Improving the Quality of Citizen Contributed Geodata through Their Historical Contributions:The Case of the Road Network in OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap (OSM) has proven to serve as a promising free global encyclopedia of maps with an increasing popularity across different user communities and research bodies. One of the unique characteristics of OSM has been the availability of the full history of users’ contributions, which can leverage our quality control mechanisms through exploiting the history of contributions. Since this aspect of contributions (i.e., historical contributions) has been neglected in the literature, this study aims at presenting a novel approach for improving the positional accuracy and completeness of the OSM road network. To do so, we present a five-stage approach based on a Voronoi diagram that leads to improving the positional accuracy and completeness of the OSM road network. In the first stage, the OSM data history file is retrieved and in the second stage, the corresponding data elements for each object in the historical versions are identified. In the third stage, data cleaning on the historical datasets is carried out in order to identify outliers and remove them accordingly. In the fourth stage, through applying the Voronoi diagram method, one representative version for each set of historical versions is extracted. In the final stage, through examining the spatial relations for each object in the history file, the topology of the target object is enhanced. As per validation, a comparison between the latest version of the OSM data and the result of our approach against a reference dataset is carried out. Given a case study in Tehran, our findings reveal that the completeness and positional precision of OSM features can be improved up to 14%. Our conclusions draw attention to the exploitation of the historical archive of the contributions in OSM as an intrinsic quality indicator

Prise en compte des dépendances entre données thématiques utilisateur et données topographiques lors d’un changement de niveau de détail

With the large availability of reference topographic data, creating geographic data is not exclusive to experts of geographic information any more. More and more users rely on reference data to create their own data, hereafter called thematic data. Reference data then play the role of support for thematic data. Thematic data make sense by themselves, but even more by their relations with topographic data. Not taking into account the relations between thematic and topographic data during processes that modify the former or the latter may cause inconsistencies, especially for processes that are related to changing the level of detail. The objective of this thesis is to define a methodology to preserve the consistency between thematic and topographic when the level of detail is modified. This thesis focuses on the adaptation of thematic data after a modification of topographic data: we call this process thematic data migration. We first propose a model for the migration of punctual thematic data hosted by a network. This model is composed of: (1) a model to describe the referencing of thematic data on topographic data using spatial relations (2) a method to re-locate thematic data based on these relations. The approach consists in identifying the expected final relations according to the initial relations and the modifications of topographic data between the initial and the final state. The thematic data are then re-located using a multi-criteria method in order to satisfy, as much as possible, the expected relations. An implementation is presented on toy problems and on a real use case provided by a French public authority in charge of road network management. The extension of the proposed model to take into account the relations for other applications than thematic data migration is also discussedAvec l'importante disponibilité de données topographiques de référence, la création des données géographiques n'est plus réservée aux professionnels de l'information géographique. De plus en plus d'utilisateurs saisissent leurs propres données, que nous appelons données thématiques, en s'appuyant sur ces données de référence qui jouent alors le rôle de données support. Les données thématiques ainsi saisies font sens en tant que telles, mais surtout de par leurs relations avec les données topographiques. La non prise en compte des relations entre données thématiques et topographiques lors de traitements modifiant les unes ou les autres peut engendrer des incohérences, notamment pour les traitements liés au changement de niveau de détail. L'objectif de la thèse est de définir une méthodologie pour préserver la cohérence entre les données thématiques et topographiques lors d'un changement de niveau de détail. Nous nous concentrons sur l'adaptation des données thématiques suite à une modification des données topographiques, processus que nous appelons migration des données thématiques. Nous proposons d'abord un modèle pour la migration de données thématiques ponctuelles sur réseau composé de : (1) un modèle pour décrire le référencement des données thématiques sur les données topographiques par des relations spatiales (2) une méthode de relocalisation basée sur ces relations. L'approche consiste à identifier les relations finales attendues en fonction des relations initiales et des changements sur les données topographiques entre les états initial et final. La relocalisation est alors effectuée grâce à une méthode multicritère de manière à respecter au mieux les relations attendues. Une mise en œuvre est présentée sur des cas d'étude jouets et sur un cas réel fourni par un service de l'Etat gestionnaire de réseau routier. Nous discutons enfin l'extension du modèle proposé pour traiter la prise en compte des relations pour d'autres applications que la migration de données thématique

Security of Cyber-Physical Systems

Cyber-physical system (CPS) innovations, in conjunction with their sibling computational and technological advancements, have positively impacted our society, leading to the establishment of new horizons of service excellence in a variety of applicational fields. With the rapid increase in the application of CPSs in safety-critical infrastructures, their safety and security are the top priorities of next-generation designs. The extent of potential consequences of CPS insecurity is large enough to ensure that CPS security is one of the core elements of the CPS research agenda. Faults, failures, and cyber-physical attacks lead to variations in the dynamics of CPSs and cause the instability and malfunction of normal operations. This reprint discusses the existing vulnerabilities and focuses on detection, prevention, and compensation techniques to improve the security of safety-critical systems

