includes geotagged California Cancer Registry data linked to census, American Community Survey, and other curated sources of neighborhood-level contextual and environmental data. The D3W allows ecologic and/or multilevel statistical analysis and supports sophisticated analysis of the spatial dynamics of cancer in California. The HealthWebMapper is a highly interactive data visualization tool with a simple two-tier web geographic information systems (GIS) framework. This dynamic web GIS/mapping tool was created with open-source JavaScript library, Leaflet, and free web authoring tools (bootstrap, jquery, and Google Chart) to provide user-friendly maps and data-mining functions, including multiple classification methods, correlation analysis, data export, and side-by-side displays. HealthWebMapper is an open source application and available via a public Github repository, and it can be easily installed on any website without specialized GIS servers or databases. Finally, to promote ease of access to the D3W and HealthWebMapper as well as other research data resources, we are developing the Health Data Open Analytic Portal, with support from the newly established NIH-funded HealthLINK Center for Population Health and Health Disparities Research at San Diego State University. The key functions of the open data portal are to archive, manage, download, and integrate disease, environmental, socioeconomic, and health behavior data. The data portal will enable the sharing, archiving, and learning of research procedures and health data resources. The searchable and downloadable data portal will also provide comprehensive research investigator profiles and online training materials to facilitate transdisciplinary research collaborations in cancer population health and beyond. Citation Format: Caroline A. Thompson, Ming-Hsiang Tsou. Improving researcher accessibility to publicly available data through creative integration, geospatial visualization, and open data portals [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Special Conference on Modernizing Population Sciences in the Digital Age; 2019 Feb 19-22; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2020;29(9 Suppl):Abstract nr IA08.

Notes on the Poster “Map of Natural Stones from Sardinia (Italy)”

Sardinia (Italy) produces a vast array of natural stones for ornamental use. Besides the internationally known pink and gray granites and the famous limestone known as Orosei marble, a wide range of vulcanites (basalts and “trachytes”) and phyllites - including yellow and ghiandone granites - are also produced. Orosei marbles are some of the most requested types today, which are marketed especially to China. However, there are a number of Sardinian natural stones, which have been quarried and marketed for fifty years, although no image or footage has been published yet: a mention of this natural stones has been only made in some old list of Sardinian stones. For this reason, authors suggested the publication of a poster (70 cm x 100 cm) showing a collection of natural stones quarried for ornamental purposes in Sardinia over the last fifty years. The poster includes a user-friendly map that has been adapted for school use and as a public resource in libraries. There are no previous publications showing a similar wide range of Sardinian stones. The poster offers scientific information about lithology, quarrying sites, dimension stone producing areas, quarries of historical and/or archaeological interest, historical trend in quarries output, technical properties, stone surface workability and a glossary.

Architectural effect on 3D elastic properties and anisotropy of cubic lattice structures

This article investigates the elastic properties of a large panel of lattice architectures using a continuous description of geometry. The elastic constants of the orthotropic material are determined, and discussed in terms of specific stiffness and of its density dependence. Different kinds of topology families are emerging depending on their specific deformation behavior. For some of them, interesting properties in terms of traction-compression were measured, while some other families are predominantly adapted to shear loading. Homogenization technique also allows to quantify the anisotropy of the structures and to compare them. Specific structures having quasi-isotropic properties even at low relative densities were detected. Experimental works demonstrated the validity of the numerical models, and highlighted the necessity to consider carefully the effect of defects on the specific strength, which are not negligible, despite being of the second-order. Finally, this article provides user-friendly maps for selection of optimal architectures for a large variety of specific needs, like a target stiffness or anisotropy.

