Spatial ontologies for architectural heritage

Informatics and artificial intelligence have generated new requirements for digital archiving, information, and documentation. Semantic interoperability has become fundamental for the management and sharing of information. The constraints to data interpretation enable both database interoperability, for data and schemas sharing and reuse, and information retrieval in large datasets. Another challenging issue is the exploitation of automated reasoning possibilities. The solution is the use of domain ontologies as a reference for data modelling in information systems. The architectural heritage (AH) domain is considered in this thesis. The documentation in this field, particularly complex and multifaceted, is well-known to be critical for the preservation, knowledge, and promotion of the monuments. For these reasons, digital inventories, also exploiting standards and new semantic technologies, are developed by international organisations (Getty Institute, ONU, European Union). Geometric and geographic information is essential part of a monument. It is composed by a number of aspects (spatial, topological, and mereological relations; accuracy; multi-scale representation; time; etc.). Currently, geomatics permits the obtaining of very accurate and dense 3D models (possibly enriched with textures) and derived products, in both raster and vector format. Many standards were published for the geographic field or in the cultural heritage domain. However, the first ones are limited in the foreseen representation scales (the maximum is achieved by OGC CityGML), and the semantic values do not consider the full semantic richness of AH. The second ones (especially the core ontology CIDOC – CRM, the Conceptual Reference Model of the Documentation Commettee of the International Council of Museums) were employed to document museums’ objects. Even if it was recently extended to standing buildings and a spatial extension was included, the integration of complex 3D models has not yet been achieved. In this thesis, the aspects (especially spatial issues) to consider in the documentation of monuments are analysed. In the light of them, the OGC CityGML is extended for the management of AH complexity. An approach ‘from the landscape to the detail’ is used, for considering the monument in a wider system, which is essential for analysis and reasoning about such complex objects. An implementation test is conducted on a case study, preferring open source applications

A Geospatial Cyberinfrastructure for Urban Economic Analysis and Spatial Decision-Making

abstract: Urban economic modeling and effective spatial planning are critical tools towards achieving urban sustainability. However, in practice, many technical obstacles, such as information islands, poor documentation of data and lack of software platforms to facilitate virtual collaboration, are challenging the effectiveness of decision-making processes. In this paper, we report on our efforts to design and develop a geospatial cyberinfrastructure (GCI) for urban economic analysis and simulation. This GCI provides an operational graphic user interface, built upon a service-oriented architecture to allow (1) widespread sharing and seamless integration of distributed geospatial data; (2) an effective way to address the uncertainty and positional errors encountered in fusing data from diverse sources; (3) the decomposition of complex planning questions into atomic spatial analysis tasks and the generation of a web service chain to tackle such complex problems; and (4) capturing and representing provenance of geospatial data to trace its flow in the modeling task. The Greater Los Angeles Region serves as the test bed. We expect this work to contribute to effective spatial policy analysis and decision-making through the adoption of advanced GCI and to broaden the application coverage of GCI to include urban economic simulations

Distributed Hybrid Simulation of the Internet of Things and Smart Territories

This paper deals with the use of hybrid simulation to build and compose heterogeneous simulation scenarios that can be proficiently exploited to model and represent the Internet of Things (IoT). Hybrid simulation is a methodology that combines multiple modalities of modeling/simulation. Complex scenarios are decomposed into simpler ones, each one being simulated through a specific simulation strategy. All these simulation building blocks are then synchronized and coordinated. This simulation methodology is an ideal one to represent IoT setups, which are usually very demanding, due to the heterogeneity of possible scenarios arising from the massive deployment of an enormous amount of sensors and devices. We present a use case concerned with the distributed simulation of smart territories, a novel view of decentralized geographical spaces that, thanks to the use of IoT, builds ICT services to manage resources in a way that is sustainable and not harmful to the environment. Three different simulation models are combined together, namely, an adaptive agent-based parallel and distributed simulator, an OMNeT++ based discrete event simulator and a script-language simulator based on MATLAB. Results from a performance analysis confirm the viability of using hybrid simulation to model complex IoT scenarios.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1605.0487

