Remote Sensing Information Sciences Research Group, Santa Barbara Information Sciences Research Group, year 3

Research continues to focus on improving the type, quantity, and quality of information which can be derived from remotely sensed data. The focus is on remote sensing and application for the Earth Observing System (Eos) and Space Station, including associated polar and co-orbiting platforms. The remote sensing research activities are being expanded, integrated, and extended into the areas of global science, georeferenced information systems, machine assissted information extraction from image data, and artificial intelligence. The accomplishments in these areas are examined

Can Learning Geographic Information Systems be Improved for Interdisciplinary Researchers? A Comparative Study of Formal/Informal Learning Approaches and the Relevance of Context

In an increasingly complex world, interdisciplinary approaches in research are becoming necessary to address challenges faced by modern society. Universities are progressively acknowledging this and new collaborative opportunities are being recognised between disciplines. When undertaking Interdisciplinary Research (IDR), words may not have the same meaning in other disciplines and, if a commonly understood methodology of work is not established, there may be confusion or serious misunderstandings. IDR comes with a unique set of challenges and suggested solutions; however, that does not mean they may be implemented so easily. The field of Geography lends itself well to IDR, as it has been described as an integrator for other disciplines. Therefore, a Geographic Information System (GIS) as a spatial analysis tool from Geography may be aligned for IDR. However, GIS in IDR adds another dimension of complexity, as those who need to learn it may have difficulties doing so. GIS educators and educational materials try to help quickly skill people up in new areas; however, how are these efforts perceived by interdisciplinary researchers and can they be improved upon? This research begins by highlighting that challenges in IDR, which relate to issues including conflicts or gaps of knowledge between disciplines, time constraints, differing agendas or personality conflicts. These may be addressed through training and building relationships with other learners. To understand the concepts of learning, various educational theories and learning approaches were reviewed to ascertain ways of framing and presenting educational resources. From older theories, such as behaviourism, to more contemporary ones, such as context based learning, educators can improve their practices and materials to hopefully better suit the learner by understanding who the learner is, what they wish to learn and how they would go about learning it (in this case, GIS). Determining which GIS concepts are of interest to interdisciplinary learners required the use of a standard structure to investigate them. International GIS curricula were evaluated, which included the NCGIA Core Curriculum and its successor the Geographic Information Science and Technology Body of Knowledge. The Knowledge Areas and descriptions of topics from the latter were selected to frame concepts in a flexible way for activity contexts for this research. With challenges in IDR and suggested solutions highlighted as well as categories of GIS concepts to explore, an analysis of existing IDR studies that used GIS is carried out to determine current approaches to using GIS and where they succeed and fail. This involved gathering information from relevant research articles by mining Google Scholar and a year-long survey, administered online, that asked interdisciplinary researchers that learned GIS how they went about doing so. A more in-depth exploration was then carried out through a series of interviews with interdisciplinary researchers to understand why they learned GIS in the way they did and the contexts they applied it in. Additionally, a review of learning diaries kept by GIS learners to provide insight into their own learning process was carried out. Overview findings from Google Scholar and the survey show difficulties come from gaps in knowledge around GIS and that training opportunities are looked upon favourably. The interviews and learning diaries highlighted that people believed face-to-face training was a time efficient manner of learning, in comparison to informal methods (e.g. internet searches, watching videos, etc.). Altogether, the results showed interest in web GIS platforms and using a GIS to create, analyse and visualise contextually relevant data, which related back to core concepts from the Geographic Information Science & Technology Body of Knowledge. Based on these findings, an online resource was developed to teach GIS concepts identified as important to interdisciplinary researchers, through contextually relevant lessons, minimising on extra-disciplinary information and simplifying GIS terms. This was used to explore contextual relevance of lessons and formal and informal learning approaches with interdisciplinary researchers. It was found that while context may play a role, motivation for learning GIS may be a more important factor. Additionally, training resources must be mindful about language used to improve understanding. This work provides guidance on what to change for GIS learning materials and teaching approaches to better accommodate IDR and learners outside the discipline

Cognitive aspects of work with digital maps

Digital maps of geographic areas are increasingly common in many types of workplace, in education and in the public domain. Their interactivity and visual features, and the complexity of geographic(al) information systems (GIS) which create, edit and manipulate them, create special cognitive demands on the end-user which are not present in traditional cartographic maps or in most human-computer interaction (HCI). This thesis reviews cross-disciplinary literature regarding cognitive aspects of viewing and interacting with digital maps. Data from an observational study of GIS use, including real-time recordings of normal workplace activities, was analysed using various approaches to examine the interactive and visual aspects of people's work. The implications for cartographic, psychological and HeI aspects of GIS are discussed, in the context of the actual tasks people perform with them (rather than the computationally advanced analyses assumed by most literature). The second phase of the research examined the spatial knowledge attained and used during this interaction. The relevance of specific concepts in cognitive psychology, and of factors that create individual differences in cognition, are discussed in depth, alongside work in environmental and educational psychology, cartography and geography. A controlled experiment examined the degree to which task characteristics induce a different spatial model or reference frame when viewing a digital map. It was shown that even novice users can switch between considering the map as an abstract geometric display or as a geographical representation, without affecting performance. However, tasks forcing subjects to focus entirely on the geometry rather than the geography did affect performance in a surprise post-test photograph identification task. Map users' mental model or reference frame is apparently affected by these task constraints; this has implications for GIS design and practice as well as for understanding spatial cognition The study also considered the role of expertise and other individual difference factors, although conclusions were limited by sample size. Further research issues are highlighted, particularly regarding the knowledge structures and spatial language used in interpreting digital maps