Dwelling on ontology - semantic reasoning over topographic maps

The thesis builds upon the hypothesis that the spatial arrangement of topographic features, such as buildings, roads and other land cover parcels, indicates how land is used. The aim is to make this kind of high-level semantic information explicit within topographic data. There is an increasing need to share and use data for a wider range of purposes, and to make data more definitive, intelligent and accessible. Unfortunately, we still encounter a gap between low-level data representations and high-level concepts that typify human qualitative spatial reasoning. The thesis adopts an ontological approach to bridge this gap and to derive functional information by using standard reasoning mechanisms offered by logic-based knowledge representation formalisms. It formulates a framework for the processes involved in interpreting land use information from topographic maps. Land use is a high-level abstract concept, but it is also an observable fact intimately tied to geography. By decomposing this relationship, the thesis correlates a one-to-one mapping between high-level conceptualisations established from human knowledge and real world entities represented in the data. Based on a middle-out approach, it develops a conceptual model that incrementally links different levels of detail, and thereby derives coarser, more meaningful descriptions from more detailed ones. The thesis verifies its proposed ideas by implementing an ontology describing the land use ‘residential area’ in the ontology editor Protégé. By asserting knowledge about high-level concepts such as types of dwellings, urban blocks and residential districts as well as individuals that link directly to topographic features stored in the database, the reasoner successfully infers instances of the defined classes. Despite current technological limitations, ontologies are a promising way forward in the manner we handle and integrate geographic data, especially with respect to how humans conceptualise geographic space

Eye quietness and quiet eye in expert and novice golf performance: an electrooculographic analysis

Quiet eye (QE) is the final ocular fixation on the target of an action (e.g., the ball in golf putting). Camerabased eye-tracking studies have consistently found longer QE durations in experts than novices; however, mechanisms underlying QE are not known. To offer a new perspective we examined the feasibility of measuring the QE using electrooculography (EOG) and developed an index to assess ocular activity across time: eye quietness (EQ). Ten expert and ten novice golfers putted 60 balls to a 2.4 m distant hole. Horizontal EOG (2ms resolution) was recorded from two electrodes placed on the outer sides of the eyes. QE duration was measured using a EOG voltage threshold and comprised the sum of the pre-movement and post-movement initiation components. EQ was computed as the standard deviation of the EOG in 0.5 s bins from –4 to +2 s, relative to backswing initiation: lower values indicate less movement of the eyes, hence greater quietness. Finally, we measured club-ball address and swing durations. T-tests showed that total QE did not differ between groups (p = .31); however, experts had marginally shorter pre-movement QE (p = .08) and longer post-movement QE (p < .001) than novices. A group × time ANOVA revealed that experts had less EQ before backswing initiation and greater EQ after backswing initiation (p = .002). QE durations were inversely correlated with EQ from –1.5 to 1 s (rs = –.48 - –.90, ps = .03 - .001). Experts had longer swing durations than novices (p = .01) and, importantly, swing durations correlated positively with post-movement QE (r = .52, p = .02) and negatively with EQ from 0.5 to 1s (r = –.63, p = .003). This study demonstrates the feasibility of measuring ocular activity using EOG and validates EQ as an index of ocular activity. Its findings challenge the dominant perspective on QE and provide new evidence that expert-novice differences in ocular activity may reflect differences in the kinematics of how experts and novices execute skills

Urban food strategies in Central and Eastern Europe: what's specific and what's at stake?

Integrating a larger set of instruments into Rural Development Programmes implied an increasing focus on monitoring and evaluation. Against the highly diversified experience with regard to implementation of policy instruments the Common Monitoring and Evaluation Framework has been set up by the EU Commission as a strategic and streamlined method of evaluating programmes’ impacts. Its indicator-based approach mainly reflects the concept of a linear, measure-based intervention logic that falls short of the true nature of RDP operation and impact capacity on rural changes. Besides the different phases of the policy process, i.e. policy design, delivery and evaluation, the regional context with its specific set of challenges and opportunities seems critical to the understanding and improvement of programme performance. In particular the role of local actors can hardly be grasped by quantitative indicators alone, but has to be addressed by assessing processes of social innovation. This shift in the evaluation focus underpins the need to take account of regional implementation specificities and processes of social innovation as decisive elements for programme performance.