FOSS4G 2013 Full Conference Proceedings (papers)

This Conference Proceedings is a collection of outstanding papers submitted to the Academic Program of the International Conference for Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G), 17th to 21st September 2013 in Nottingham, U.K

Spatial ontologies for architectural heritage

Informatics and artificial intelligence have generated new requirements for digital archiving, information, and documentation. Semantic interoperability has become fundamental for the management and sharing of information. The constraints to data interpretation enable both database interoperability, for data and schemas sharing and reuse, and information retrieval in large datasets. Another challenging issue is the exploitation of automated reasoning possibilities. The solution is the use of domain ontologies as a reference for data modelling in information systems. The architectural heritage (AH) domain is considered in this thesis. The documentation in this field, particularly complex and multifaceted, is well-known to be critical for the preservation, knowledge, and promotion of the monuments. For these reasons, digital inventories, also exploiting standards and new semantic technologies, are developed by international organisations (Getty Institute, ONU, European Union). Geometric and geographic information is essential part of a monument. It is composed by a number of aspects (spatial, topological, and mereological relations; accuracy; multi-scale representation; time; etc.). Currently, geomatics permits the obtaining of very accurate and dense 3D models (possibly enriched with textures) and derived products, in both raster and vector format. Many standards were published for the geographic field or in the cultural heritage domain. However, the first ones are limited in the foreseen representation scales (the maximum is achieved by OGC CityGML), and the semantic values do not consider the full semantic richness of AH. The second ones (especially the core ontology CIDOC – CRM, the Conceptual Reference Model of the Documentation Commettee of the International Council of Museums) were employed to document museums’ objects. Even if it was recently extended to standing buildings and a spatial extension was included, the integration of complex 3D models has not yet been achieved. In this thesis, the aspects (especially spatial issues) to consider in the documentation of monuments are analysed. In the light of them, the OGC CityGML is extended for the management of AH complexity. An approach ‘from the landscape to the detail’ is used, for considering the monument in a wider system, which is essential for analysis and reasoning about such complex objects. An implementation test is conducted on a case study, preferring open source applications

ZoomAzores project: implementation of a WebGIS for Nature and Adventure Tourism.

Dissertação apresentada como requisito parcial para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Estatística e Gestão de InformaçãoNowadays, the Web offers new ways to make available information to users. This creates new ways and tools that can be used to make available tourist information and promotion of these destinations. The main objective this work is to develop a Web application for the ZoomAzores project. This web application uses dynamic maps and user-generated content features, which are focused on make available useful information for the tourist and the promotion of Nature and Adventure Tourism (NAT) in the archipelago of Azores. The solutions encountered were always determined by the technologies used and from the point of view of tourists visiting the Azores, which frequently doesn’t know about the Azores territory. The ZoomAzores Web application has Geographic Information System (GIS) visualization and navigation capabilities on the Internet, turning it into a WebGIS. It also encompasses the principles of Web 2.0 providing functionalities such as the generation of contents by users. The existing link between the use of dynamic maps and Web 2.0 in the tourism promotion and travel planning tasks seems to be a solid reality putting up new opportunities for the business in tourism.In this work, the development of the ZoomAzores WebGIS is based on the use of Open Standards (OS) and Free Open Source Software (FOSS). The use of OS is a key to the development of a WebGIS application able to interoperate with other systems and then use and consume Web Services (WS) that other systems can offer, concurrently enriching the data sources used. The FOSS technologies allow creates a more low cost solution without licensing cost software. This document exposes some design aspects in the system development and describes some functional and architectural features about the WebGIS ZoomAzores

RADGIS - an improved architecture for runtime-extensible, distributed GIS applications