Grounding for a computational model of place

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2006.Text printed 2 columns per page.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 66-70).Places are spatial locations that have been given meaning by human experience. The sense of a place is it's support for experiences and the emotional responses associated with them. This sense provides direction and focus for our daily lives. Physical maps and their electronic decedents deconstruct places into discrete data and require user interpretation to reconstruct the original sense of place. Is it possible to create maps that preserve this sense of place and successfully communicate it to the user? This thesis presents a model, and an application upon that model, that captures sense of place for translation, rather then requires the user to recreate it from disparate data. By grounding a human place-sense for machine interpretation, new presentations of space can be presented that more accurately mirror human cognitive conceptions. By using measures of semantic distance a user can observe the proximity of place not only in distance but also by context or association. Applications built upon this model can then construct representations that show places that are similar in feeling or reasonable destinations given the user's current location.(cont.) To accomplish this, the model attempts to understand place in the context a human might by using commonsense reasoning to analyze textual descriptions of place, and implicit statements of support for the role of these places in natural activity. It produces a semantic description of a place in terms of human action and emotion. Representations built upon these descriptions can offer powerful changes in the cognitive processing of space.Matthew Curtis Hockenberry.S.M

GIS maps as powerful curriculum artefacts

Maps have always been central to high quality geography education. Recent developments in web GIS have opened up new potential for teachers using GIS maps as powerful curriculum artefacts. Curriculum artefacts are resources that have signature meaning for teaching and learning. This paper argues that the use of GIS maps as curriculum artefacts can significantly enhance geography teaching and learning in schools. To illustrate this line of argument, a GIS curriculum artefact constructed in ESRI ArcGIS Online is critically evaluated using Maude’s typology of powerful geography knowledge as an analytical framework. The analysis identifies a number of educational benefits of using GIS maps as curriculum artefacts in school geography via a GeoCapabilities approach. The paper concludes with recommendations for the future geography curriculum development with GIS map artefacts in schools

Instructional geographic information science: map overlay and spatial abilities

The fundamental goal of this study is to determine if the complex spatial concept of map overlay can be effectively learned by young adolescents through the utilization of an instructional technique based within the foundations of Instructional Geographic Information Science (InGIScience). Percent correct and reaction times were the measures used to analyze the ability of young adolescents to learn the intersect, erase, and union functions of map overlay. The ability to solve for missing inputs, output, or function was also analyzed. Young adolescents of the test group scored higher percent correct and recorded faster reaction times than those of the control group or adults of the expert group by the end of the experiment. The intersect function of map overlay was more difficult in terms of percent correct and reaction time than the erase or union functions. Solving for the first or second input consistently resulted in lower percent correct and higher reaction times throughout the experiment. No overall performance differences were shown to exist between males and females. Results of a subjective "real-world" test also indicated learning by young adolescents. This study has shown that the practice of repetitive instruction and testing has proven effective for enhancing spatial abilities with regard to the map overlay concept. This study found that with practice, young adolescents can learn the map overlay concept and perform at levels equal to or greater than adults. This study has helped to answer the question of whether this development of spatial abilities is possible

Staging urban emergence through collective creativity: Devising an outdoor mobile augmented reality tool

The unpredictability of global geopolitical conflicts, economic trends, and impacts of climate change, coupled with an increasing urban population, necessitates a more profound commitment to resilience thinking in urban planning and design. In contrast to top-down planning and designing for sustainability, allowing for emergence to take place seems to contribute to a capacity to better deal with this complex unpredictability, by allowing incremental changes through bottom-up, self-organized adaptation made by diverse actors in the proximity of various social, economical and functional entities in the urban context.The present thesis looks into the processes of creating urban emergence from both theoretical and practical perspectives. The theoretical section of the thesis first looks into the relationship between the processes and the qualities of a compact city. The Japanese city of Tokyo is used as an example of a resilient compact city that continuously emerges through incremental micro-adaptations by individual actors guided by urban rules that ‘let it happen’ without much central control or top-down design of the individual outcomes. The thesis then connects such rule-based emergent processes and the qualities of a compact city to complex adaptive system’s (CAS) theory, emphasizing the value of incremental and individual multiple-stakeholder input. The latter part of the thesis focuses on how to create a platform that can combine the bottom-up, emergent, rule-based planning approaches, and collective creativity based on individual participation and input from the public. This section is dedicated to developing a tool for a collaborative urban design using outdoor mobile augmented reality (MAR) by research-through-design method.The thesis thus has three parts addressing the topics: 1. urban planning processes and resulting urban qualities concerning compact city – i.e., density and diversity; 2. the processes of urban emergence, which generates complexity that renders urban resilience from the urban planning theory perspective; 3. developing a tool for non-expert citizens and other stakeholders to design and visualize an urban neighborhood by simulating the rule-based urban emergence using outdoor MAR. The results include a proposal for a complementary hybrid planning approaches that might approximate the CAS in urban systems with qualities that contribute to urban resiliency. Thereafter, the results describe specifications and design criteria for a tool as a public collaborative design platform using outdoor MAR to promote public participation: Urban CoBuilder. The processes of developing and prototyping such a tool to test various urban concepts concerning identified adaptive urban planning approaches are also presented with an assessment of the MAR tool based on focus group user tests. Future studies need to better include the potential of crowdsourcing public creativity through mass participation using the collaborative design tool and actual integration of these participatory design results in urban policies