A geo-database for potentially polluting marine sites and associated risk index

The increasing availability of geospatial marine data provides an opportunity for hydrographic offices to contribute to the identification of Potentially Polluting Marine Sites (PPMS). To adequately manage these sites, a PPMS Geospatial Database (GeoDB) application was developed to collect and store relevant information suitable for site inventory and geo-spatial analysis. The benefits of structuring the data to conform to the Universal Hydrographic Data Model (IHO S-100) and to use the Geographic Mark-Up Language (GML) for encoding are presented. A storage solution is proposed using a GML-enabled spatial relational database management system (RDBMS). In addition, an example of a risk index methodology is provided based on the defined data structure. The implementation of this example was performed using scripts containing SQL statements. These procedures were implemented using a cross-platform C++ application based on open-source libraries and called PPMS GeoDB Manager

Automated Productivity Models for Earthmoving Operations

Earthmoving operations have significant importance, particularly for civil infrastructure projects. The performance of these operations should be monitored regularly to support timely recognition of undesirable productivity variances. Although productivity assessment occupies high importance in earthmoving operations, it does not provide sufficient information to assist project managers in taking the necessary actions in a timely manner. Assessment only is not capable of identifying problems encountered in these operations and their causes. Many studies recognized conditions and related factors that influence productivity of earthmoving operations. These conditions are mainly project-specific and vary from one project to another. Most of reported work in the literature focused on assessment rather than analysis of productivity. This study presents three integrated models that automate productivity measurement and analysis processes with capabilities to detect different adverse conditions that influence the productivity of earthmoving operations. The models exploit innovations in wireless and remote sensing technologies to provide project managers, contractors, and decision makers with a near-real-time automated productivity measurement and analysis. The developed models account for various uncertainties associated with earthmoving projects. The first model introduces a fuzzy-based standardization for customizing the configuration of onsite data acquisition systems for earthmoving operations. While the second model consists of two interrelated modules. The first is a customized automated data acquisition module, where a variety of sensors, smart boards, and microcontrollers are used to automate the data acquisition process. This module encompasses onsite fixed unit and a set of portable units attached to each truck used in the earthmoving fleet. The fixed unit is a communication gateway (Meshlium®), which has integrated MySQL database with data processing capabilities. Each mobile unit consists of a microcontroller equipped with a smart board that hosts a GPS module as well as a number of sensors such as accelerometer, temperature and humidity sensors, load cell and automated weather station. The second is a productivity measurement and analysis module, which processes and analyzes the data collected automatically in the first module. It automates the analysis process using data mining and machine learning techniques; providing a near-real-time web-based visualized representation of measurement and analysis outcomes. Artificial Neural Network (ANN) was used to model productivity losses due to the existence of different influencing conditions. Laboratory and field work was conducted in the development and validation processes of the developed models. The work encompassed field and scaled laboratory experiments. The laboratory experiments were conducted in an open to sky terrace to allow for a reliable access to GPS satellites. Also, to make a direct connection between the data communication gateway (Meshlium®), initially installed on a PC computer to observe the received data latency. The laboratory experiments unitized 1:24 scaled loader and dumping truck to simulate loading, hauling and dumping operations. The truck was instrumented with the microcontroller equipped with an accelerometer, GPS module, load cell, and soil water content sensor. Thirty simulated earthmoving cycles were conducted using the scaled equipment. The collected data was recorded in a micro secure digital (SD) card in a comma separated value (CSV) format. The field work was carried out in the city of Saint-Laurent, Montreal, Quebec, Canada using a passenger vehicle to mimic the hauling truck operational modes. Fifteen Field simulated earthmoving cycles were performed. In this work two roads with different surface conditions, but of equal length (1150 m) represented the haul and return roads. These two roads were selected to validate the developed road condition analysis algorithm and to study the model’s capability in determining the consequences of adverse road conditions on the haul and return durations and thus on the tuck and fleet productivity. The data collected from the lab experiments and field work was used as input for the developed model. The developed model has shown perfect recognition of the state of truck throughout the fifteen field simulated earthmoving cycles. The developed road condition analysis algorithm has demonstrated an accuracy of 83.3% and 82.6% in recognizing road bumps and potholes, respectively. Also, the results indicated tiny variances in measuring the durations compared with actual durations using time laps displayed on a smart cell telephone; with an average invalidity percentage AIP% of 1.89 % and 1.33% for the joint hauling and return duration and total cycle duration, respectively

