12,701 research outputs found
3D and 4D Simulations for Landscape Reconstruction and Damage Scenarios. GIS Pilot Applications
The project 3D and 4D Simulations for Landscape Reconstruction and Damage Scenarios: GIS Pilot
Applications has been devised with the intention to deal with the demand for research, innovation and
applicative methodology on the part of the international programme, requiring concrete results to
increase the capacity to know, anticipate and respond to a natural disaster. This project therefore sets
out to develop an experimental methodology, a wide geodatabase, a connected performant GIS
platform and multifunctional scenarios able to profitably relate the added values deriving from
different geotechnologies, aimed at a series of crucial steps regarding landscape reconstruction, event
simulation, damage evaluation, emergency management, multi-temporal analysis. The Vesuvius area
has been chosen for the pilot application owing to such an impressive number of people and buildings subject to volcanic risk that one could speak in terms of a possible national disaster. The steps of the
project move around the following core elements: creation of models that reproduce the territorial and
anthropic structure of the past periods, and reconstruction of the urbanized area, with temporal
distinctions; three-dimensional representation of the Vesuvius area in terms of infrastructuralresidential
aspects; GIS simulation of the expected event; first examination of the healthcareepidemiological
consequences; educational proposals. This paper represents a proactive contribution
which describes the aims of the project, the steps which constitute a set of specific procedures for the
methodology which we are experimenting, and some thoughts regarding the geodatabase useful to
âpackageâ illustrative elaborations. Since the involvement of the population and adequate hazard
preparedness are very important aspects, some educational and communicational considerations are
presented in connection with the use of geotechnologies to promote the knowledge of risk
Smart Geographic object: Toward a new understanding of GIS Technology in Ubiquitous Computing
One of the fundamental aspects of ubiquitous computing is the instrumentation
of the real world by smart devices. This instrumentation constitutes an
opportunity to rethink the interactions between human beings and their
environment on the one hand, and between the components of this environment on
the other. In this paper we discuss what this understanding of ubiquitous
computing can bring to geographic science and particularly to GIS technology.
Our main idea is the instrumentation of the geographic environment through the
instrumentation of geographic objects composing it. And then investigate how
this instrumentation can meet the current limitations of GIS technology, and
offers a new stage of rapprochement between the earth and its abstraction. As
result, the current research work proposes a new concept we named Smart
Geographic Object SGO. The latter is a convergence point between the smart
objects and geographic objects, two concepts appertaining respectively to
Techniques for augmenting the visualisation of dynamic raster surfaces
Despite their aesthetic appeal and condensed nature, dynamic raster surface representations such as a temporal series of a landform and an attribute series of a socio-economic attribute of an area, are often criticised for the lack of an effective information delivery and interactivity.In this work, we readdress some of the earlier raised reasons for these limitations -information-laden quality of surface datasets, lack of spatial and temporal continuity in the original data, and a limited scope for a real-time interactivity. We demonstrate with examples that the use of four techniques namely the re-expression of the surfaces as a framework of morphometric features, spatial generalisation, morphing, graphic lag and brushing can augment the visualisation of dynamic raster surfaces in temporal and attribute series
An Introduction to Ontology
Analytical philosophy of the last one hundred years has been heavily influenced by a doctrine to the effect that one can arrive at a correct ontology by paying attention to certain superficial (syntactic) features of first-order predicate logic as conceived by Frege and Russell. More specifically, it is a doctrine to the effect that the key to the ontological structure of reality is captured syntactically in the âFaâ (or, in more sophisticated versions, in the âRabâ) of first-order logic, where âFâ stands for what is general in reality and âaâ for what is individual. Hence âf(a)ntologyâ. Because predicate logic has exactly two syntactically different kinds of referring expressionsââFâ, âGâ, âRâ, etc., and âaâ, âbâ, âcâ, etc.âso reality must consist of exactly two correspondingly different kinds of entity: the general (properties, concepts) and the particular (things, objects), the relation between these two kinds of entity being revealed in the predicate-argument structure of atomic formulas in first-order logic
Map Calculus in GIS: a proposal and demonstration
This paper provides a new representation for fields (continuous surfaces) in Geographical Information Systems (GIS), based on the notion of spatial functions and their combinations. Following Tomlin's (1990) Map Algebra, the term 'Map Calculus' is used for this new representation. In Map Calculus, GIS layers are stored as functions, and new layers can be created by combinations of other functions. This paper explains the principles of Map Calculus and demonstrates the creation of function-based layers and their supporting management mechanism. The proposal is based on Church's (1941) Lambda Calculus and elements of functional computer languages (such as Lisp or Scheme)
An "All Hands" Call to the Social Science Community: Establishing a Community Framework for Complexity Modeling Using Agent Based Models and Cyberinfrastructure
To date, many communities of practice (COP) in the social sciences have been struggling with how to deal with rapidly growing bodies of information. Many CoPs across broad disciplines have turned to community frameworks for complexity modeling (CFCMs) but this strategy has been slow to be discussed let alone adopted by the social sciences communities of practice (SS-CoPs). In this paper we urge the SS-CoPs that it is timely to develop and establish a CBCF for the social sciences for two major reasons: the rapid acquisition of data and the emergence of critical cybertools which can facilitate agent-based, spatially-explicit models. The goal of this paper is not to prescribe how a CFCM might be set up but to suggest of what components it might consist and what its advantages would be. Agent based models serve the establishment of a CFCM because they allow robust and diverse inputs and are amenable to output-driven modifications. In other words, as phenomena are resolved by a SS-CoP it is possible to adjust and refine ABMs (and their predictive ability) as a recursive and collective process. Existing and emerging cybertools such as computer networks, digital data collections and advances in programming languages mean the SS-CoP must now carefully consider committing the human organization to enabling a cyberinfrastructure tool. The combination of technologies with human interfaces can allow scenarios to be incorporated through 'if' 'then' rules and provide a powerful basis for addressing the dynamics of coupled and complex social ecological systems (cSESs). The need for social scientists to be more engaged participants in the growing challenges of characterizing chaotic, self-organizing social systems and predicting emergent patterns makes the application of ABMs timely. The enabling of a SS-CoP CFCM human-cyberinfrastructure represents an unprecedented opportunity to synthesize, compare and evaluate diverse sociological phenomena as a cohesive and recursive community-driven process.Community-Based Complex Models, Mathematics, Social Sciences
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