Rising waters : integrating national datasets for the visualisation of diminishing spatial entities

Preparing for the potential changes wrought by climate change can be grounded in commonly integrated real data. Efforts by various countries to prepare for such potentialities have resulted in a stepped- approach to data management and integration. Small island states experience an added burden through data limitations, disparate datasets and data hoarding. This paper reviews the processes employed in Malta that target a spatio-temporal analysis of current and future climate change scenarios aimed at integrating environmental, spatial planning and social data in line with the transposition of the Aarhus Convention, the INSPIRE Directive (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community) and the SEIS (Shared Environmental Information System) initiative. The study analyses potential physical and social aspects that will be impacted by sea-level rise in the Maltese islands. Scenarios include the analysis of areas that will be inundated, the methodology employed to carry out the analysis, and the relative impacts on land use and environmental, infrastructural and population loss. Spatial information systems and 3D outputs illustrate outcome scenarios.peer-reviewe

Geoinformatics for the conservation and promotion of cultural heritage in support of the UN Sustainable Development Goals

Cultural Heritage (CH) is recognised as being of historical, social, and anthropological value and is considered as an enabler of sustainable development. As a result, it is included in the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 11 and 8. SDG 11.4 emphasises the protection and safeguarding of heritage, and SDG 8.9 aims to promote sustainable tourism that creates jobs and promotes local culture and products. This paper briefly reviews the geoinformatics technologies of photogrammetry, remote sensing, and spatial information science and their application to CH. Detailed aspects of CH-related SDGs, comprising protection and safeguarding, as well as the promotion of sustainable tourism are outlined. Contributions of geoinformatics technologies to each of these aspects are then identified and analysed. Case studies in both developing and developed countries, supported by funding directed at the UN SDGs, are presented to illustrate the challenges and opportunities of geoinformatics to enhance CH protection and to promote sustainable tourism. The potential and impact of geoinformatics for the measurement of official SDG indicators, as well as UNESCO's Culture for Development Indicators, are discussed. Based on analysis of the review and the presented case studies, it is concluded that the contribution of geoinformatics to the achievement of CH SDGs is necessary, significant and evident. Moreover, following the UNESCO initiative to introduce CH into the sustainable development agenda and related ICOMOS action plan, the concept of Sustainable Cultural Heritage is defined, reflecting the significance of CH to the United Nations' ambition to "transform our world"

Continuous maintenance and the future – Foundations and technological challenges

High value and long life products require continuous maintenance throughout their life cycle to achieve required performance with optimum through-life cost. This paper presents foundations and technologies required to offer the maintenance service. Component and system level degradation science, assessment and modelling along with life cycle ‘big data’ analytics are the two most important knowledge and skill base required for the continuous maintenance. Advanced computing and visualisation technologies will improve efficiency of the maintenance and reduce through-life cost of the product. Future of continuous maintenance within the Industry 4.0 context also identifies the role of IoT, standards and cyber security

What does it take to make integrated care work? A ‘cookbook’ for large-scale deployment of coordinated care and telehealth

The Advancing Care Coordination & Telehealth Deployment (ACT) Programme is the first to explore the organisational and structural processes needed to successfully implement care coordination and telehealth (CC&TH) services on a large scale. A number of insights and conclusions were identified by the ACT programme. These will prove useful and valuable in supporting the large-scale deployment of CC&TH. Targeted at populations of chronic patients and elderly people, these insights and conclusions are a useful benchmark for implementing and exchanging best practices across the EU. Examples are: Perceptions between managers, frontline staff and patients do not always match; Organisational structure does influence the views and experiences of patients: a dedicated contact person is considered both important and helpful; Successful patient adherence happens when staff are engaged; There is a willingness by patients to participate in healthcare programmes; Patients overestimate their level of knowledge and adherence behaviour; The responsibility for adherence must be shared between patients and health care providers; Awareness of the adherence concept is an important factor for adherence promotion; The ability to track the use of resources is a useful feature of a stratification strategy, however, current regional case finding tools are difficult to benchmark and evaluate; Data availability and homogeneity are the biggest challenges when evaluating the performance of the programmes

A digital information model framework for uas-enabled bridge inspection

Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) provide two main functions with regards to bridge inspections: (1) high-quality digital imaging to detect element defects; (2) spatial point cloud data for the reconstruction of 3D asset models. With UAS being a relatively new inspection method, there is little in the way of existing framework for storing, processing and managing the resulting inspection data. This study has proposed a novel methodology for a digital information model covering data acquisition through to a 3D GIS visualisation environment, also capable of integrating within a bridge management system (BMS). Previous efforts focusing on visualisation functionality have focused on BIM and GIS as separate entities, which has a number of problems associated with it. This methodology has a core focus on the integration of BIM and GIS, providing an effective and efficient information model, which provides vital visual context to inspectors and users of the BMS. Three-dimensional GIS visualisation allows the user to navigate through a fully interactive environment, where element level inspection information can be obtained through point-and-click operations on the 3D structural model. Two visualisation environments were created: a web-based GIS application and a desktop solution. Both environments develop a fully interactive, user-friendly model which have fulfilled the aims of coordinating and streamlining the BMS process.publishedVersio