Resources value mapping: A method to assess the resource efficiency of manufacturing systems

The assessment and monitoring of energy and resource efficiency is an essential activity toward the implementation of sustainable manufacturing practices. Existing energy/resource assessment methods and tools are not based on a comprehensive approach, lack on the use of specific key performance indicators, are dedicated to expert stakeholders and do not provide useful suggestions for improving production systems. This paper proposes an innovative method, called Resources Value Mapping that aims to map and classify activities and related energy/resource consumptions according to lean philosophy principles (value-added, non value-added, waste). A user-friendly map and two efficiency indicators (Cost Index and Muda Index) are proposed to quantitatively support the identification of criticalities related to activities, processes, lines, plants, etc., and to successively guide the decision-making process during the improvement strategies implementation. The method has been used to analyze a manufacturing plant that produces cooking appliances. The case study demonstrated the applicability of the method in real industrial contexts and its effectiveness in identifying the energy/resource flows (electricity and compressed air), departments (sheet department) and lines (mechanical and hydraulic presses) for which the waste and non value-added consumptions are prominent. The analysis highlighted that less of 20% of the resources consumed during the process creates value, offering wide margins for improvement. Finally, it aided the definition of an action plan leading to relevant reduction of resource consumptions, economic savings and environmental benefits.

Design of an Extensive Emergency Rescue Service for Electric Vehicles

This paper designs and develops an emergency rescue service for electric vehicles (EVs), which may suffer from the battery depletion during their trips. After building relevant data models on both chargers and EVs, our design defines the interaction among three parties of EV drivers, the rescue server, and rescue vehicles to responsively process the dispatch request and systematically meet the user requirement. Particularly, a comprehensive mobile application is developed on the Android operating system to help users to promptly send a rescue request to the server and monitor the request processing status. This user interface allows EV drivers to automatically specify their locations and necessary personal information as well as to view the distribution of emergency vehicles through user-friendly maps. Our design is scalable for a large number of emergency vehicles and rescue requests, accelerating the wide deployment of EVs in our daily lives. Moreover, the rescue system design can collaborate with an EV tracking system and charge reservation agents to create a more sophisticated EV information service.

Rapid Diagnostics for the Endgame in Lymphatic Filariasis Elimination

Rapid Diagnostics for the Endgame in Lymphatic Filariasis Elimination

SOCIAL MEDIA WIDGET FOR EMERGENCY RESPONSE

Emergency planners and responders are increasingly investigating the potential of social media as an information source “from the crowd” for providing critical information for emergency response. The proposed map-based social media widget, which may be integrated into a variety of web-based mapping applications, will provide users with an organized and comprehensive pool of real-time data gathered from one of the most popular social media source, Twitter. The widget focuses on developing solutions for two primary challenges related to information from social media sources ‐ gathering and storing real-time data, and filtering and visualizing the gathered information based on required criteria. Users can view filtered data by keyword, time, and location. A user-friendly map for graphical display of feed locations is generated in order to provide a geographic context to an emergency situation.

Prediction and 3D visualization of biological networks using cytological disease mapping