24th International Conference on Information Modelling and Knowledge Bases

In the last three decades information modelling and knowledge bases have become essentially important subjects not only in academic communities related to information systems and computer science but also in the business area where information technology is applied. The series of European – Japanese Conference on Information Modelling and Knowledge Bases (EJC) originally started as a co-operation initiative between Japan and Finland in 1982. The practical operations were then organised by professor Ohsuga in Japan and professors Hannu Kangassalo and Hannu Jaakkola in Finland (Nordic countries). Geographical scope has expanded to cover Europe and also other countries. Workshop characteristic - discussion, enough time for presentations and limited number of participants (50) / papers (30) - is typical for the conference. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to: 1. Conceptual modelling: Modelling and specification languages; Domain-specific conceptual modelling; Concepts, concept theories and ontologies; Conceptual modelling of large and heterogeneous systems; Conceptual modelling of spatial, temporal and biological data; Methods for developing, validating and communicating conceptual models. 2. Knowledge and information modelling and discovery: Knowledge discovery, knowledge representation and knowledge management; Advanced data mining and analysis methods; Conceptions of knowledge and information; Modelling information requirements; Intelligent information systems; Information recognition and information modelling. 3. Linguistic modelling: Models of HCI; Information delivery to users; Intelligent informal querying; Linguistic foundation of information and knowledge; Fuzzy linguistic models; Philosophical and linguistic foundations of conceptual models. 4. Cross-cultural communication and social computing: Cross-cultural support systems; Integration, evolution and migration of systems; Collaborative societies; Multicultural web-based software systems; Intercultural collaboration and support systems; Social computing, behavioral modeling and prediction. 5. Environmental modelling and engineering: Environmental information systems (architecture); Spatial, temporal and observational information systems; Large-scale environmental systems; Collaborative knowledge base systems; Agent concepts and conceptualisation; Hazard prediction, prevention and steering systems. 6. Multimedia data modelling and systems: Modelling multimedia information and knowledge; Contentbased multimedia data management; Content-based multimedia retrieval; Privacy and context enhancing technologies; Semantics and pragmatics of multimedia data; Metadata for multimedia information systems. Overall we received 56 submissions. After careful evaluation, 16 papers have been selected as long paper, 17 papers as short papers, 5 papers as position papers, and 3 papers for presentation of perspective challenges. We thank all colleagues for their support of this issue of the EJC conference, especially the program committee, the organising committee, and the programme coordination team. The long and the short papers presented in the conference are revised after the conference and published in the Series of “Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence” by IOS Press (Amsterdam). The books “Information Modelling and Knowledge Bases” are edited by the Editing Committee of the conference. We believe that the conference will be productive and fruitful in the advance of research and application of information modelling and knowledge bases. Bernhard Thalheim Hannu Jaakkola Yasushi Kiyok

