Semantic Tagging on Historical Maps

Tags assigned by users to shared content can be ambiguous. As a possible solution, we propose semantic tagging as a collaborative process in which a user selects and associates Web resources drawn from a knowledge context. We applied this general technique in the specific context of online historical maps and allowed users to annotate and tag them. To study the effects of semantic tagging on tag production, the types and categories of obtained tags, and user task load, we conducted an in-lab within-subject experiment with 24 participants who annotated and tagged two distinct maps. We found that the semantic tagging implementation does not affect these parameters, while providing tagging relationships to well-defined concept definitions. Compared to label-based tagging, our technique also gathers positive and negative tagging relationships. We believe that our findings carry implications for designers who want to adopt semantic tagging in other contexts and systems on the Web.Comment: 10 page

Seafloor characterization using airborne hyperspectral co-registration procedures independent from attitude and positioning sensors

The advance of remote-sensing technology and data-storage capabilities has progressed in the last decade to commercial multi-sensor data collection. There is a constant need to characterize, quantify and monitor the coastal areas for habitat research and coastal management. In this paper, we present work on seafloor characterization that uses hyperspectral imagery (HSI). The HSI data allows the operator to extend seafloor characterization from multibeam backscatter towards land and thus creates a seamless ocean-to-land characterization of the littoral zone

Design Research and Domain Representation

While diverse theories about the nature of design research have been proposed, they are rarely considered in relation to one another across the broader disciplinary field. Discussions of design research paradigms have tended to use overarching binary models for understanding differing knowledge frameworks. This paper focuses on an analysis of theories of design research and the use of Web 3 and open content systems to explore the potential of building more relational modes of conceptual representation. The nature of this project is synthetic, building upon the work of other design theorists and researchers. A number of theoretical frameworks will be discussed and examples of the analysis and modelling of key concepts and information relationships, using concept mapping software, collaborative ontology building systems and semantic wiki technologies will be presented. The potential of building information structures from content relationships that are identified by domain specialists rather than the imposition of formal, top-down, information hierarchies developed by information scientists, will be considered. In particular the opportunity for users to engage with resources through their own knowledge frameworks, rather than through logically rigorous but largely incomprehensible ontological systems, will be explored in relation to building resources for emerging design researchers. The motivation behind this endeavour is not to create a totalising meta-theory or impose order on the ‘ill structured’ and ‘undisciplined’, domain of design. Nor is it to use machine intelligence to ‘solve design problems’. It seeks to create dynamic systems that might help researchers explore design research theories and their various relationships with one another. It is hoped such tools could help novice researchers to better locate their own projects, find reference material, identify knowledge gaps and make new linkages between bodies of knowledge by enabling forms of data-poesis - the freeing of data for different trajectories. Keywords: Design research; Design theory; Methodology; Knowledge systems; Semantic web technologies.</p