Motivation and Objectives The subcellular localization of biochemical networks is one of the new challenges of the post-genomic era. It may be used in future as an additional criteria to judge the probability of potential proteomic interaction partners, to choose the appropriate experimental constellations or to create virtual cell environments. Today we can use database integration tools and text mining for the prediction of biological networks. However, we can use the same tools for the prediction of the localization values of each component of biological networks. Having this information calculated we can realize a 3D (2D) visualization of biochemical networks based on a 3D (2D) virtual cell. Therefore we extended our CELLmicrocosmos (http://Cm4.CELLmicrocosmos.org) project. Methods The CELLmicrocsosmos 4.2 PathwayIntegration (short: CmPI) is a module developed based on the CELLmicrocosmos 1.1 CellExplorer (CmCX). CmCX provides a virtual cell environment. This cell environment, containing different cell components, can be associated with protein-related networks using localization information parsed from DAWIS-M.D. as well as ANDCell. Figure 1 shows the workflow between CmPI and the two aforementioned systems. CmPI connects now directly to ANDCell, which is a data mining tool for pathway reconstruction, and DAWIS-M.D., which is a bio data warehouse. The input is a set of proteins or a protein-related network. Based on the data mining and bio data warehouse approach, CmPI will search for localization information for each network component. Based on this data and an already created virtual cell, CmPI will semi-automatically map this information into the three-dimensional cell environment. The user-friendly mapping process is supported by different visualization techniques. DAWIS-M.D. which is based on the Bioinformatics Data Warehouse (BioDWH) toolkit, is a platform-independent data warehouse approach developed by the Bio-/Medical Informatics Department of Bielefeld University. It contains a number of metabolic-disease-related databases. For this work, only a subset of those databases was used for the localization of proteins: Brenda, Reactome, The Gene Ontology (GO), and UniProt. The ANDCell (Associative Network Discovery) system contains a large variety of different databases. It is a commercial product of PBSoft Ltd., a start-up company from the Institute of Cytology and Genetics (Novosibirsk). It was developed for the automatic extraction of facts and knowledge of interactions between proteins, genes, metabolites, microRNA, cellular components, molecular processes, and their association with diseases from the texts of scientific publications and databases. For this work, only those information were taken into account which were extracted from PubMed-abstracts which are freely available for CmPI. Results and Discussion These data integration techniques will underscoreour understanding of the molecular mechanisms of diseases. In particular, this approach is important to investigate which cellular compartment is mainly involved in a specific pathological process. Based on this integrated knowledge, biological network prediction and reconstruction can be done for many investigated diseases even if the molecular knowledge of such disease is only rudimentary. Figure 2 shows a MPDZ-related protein-protein interaction network associated with a three-dimensional cell model. This application case was discussed in Sommer et al. 2010. Experimental results suggested that MPDZ is involved in dilated cardiomyopathy. The interacting proteins were found to be associated with the tight junction complex of the cell membrane. Therefore it can be suggested that this cell localization is affected by dilated cardiomyopathy and should be taken into account in future computational and experimental analyses. Acknowledgements This work was supported in part by: BMBF Internationale Zusammenarbeit in Bildung und Forschung mit Russland, RUS 08/005, EU-FP6, CARDIOWORKBENCH project, RAS Program “Living Nature: Current State & the Problems of Development”, 14.740.11.0001 (PD, VI, NK); EU-FP7-260429-SYSPATHO. References B. Sommer, E. S. Tiys, B. Kormeier, K. Hippe, S. J. Janowski, T. V. Ivanisenko, A. O. Bragin, P. Arrigo, P. S. Demenkov, A. V. Kochetov, V. A. Ivanisenko, N. A. Kolchanov, R. Hofestadt. Visualization and Analysis of a Cardio Vascular Disease-and MUPP1-related Biological Network combining Text Mining and Data Warehouse Approaches. Journal of Integrative Bioinformatics, 7(1):148, 2010. Note: Figures and tables are available in PDF version only.

Development and Use of a GIS Workstation at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Research Library

ABSTRACT Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is the Department of Energy's (DOE) largest multipurpose science and energy laboratory. As an interdisciplinary research organization, access to information plays a critical part in the success of the many research efforts in progress at the Laboratory. The Research Library, in a supportive role, enables staff to fulfill the Laboratory's mission by making available a myriad of information resources including paper and electronic maps. The Research Library Geographic Information System (GIS) workstation was developed to better serve library customers by providing convenient access to a variety of mapping resources. The GIS workstation functions as a supplement to the paper map collection by providing customers with maps in an electronic format that can easily be inserted into memos, reports, and journal articles. Customer interest, together with the growing availability of low-cost and user-friendly mapping software, led to the development of the GIS workstation, which hosts an array of commercial mapping software that enables customers to produce ready-made topographic maps, current and historical maps, and road maps. Customers may also create customized maps using their own data or data supplied by the software vendor. This article focuses on the development, implementation, and use of the library's GIS workstation by providing a brief description of hardware components, mapping resources, and how these resources are used by Laboratory staff.

Sequence mapping of Holocene coastal lowlands: the application of the Streif classification system in the Belgian coastal plain

A geological map of the Holocene deposits of a portion of the western Belgian coastal plain is presented. The map differs from a conventional geological map which is of little use for coastal lowlands because of the high lateral and vertical variability in lithology in the subsoil. The method of sequence maps was chosen because these maps allow the representation of the entire vertical sequence of the Holocene deposits. A sequence map is constructed on the basis of profile types consisting of the vertical succession of the various mapping units. In order to produce a user-friendly map, preference was given to lithogenetic units instead of formal lithostratigraphic units for the determination of mapping units. The organisation of the mapping units was established according to the Streif classification system. The application of the system is demonstrated with two different sequence maps each constructed on a different level of the hierarchic system: a general sequence map and a special sequence map showing further differentiation.