A number of GIS architectures and technologies have emerged recently to facilitate the visualisation and processing of geospatial data over the Web. The work presented in this dissertation builds on these efforts and undertakes to overcome some of the major problems with traditional GIS client architectures, including application bloat, lack of customisability, and lack of interoperability between GIS products. In this dissertation we describe how a new client-side GIS architecture was developed and implemented as a proof-of-concept application called RADGIS, which is based on open standards and emerging distributed component-based software paradigms. RADGIS reflects the current trend in development focus from Web browser-based applications to customised clients, based on open standards, that make use of distributed Web services. While much attention has been paid to exposing data on the Web, there is growing momentum towards providing “value-added” services. A good example of this is the tremendous industry interest in the provision of location-based services, which has been discussed as a special use-case of our RADGIS architecture. Thus, in the near future client applications will not simply be used to access data transparently, but will also become facilitators for the location-transparent invocation of local and remote services. This flexible architecture will ensure that data can be stored and processed independently of the location of the client that wishes to view or interact with it. Our RADGIS application enables content developers and end-users to create and/or customise GIS applications dynamically at runtime through the incorporation of GIS services. This ensures that the client application has the flexibility to withstand changing levels of expertise or user requirements. These GIS services are implemented as components that execute locally on the client machine, or as remote CORBA Objects or EJBs. Assembly and deployment of these components is achieved using a specialised XML descriptor. This XML descriptor is written using a markup language that we developed specifically for this purpose, called DGCML, which contains deployment information, as well as a GUI specification and links to an XML-based help system that can be merged with the RADGIS client application’s existing help system. Thus, no additional requirements are imposed on object developers by the RADGIS architecture, i.e. there is no need to rewrite existing objects since DGCML acts as a runtime-customisable wrapper, allowing existing objects to be utilised by RADGIS. While the focus of this thesis has been on overcoming the above-mentioned problems with traditional GIS applications, the work described here can also be applied in a much broader context, especially in the development of highly customisable client applications that are able to integrate Web services at runtime

Environmental science applications with Rapid Integrated Mapping and analysis System (RIMS)

The Rapid Integrated Mapping and analysis System (RIMS) has been developed at the University of New Hampshire as an online instrument for multidisciplinary data visualization, analysis and manipulation with a focus on hydrological applications. Recently it was enriched with data and tools to allow more sophisticated analysis of interdisciplinary data. Three different examples of specific scientific applications with RIMS are demonstrated and discussed. Analysis of historical changes in major components of the Eurasian pan-Arctic water budget is based on historical discharge data, gridded observational meteorological fields, and remote sensing data for sea ice area. Express analysis of the extremely hot and dry summer of 2010 across European Russia is performed using a combination of near-real time and historical data to evaluate the intensity and spatial distribution of this event and its socioeconomic impacts. Integrative analysis of hydrological, water management, and population data for Central Asia over the last 30 years provides an assessment of regional water security due to changes in climate, water use and demography. The presented case studies demonstrate the capabilities of RIMS as a powerful instrument for hydrological and coupled human-natural systems research

On-Demand Monitoring of Construction Projects through a Game-Like Hybrid Application of BIM and Machine Learning

While unavoidable, inspections, progress monitoring, and comparing as-planned with as-built conditions in construction projects do not readily add tangible intrinsic value to the end-users. In large-scale construction projects, the process of monitoring the implementation of every single part of buildings and reflecting them on the BIM models can become highly labour intensive and error-prone, due to the vast amount of data produced in the form of schedules, reports and photo logs. In order to address the mentioned methodological and technical gap, this paper presents a framework and a proof of concept prototype for on-demand automated simulation of construction projects, integrating some cutting edge IT solutions, namely image processing, machine learning, BIM and Virtual Reality. This study utilised the Unity game engine to integrate data from the original BIM models and the as-built images, which were processed via various computer vision techniques. These methods include object recognition and semantic segmentation for identifying different structural elements through supervised training in order to superimpose the real world images on the as-planned model. The proposed framework leads to an automated update of the 3D virtual environment with states of the construction site. This framework empowers project managers and stockholders with an advanced decision-making tool, highlighting the inconsistencies in an effective manner. This paper contributes to body knowledge by providing a technical exemplar for the integration of ML and image processing approaches with immersive and interactive BIM interfaces, the algorithms and program codes of which can help replicability of these approaches by other scholars