Digital traces and urban research : Barcelona through social media data

Most of the world’s population now resides in urban areas, and it is expected that almost all of the planet’s growth will be concentrated in them for the next 30 years, making the improvement of the quality of life in the cities one of the big challenges of this century. To that end, it is crucial to have information on how people use the spaces in the city, and allows urban planning to successfully respond to their needs. This dissertation proposes using data shared voluntarily by the millions of users that make up social network’s communities as a valuable tool for the study of the complexity of the city, because of its capacity of providing an unprecedented volume of urban information, with geographic, temporal, semantic and multimedia components. However, the volume and variety of data raises important challenges regarding its retrieval, manipulation, analysis and representation, requiring the adoption of the best practices in data science, using a multi-faceted approach in the field of urban studies with a strong emphasis in the reproducibility of the developed methodologies. This research focuses in the case of study of the city of Barcelona, using the public data collected from Panoramio, Flickr, Twitter and Instagram. After a literature review, the methods to access the different services are discussed, along with their available data and limitations. Next, the retrieved data is analyzed at different spatial and temporal scales. The first approximation to data focuses on the origins of users who took geotagged pictures of Barcelona, geocoding the hometowns that appear in their Flickr public profiles, allowing the identification of the regions, countries and cities with the largest influx of visitors, and relating the results with multiple indicators at a global scale. The next scale of analysis discusses the city as a whole, developing methodologies for the representation of the spatial distribution of the collected locations, avoiding the artifacts produced by overplotting. To this end, locations are aggregated in regular tessellations, whose size is determined empirically from their spatial distribution. Two spatial statistics techniques (Moran’s I and Getis-Ord’s G*) are used to visualize the local spatial autocorrelation of the areas with exceptionally high or low densities, under a statistical significance framework. Finally, the kernel density estimation is introduced as a non-parametric alternative. The third level of detail follows the official administrative division of Barcelona in 73 neighborhoods and 12 districts, which obeys to historical, morphological and functional criteria. Micromaps are introduced as a representation technique capable of providing a geographical context to commonly used statistical graphics, along with a methodology to produce these micromaps automatically. This technique is compared to annotated scatterplots to relate picture intensity with different urban indicators at a neighborhood scale. The hypothesis of spatial homogeneity is abandoned at the most detailed scale, focusing the analysis on the street network. Two techniques to assign events to road segments in the street graph are presented (direct by shortest distance or by proxy through the postal addresses), as well as the generalization of the kernel density estimation from the Euclidean space to a network topology. Beyond the spatial domain, the interactions of three temporal cycles are further analyzed using the timestamps available in the picture metadata: daytime/nighttime (daily cycle), work/leisure (weekly cycle) and seasonal (yearly cycle).La major part de la població mundial resideix actualment en àrees urbanes, i es preveu que pràcticament tot el creixement del planeta es concentri en elles en els propers 30 anys, convertint la millora de la qualitat de vida a les ciutats en un dels grans reptes del present segle. És per tant imprescindible disposar d'informació sobre les activitats que les persones desenvolupen en elles, que permetin al planejament donar resposta a les seves necessitats. Aquesta tesi proposa l'ús de dades compartides de manera voluntària pels milions d'usuaris que conformen les comunitats de les xarxes socials com una valuosa eina per a l'estudi de la complexitat de la ciutat, per la seva capacitat de proporcionar un volum d'informació urbana sense precedents, reunint components tant geogràfics, temporals, semàntics i multimèdia. No obstant això, aquest volum i varietat de les dades planteja grans reptes pel que fa a la seva obtenció, tractament, anàlisi i representació, requerint adoptar les millors pràctiques de la ciència de dades, aplicades des de múltiples punts de vista al camp dels estudis urbans, posant sempre l'èmfasi en la reproductibilitat de les metodologies desenvolupades. Aquesta investigació se centra en el cas d'estudi de la ciutat de Barcelona, a partir de les dades públiques obtingudes de Panoramio, Flickr, Twitter i Instagram. Després d'una revisió de l'estat de l'art, es desenvolupa l'operativa d'accés als diferents serveis, revisant les dades disponibles i les seves limitacions. A continuació, s'analitzen les dades obtingudes en diferents escales espacials i temporals. La primera aproximació a les dades es desenvolupa a partir de l'origen dels usuaris que han pres fotografies geolocalitzades de Barcelona, a través de la geocodificació de les ubicacions que apareixen en els seus perfils públics de Flickr, permetent identificar les regions, països i ciutats amb major afluència de visitants i relacionar els resultats amb diferents indicadors a escala global. La següent escala d'anàlisi es centra en la ciutat en el seu conjunt, desenvolupant metodologies per a la representació de la distribució espacial de les localitzacions obtingudes, evitant els artefactes produïts per la superposició de mostres. Per a això s'agreguen les localitzacions en tesselacions regulars, la mida de les quals es determina empíricament a partir de la seva distribució espacial. S'utilitzen dues tècniques d'estadística espacial (I de Moran i G* de Getis-Ord) per a visualitzar l'autocorrelació espacial local dels àmbits amb densitats excepcionalment altes o baixes, seguint un criteri de significança estadística. Finalment s'introdueix com a alternativa no paramètrica l'estimació de la densitat. El tercer nivell de detall coincideix amb la delimitació administrativa oficial de Barcelona en 73 barris i 12 districtes, realitzada a partir de criteris històrics, morfològics i funcionals. S'introdueixen els micromapes com a tècnica de representació capaç d'aportar un context geogràfic a gràfics estadístics d'ús comú, juntament amb una metodologia per produir aquests micromapes de manera automàtica. Es compara aquesta tècnica amb diagrames de dispersió anotats per a relacionar la intensitat de fotografies amb diferents indicadors urbans a escala de barri. En l'escala més detallada s'abandona la hipòtesi d'homogeneïtat espacial i es trasllada l'anàlisi al sistema viari. Es presenten dues tècniques d'atribució de localitzacions a trams de carrer del graf vial (directa per distància o indirecta a través de les adreces postals), així com la generalització de l'estimació de la densitat d'un espai euclidià a una topologia de xarxa. Fora del context espacial, s'analitzen les interaccions de tres cicles temporals a partir de les metadades del moment en què van ser preses les fotografies: diürn/nocturn (cicle diari), treball/oci (cicle setmanal) i estacional (cicle anual).Postprint (published version

