SWITCH Innovation Lab: “Image to Concept”: Final Project Report

By means of its “Research Data Connectome”, SWITCH, the Swiss national infrastructure service provider for higher education and research, seeks to connect open research using linked open data technologies. The goal is to make the data accessible, interoperable and valuable for research, education and innovation. In order to kick-start the development of new services, SWITCH carries out so-called “InnoLab” projects which have an experimental character and are geared towards generating quick learnings. The present InnoLab project brought together researchers and software developers from SWITCH, Wikimedia Sverige, the University of Applied Sciences of the Grisons as well as the Bern University of Applied Sciences. The goal was to develop a microservice that supports the semi-automatic tagging of images in order to interlink them with concepts on Wikidata. It thus facilitates the search and discovery of relevant images by researchers and other interested parties. The microservice builds upon an existing crowdsourcing tool, the ISA Tool, that has been deployed on Wikimedia Commons in 2019 where it is used to apply “depicts” statements describing the content of images stored in the free media repository. The semi-automatic tagging functionality added to the ISA Tool in the course of the present project relies on two distinct algorithms: One of them is used to extract entities from the image itself. For this purpose, the Google Cloud Vision service available on Wikimedia Commons is used. The other one extracts entities from the image metadata, thus leveraging earlier efforts made to describe the content of the images. At the time of writing, the enhanced version of the ISA Tool is available in the test environment and can be used to add “depicts” statements to images on Wikimedia Commons. Plans to deploy it to production have been postponed due to several remaining bugs. The key learnings gained in the course of the project can be summarized as follows: – There are several issues that need to be tackled to allow for wider use and promotion of the ISA Tool: performance issues, reliability issues, improvement of multilingual support. – Once these issues have been resolved, measures should be taken to increase the visibility and take-up of the tool among potential contributors. As an accompanying measure, it would be advisable to assess and monitor the relevance of the ISA Tool in comparison to other tools and methods employed to add Structured Data on Commons. Moreover, activities to further promote the tool among the volunteer community should be accompanied by a dialogue with various stakeholders on what constitutes “good” tagging of images. – The algorithms used for semi-automatic tagging should be further improved and/or complemented; a variety of avenues to be pursued to this effect have been suggested. – Research use cases in the context of the SWITCH Research Data Connectome should be facilitatedby developing alternatives to the current requirement of uploading all media files to Wikimedia Commons. Some initial use cases have been identified in the areas of digital humanities, medicallibraries etc. – Requirements arising from research use cases making use of “depicts” statements beyond theircurrent use for search and discovery should be further investigated. – If the ISA Tool is to be used on a large scale in the context of the SWITCH Research Data Connectome, the conclusion of contractual agreements with service providers may be indicated. Roles and responsibilities with regard to deployment, operations and maintenance need to be clarified

Training of Crisis Mappers and Map Production from Multi-sensor Data: Vernazza Case Study (Cinque Terre National Park, Italy)

This aim of paper is to presents the development of a multidisciplinary project carried out by the cooperation between Politecnico di Torino and ITHACA (Information Technology for Humanitarian Assistance, Cooperation and Action). The goal of the project was the training in geospatial data acquiring and processing for students attending Architecture and Engineering Courses, in order to start up a team of "volunteer mappers". Indeed, the project is aimed to document the environmental and built heritage subject to disaster; the purpose is to improve the capabilities of the actors involved in the activities connected in geospatial data collection, integration and sharing. The proposed area for testing the training activities is the Cinque Terre National Park, registered in the World Heritage List since 1997. The area was affected by flood on the 25th of October 2011. According to other international experiences, the group is expected to be active after emergencies in order to upgrade maps, using data acquired by typical geomatic methods and techniques such as terrestrial and aerial Lidar, close-range and aerial photogrammetry, topographic and GNSS instruments etc.; or by non conventional systems and instruments such us UAV, mobile mapping etc. The ultimate goal is to implement a WebGIS platform to share all the data collected with local authorities and the Civil Protectio

Spatial Aided Decision-making System for E-Government

Non

THE EARLY PHRYGIAN GATE AT GORDION, TURKEY: AN INVESTIGATION OF DRY STONE MASONRY IN SEISMIC REGIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR STABILIZATION

The archaeological site at Gordion, Turkey is located in a region of high seismic activity, which threatens the standing masonry structures—particularly the dry laid limestone walls—of the ancient Phrygian capital. First excavated in the 1950s, the citadel gate is composed of an ashlar limestone veneer encasing a rubble core. Although the gate has been the focus of several conservation efforts, the unreinforced masonry structure requires study and possible stabilization to mitigate and prevent further bulging or even collapse. The gate’s current conditions include extensive cracking, spalls, split faces, missing chinking stones, open joints and bulges, which partially result from the complex history of the site. Constructed around 900 BC, the Early Phrygian Gate only briefly served as the main entryway to the citadel; it was then affected by fire and burial and used as a foundational support for later structures. Partial excavation has largely exposed the North and South Courts of the gate complex. However, several courses of the later building stone remain in localized areas of the gate walls, and the interior of South Court still contains the almost 3,000 year old clay construction fill. These factors have contributed to displacement of the multiple leaf system by exerting lateral force and causing compression and shear cracks. This thesis synthesizes existing knowledge of the behavior of masonry during seismic events, properties of dry stone structures and site-specific characteristics as a basis for constructing recommendations for future monitoring and stabilization efforts

Big Data Computing for Geospatial Applications

The convergence of big data and geospatial computing has brought forth challenges and opportunities to Geographic Information Science with regard to geospatial data management, processing, analysis, modeling, and visualization. This book highlights recent advancements in integrating new computing approaches, spatial methods, and data management strategies to tackle geospatial big data challenges and meanwhile demonstrates opportunities for using big data for geospatial applications. Crucial to the advancements highlighted in this book is the integration of computational thinking and spatial thinking and the transformation of abstract ideas and models to concrete data structures and algorithms

Disaster Relief 2.0: The Future of Information Sharing in Humanitarian Emergencies

Outlines the challenges of and recommendations for creating an effective interface between humanitarian groups and volunteer and technical communities aggregating, visualizing, and analyzing data on and from affected communities to support relief efforts