The Venetian Ghetto : Semantic Modelling for an Integrated Analysis

In the digital era, historians are embracing information technology as a research tool. New technologies offer investigation and interpretation, synthesis and communication tools that are more effective than the more traditional study methods, as they guarantee a multidisciplinary approach and analyses integration. Among the available technologies the best suited for the study or urban phenomena are databases (DB), the Geographic Information System (GIS), the Building Information Modelling (BIM) and the multimedia tools (Video, APP) for the dissemination of results. The case study described here concerns the analysis of part of Venice that changed its appearance from 1516 onwards, with the creation of the Jewish Ghetto. This was an event that would have repercussions throughout Europe, changing the course of history. Our research confirms that the exclusive use of one of the systems mentioned above (DB, GIS, BIM) makes it possible to manage the complexity of the subject matter only partially. Consequently, it became necessary to analyse the possible interactions between such tools, so as to create a link between an alphanumeric DB and a geographical DB. The use of only GIS and BIM that provide for a 4D time management of objects turned out to be able to manage information and geometry in an effective and scalable way, providing a starting point for the mapping in depth of the historical analysis. Software products for digital modelling have changed in nature over time, going from simple viewing tools to simulation tools. The reconstruction of the time phases of the three Ghettos (Nuovo, Vecchio, and Nuovissimo) and their visualisation through digital narratives of the history of that specific area of the city, for instance through videos, is making it possible for an increasing number of scholars and the general public to access the results of the study

GeoBIM for built environment condition assessment supporting asset management decision making

The digital transformation in management of the built environment is more and more evident. While the benefits of location data, from Building Information Modelling or Geographical Information Systems, have been explored separately, their combination - GeoBIM - in asset management has never been explored. Data collection for condition assessment is challenging due to quantity, types, frequency and quality of data. We first describe the opportunities and challenges of GeoBIM for condition assessment. The theoretical approach is then validated developing an integrated GeoBIM model of the digital built environment, for a neighbourhood in Milan, Italy. Data are collected, linked, processed and analysed, through multiple software platforms, providing relevant information for asset management decision making. Good results are achieved in rapid massive data collection, improved visualisation, and analysis. While further testing and development is required, the case study outcomes demonstrated the innovation and the mid-term service-oriented potential of the proposed approach

Science Mapping for Recent Research Regarding Urban Underground Infrastructure

The presented research conducted a bibliometric analysis regarding academic publications, especially journal publications, in the area of urban underground infrastructure (UI) systems (which include sewer pipes, drinking water pipes, cables, tunnels, etc.). In total, 547 journal papers published from 2002 to July 2022 (around 20 years period) were retrieved from Scopus using the proposed data collection method. Bibliometric analysis was conducted to extract and map the hidden information from retrieved papers. As a result, networks regarding co-citation, co-authorship, and keywords co-occurrence were generated to visualise and analyse the knowledge domain, patterns, and relationships. The eight most investigated topics in the UI research are identified and discussed, which provides an overview of the research history and focuses. Further, five potential research directions are suggested for researchers in the UI research area. The main contribution of this research is on revealing the knowledge domain of UI research in a quantitative manner as well as identifying the possible research directions

Modelling physiological deterioration in post-operative patient vital-sign data

Patients who undergo upper-gastrointestinal surgery have a high incidence of post-operative complications, often requiring admission to the intensive care unit several days after surgery. A dataset comprising observational vital-sign data from 171 post-operative patients taking part in a two-phase clinical trial at the Oxford Cancer Centre, was used to explore the trajectory of patients’ vital-sign changes during their stay in the post-operative ward using both univariate and multivariate analyses. A model of normality based vital-sign data from patients who had a “normal” recovery was constructed using a kernel density estimate, and tested with “abnormal” data from patients who deteriorated sufficiently to be re-admitted to the intensive care unit. The vital-sign distributions from “normal” patients were found to vary over time from admission to the post-operative ward to their discharge home, but no significant changes in their distributions were observed from halfway through their stay on the ward to the time of discharge. The model of normality identified patient deterioration when tested with unseen “abnormal” data, suggesting that such techniques may be used to provide early warning of adverse physiological events

Using Building Information Modelling to map the composition of glass panes in a historic house

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is widely regarded to be potentially useful for the conservation and management of historic buildings. So far, research in this area has mostly concentrated in geometry: surveying, the parametric modelling of building features and the accurate modelling of complex building shapes. But in order to be fully integrated with conservation practice, Building Information Models need to include other types of data. This paper demonstrates a method to introduce and visualise spatially resolved data within a Building Information Model of a historic building. It focuses on the visualisation of the composition of historic glass and the metadata associated with this measurement. The conclusions are, however, extensible to any type of spatially-resolved material information that can inform building management, conservation and interpretation. The software Dynamo is used to add this functionality to a Revit 3D model. The modelling stage requires the creation of shape families for different types of window. This approach is compared with a similar visualisation produced with ArcGIS, a common Geographic Information System (GIS) software. The Dynamo algorithm successfully adds the visualisation capacity to the BIM model, but it is unlikely that this level of customisation is achievable by the average user. There is a need for further development of technological solutions that combine the visualisation capacity of GIS with ability of BIM to link 3D models and numerical data