Digital traces and urban research : Barcelona through social media data

Most of the world’s population now resides in urban areas, and it is expected that almost all of the planet’s growth will be concentrated in them for the next 30 years, making the improvement of the quality of life in the cities one of the big challenges of this century. To that end, it is crucial to have information on how people use the spaces in the city, and allows urban planning to successfully respond to their needs. This dissertation proposes using data shared voluntarily by the millions of users that make up social network’s communities as a valuable tool for the study of the complexity of the city, because of its capacity of providing an unprecedented volume of urban information, with geographic, temporal, semantic and multimedia components. However, the volume and variety of data raises important challenges regarding its retrieval, manipulation, analysis and representation, requiring the adoption of the best practices in data science, using a multi-faceted approach in the field of urban studies with a strong emphasis in the reproducibility of the developed methodologies. This research focuses in the case of study of the city of Barcelona, using the public data collected from Panoramio, Flickr, Twitter and Instagram. After a literature review, the methods to access the different services are discussed, along with their available data and limitations. Next, the retrieved data is analyzed at different spatial and temporal scales. The first approximation to data focuses on the origins of users who took geotagged pictures of Barcelona, geocoding the hometowns that appear in their Flickr public profiles, allowing the identification of the regions, countries and cities with the largest influx of visitors, and relating the results with multiple indicators at a global scale. The next scale of analysis discusses the city as a whole, developing methodologies for the representation of the spatial distribution of the collected locations, avoiding the artifacts produced by overplotting. To this end, locations are aggregated in regular tessellations, whose size is determined empirically from their spatial distribution. Two spatial statistics techniques (Moran’s I and Getis-Ord’s G*) are used to visualize the local spatial autocorrelation of the areas with exceptionally high or low densities, under a statistical significance framework. Finally, the kernel density estimation is introduced as a non-parametric alternative. The third level of detail follows the official administrative division of Barcelona in 73 neighborhoods and 12 districts, which obeys to historical, morphological and functional criteria. Micromaps are introduced as a representation technique capable of providing a geographical context to commonly used statistical graphics, along with a methodology to produce these micromaps automatically. This technique is compared to annotated scatterplots to relate picture intensity with different urban indicators at a neighborhood scale. The hypothesis of spatial homogeneity is abandoned at the most detailed scale, focusing the analysis on the street network. Two techniques to assign events to road segments in the street graph are presented (direct by shortest distance or by proxy through the postal addresses), as well as the generalization of the kernel density estimation from the Euclidean space to a network topology. Beyond the spatial domain, the interactions of three temporal cycles are further analyzed using the timestamps available in the picture metadata: daytime/nighttime (daily cycle), work/leisure (weekly cycle) and seasonal (yearly cycle).La major part de la població mundial resideix actualment en àrees urbanes, i es preveu que pràcticament tot el creixement del planeta es concentri en elles en els propers 30 anys, convertint la millora de la qualitat de vida a les ciutats en un dels grans reptes del present segle. És per tant imprescindible disposar