IKUWA6. Shared Heritage

Celebrating the theme ‘Shared heritage’, IKUWA6 (the 6th International Congress for Underwater Archaeology), was the first such major conference to be held in the Asia-Pacific region, and the first IKUWA meeting hosted outside Europe since the organisation’s inception in Germany in the 1990s. A primary objective of holding IKUWA6 in Australia was to give greater voice to practitioners and emerging researchers across the Asia and Pacific regions who are often not well represented in northern hemisphere scientific gatherings of this scale; and, to focus on the areas of overlap in our mutual heritage, techniques and technology. Drawing together peer-reviewed presentations by delegates from across the world who converged in Fremantle in 2016 to participate, this volume covers a stimulating diversity of themes and niche topics of value to maritime archaeology practitioners, researchers, students, historians and museum professionals across the world

Formalising cartographic generalisation knowledge in an ontology to support on-demand mapping

This thesis proposes that on-demand mapping - where the user can choose the geographic features to map and the scale at which to map them - can be supported by formalising, and making explicit, cartographic generalisation knowledge in an ontology. The aim was to capture the semantics of generalisation, in the form of declarative knowledge, in an ontology so that it could be used by an on-demand mapping system to make decisions about what generalisation algorithms are required to resolve a given map condition, such as feature congestion, caused by a change in scale. The lack of a suitable methodology for designing an application ontology was identified and remedied by the development of a new methodology that was a hybrid of existing domain ontology design methodologies. Using this methodology an ontology that described not only the geographic features but also the concepts of generalisation such as geometric conditions, operators and algorithms was built. A key part of the evaluation phase of the methodology was the implementation of the ontology in a prototype on-demand mapping system. The prototype system was used successfully to map road accidents and the underlying road network at three different scales. A major barrier to on-demand mapping is the need to automatically provide parameter values for generalisation algorithms. A set of measure algorithms were developed to identify the geometric conditions in the features, caused by a change in scale. From this a Degree of Generalisation (DoG) is calculated, which represents the “amount” of generalisation required. The DoG is used as an input to a number of bespoke generalisation algorithms. In particular a road network pruning algorithm was developed that respected the relationship between accidents and road segments. The development of bespoke algorithms is not a sustainable solution and a method for employing the DoG concept with existing generalisation algorithms is required. Consideration was given to how the ontology-driven prototype on-demand mapping system could be extended to use cases other than mapping road accidents and a need for collaboration with domain experts on an ontology for generalisation was identified. Although further testing using different uses cases is required, this work has demonstrated that an ontological approach to on-demand mapping has promise

Personalizovana vizuelizacija geo-informacija iz integrisanih izvora informacija zasnovana na semantici i web tehnologijama

The research subject of this PhD thesis is personalized vizuelization of geo-information originating from integrated geo-information sources, performed within Web-based Geographic Information Systems (Web GIS). The research presented in this PhD thesis includes the definition, design and implementation of Web GIS system architecture that enables personalized visualization of geospatial information based on contextual information. The presented architecture relies on the usage of GeoNis framework for interoperability of GIS applications. GeoNis platform uses a hybrid ontology approach for information integration purposes. By taking advantage of hybrid ontology approach, GeoNis platform provides an infrastructure that enables acquiring geospatial information from a large number of GIS systems, whereas GIS systems implement their interface components in the form of Web services developed according to geospatial information dissemination standards. The presented architecture enables efficient usage of GIS system’s interface components to provide customers with a personalized view over the integrated geo-information available within any of the GIS system integrated within GeoNis platform. The presented architecture of Web Geo-Information System for personalized visualization of geospatial information uses a textual description of user preferences as a baseline for selection of geospatial content from integrated geo-information sources for individual users. A description of user preferences is used to discover geo-information sources within GeoNis platform, whereby user preferences description becomes the basis for the development of user context, in terms of selected information and maps. To discover geo-information sources, described architecture takes advantage of semantic description of integrated geo-information sources, e.g. integrated GIS systems (application). As a semantic description of the integrated geospatial information sources, this process is capable of utilizing domain GeoNis ontology and local ontologies of integrated GIS systems. The model used for storing user’s contextual information within the presented Web GIS system is defined according to the OGC Web Map Context Document specification. The development of a Web GIS system according to the proposed architecture included the development of specification and implementation of a Web service that enables creating, storing and acquiring contextual documents developed for a particular user. Also, this PhD thesis included an implementation of a mechanism that allows the prediction of geospatial context of new Web GIS system user, in terms of the selection of geospatial information and maps for individual Web GIS system user. This mechanism is based on the use of metadata that had to be previously developed for each Web GI Service in the presented Web GIS system architecture. Due to the importance of a symbology used to visualize information in a GIS, an implementation of a Web GIS system for personalized visualization of integrated geospatial information included a development of a specification and implementation of the repository that enables creating, storing and acquiring symbology used to visualize geospatial information