GeoKey - open infrastructure for community mapping and science

The development of the geospatial web (GeoWeb) over the past decade opened up opportunities for collaborative mapping and large scale data collection at unprecedented scales. Projects such as OpenStreetMap, which engage hundreds of thousands of volunteers in different aspects of mapping physical and human-made objects, to eBird, which records millions of bird observations from across the globe. While these collaborative mapping efforts are impressive in their scale and reach, there is another type of mapping which is localised, frequently carried out over a limited period of time, and aims at solving a specific issue that the people who are living in the locality are facing. These needs are addressed in participatory mapping, which nowadays includes citizen science elements in data collection and management. The paper describes the background and design of a novel infrastructure for participatory mapping and science – GeoKey. The paper provides a differentiation between collaborative and participatory mapping, describes the state of the art and several use cases of community mapping, and the architecture of GeoKey, focussing both on the approaches to data capture and subsequent potential to share the data in an open manner where possible. It also describes the design elements that support learning and creativity in these project

Representations of Environmental Data in Web-based GIS

The GIS community is using the vast potential of the Internet to disseminate geospatial information. Web-based GIS software and services are key components in distribution of geospatial data. Web-based GIS provide government departments, local authorities and environmental agencies with unprecedented opportunities to offer online access to their environmental information and related services for citizens. Web-based GIS offers access to information services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. In order for web-GIS to be successful in delivering environmental information the representation of the input datasets and output delivery formats/structures must be suitable to both the Internet delivery medium and the intended audience. In the majority of cases this will involve conversion and re-modelling of existing data resources. This paper discusses representations of environmental data for delivery and dissemination using web-based GIS in order to serve a variety of stakeholders : policy makers, scientists, media, and the general public. We summarise the major issues for delivering complex geospatial data about the environment using this medium. Prioritisation of metadata collection and geospatial data interoperability are crucial factors in delivering effective web-GIS tools. The INSPIRE Directive will greatly increase the number of available data sources and the use of webbased GIS for environmental information provision in the future will be discussed

Accessing Wireless Sensor Networks Via Dynamically Reconfigurable Interaction Models

The Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) technology is already perceived as fundamental for science across many domains, since it provides a low cost solution for environment monitoring. WSNs representation via the service concept and its inclusion in Web environments, e.g. through Web services, supports particularly their open/standard access and integration. Although such Web enabled WSNs simplify data access, network parameterization and aggregation, the existing interaction models and run-time adaptation mechanisms available to clients are still scarce. Nevertheless, applications increasingly demand richer and more flexible accesses besides the traditional client/server. For instance, applications may require a streaming model in order to avoid sequential data requests, or the asynchronous notification of subscribed data through the publish/subscriber. Moreover, the possibility to automatically switch between such models at runtime allows applications to define flexible context-based data acquisition. To this extent, this paper discusses the relevance of the session and pattern abstractions on the design of a middleware prototype providing richer and dynamically reconfigurable interaction models to Web enabled WSNs

Online participation: the Woodberry Down experiment

The internet and world wide web are generating radical changes in the way we are able tocommunicate. Our ability to engage communities and individuals in designing theirenvironment is also beginning to change as new digital media provide ways in whichindividuals and groups can interact with planners and politicians in exploring their future.This paper tells the story of how the residents of one of the most disadvantagedcommunities in Britain ? the Woodberry Down Estate in the London borough ofHackney ? have begun to use an online system which delivers everything from routineservices about their housing to ideas about options for their future. Woodberry Down isone of the biggest regeneration projects in Western Europe. It will take at least 10 years,probably much longer, to complete, at a cost of over £150 million. Online participation isone of the many ways in which this community is being engaged but as we will show, itis beginning to act as a catalyst. The kinds of networks which are evolving aroundsystems like these will change the nature of participation itself, the ways we need to thinkabout it, and the ways we need to respond. Before the experiment is described, we set thecontext by describing the wide range of digital media for communicating plans andplanning which suggests a new typology for web participation consistent with this fastemerging network culture

Methods and apparatus for constructing and implementing a universal extension module for processing objects in a database

Methods and apparatus for providing a multi-tier object-relational database architecture are disclosed. In one illustrative embodiment of the present invention, a multi-tier database architecture comprises an object-relational database engine as a top tier, one or more domain-specific extension modules as a bottom tier, and one or more universal extension modules as a middle tier. The individual extension modules of the bottom tier operationally connect with the one or more universal extension modules which, themselves, operationally connect with the database engine. The domain-specific extension modules preferably provide such functions as search, index, and retrieval services of images, video, audio, time series, web pages, text, XML, spatial data, etc. The domain-specific extension modules may include one or more IBM DB2 extenders, Oracle data cartridges and/or Informix datablades, although other domain-specific extension modules may be used

Multimedia data integration and retrieval in planning support systems

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1998.Includes bibliographical references (p. 83-86).by Carleton Tsui.M.C.P

Application of new technologies in the virtual library: Seminars in Turkey, Portugal, and Spain

This paper focuses on the technologies that are available today to support the concept of a virtual library. The concept of a 'virtual library' or a 'library without walls' is meant to convey the idea that information in any format should be available to the end-user from the desktop as if it were located on the local workstation. Discussed here are the background, trends, technology enablers, end-user requirements, and the NASA Access Mechanism (NAM) system, one example of how it is possible to apply existing technologies to the client server architecture to logically centralize geographically distributed applications and information