d'informació sobre les activitats que les persones desenvolupen en elles, que permetin al planejament donar resposta a les seves necessitats. Aquesta tesi proposa l'ús de dades compartides de manera voluntària pels milions d'usuaris que conformen les comunitats de les xarxes socials com una valuosa eina per a l'estudi de la complexitat de la ciutat, per la seva capacitat de proporcionar un volum d'informació urbana sense precedents, reunint components tant geogràfics, temporals, semàntics i multimèdia. No obstant això, aquest volum i varietat de les dades planteja grans reptes pel que fa a la seva obtenció, tractament, anàlisi i representació, requerint adoptar les millors pràctiques de la ciència de dades, aplicades des de múltiples punts de vista al camp dels estudis urbans, posant sempre l'èmfasi en la reproductibilitat de les metodologies desenvolupades. Aquesta investigació se centra en el cas d'estudi de la ciutat de Barcelona, a partir de les dades públiques obtingudes de Panoramio, Flickr, Twitter i Instagram. Després d'una revisió de l'estat de l'art, es desenvolupa l'operativa d'accés als diferents serveis, revisant les dades disponibles i les seves limitacions. A continuació, s'analitzen les dades obtingudes en diferents escales espacials i temporals. La primera aproximació a les dades es desenvolupa a partir de l'origen dels usuaris que han pres fotografies geolocalitzades de Barcelona, a través de la geocodificació de les ubicacions que apareixen en els seus perfils públics de Flickr, permetent identificar les regions, països i ciutats amb major afluència de visitants i relacionar els resultats amb diferents indicadors a escala global. La següent escala d'anàlisi es centra en la ciutat en el seu conjunt, desenvolupant metodologies per a la representació de la distribució espacial de les localitzacions obtingudes, evitant els artefactes produïts per la superposició de mostres. Per a això s'agreguen les localitzacions en tesselacions regulars, la mida de les quals es determina empíricament a partir de la seva distribució espacial. S'utilitzen dues tècniques d'estadística espacial (I de Moran i G* de Getis-Ord) per a visualitzar l'autocorrelació espacial local dels àmbits amb densitats excepcionalment altes o baixes, seguint un criteri de significança estadística. Finalment s'introdueix com a alternativa no paramètrica l'estimació de la densitat. El tercer nivell de detall coincideix amb la delimitació administrativa oficial de Barcelona en 73 barris i 12 districtes, realitzada a partir de criteris històrics, morfològics i funcionals. S'introdueixen els micromapes com a tècnica de representació capaç d'aportar un context geogràfic a gràfics estadístics d'ús comú, juntament amb una metodologia per produir aquests micromapes de manera automàtica. Es compara aquesta tècnica amb diagrames de dispersió anotats per a relacionar la intensitat de fotografies amb diferents indicadors urbans a escala de barri. En l'escala més detallada s'abandona la hipòtesi d'homogeneïtat espacial i es trasllada l'anàlisi al sistema viari. Es presenten dues tècniques d'atribució de localitzacions a trams de carrer del graf vial (directa per distància o indirecta a través de les adreces postals), així com la generalització de l'estimació de la densitat d'un espai euclidià a una topologia de xarxa. Fora del context espacial, s'analitzen les interaccions de tres cicles temporals a partir de les metadades del moment en què van ser preses les fotografies: diürn/nocturn (cicle diari), treball/oci (cicle setmanal) i estacional (cicle anual)

Social work with airports passengers

Social work at the airport is in to offer to passengers social services. The main methodological position is that people are under stress, which characterized by a particular set of characteristics in appearance and behavior. In such circumstances passenger attracts in his actions some attention. Only person whom he trusts can help him with the documents or psychologically