Valorization of urban heritage: modeling UAV 3D data for mobile platforms

The valorisation of the urban heritage is presently one of main topics discussed, mostly in the theme related conferences, treaties, conventions and programs. Mobile platforms (especially smartphones and tablets) may be very useful technological means for the agents in the territory. Admitting these assumptions, we created an information model for a mobile application (app) development, with a specific theme (water and city) that represents and describes architectural elements of a city. The selected architectural elements are those related with the water supply system in Lisbon built from XVIII to the XIX century. The inclusion of these elements in a mobile platform requires 3D modelling, improving the visualization and alphanumeric information access (e.g. historical) very useful to the agents (in particular to the city visitors). 3D models were created based on terrestrial and UAV surveys, considering rapid and authentic data acquisition. The stages of building the models were: i) Data acquisition (UAV - flight planning and image acquisition); ii) Data processing; iii) Data visualization (App/AR). The created models are very realistic. However, the results may differ when processing the data in different software, especially concerning the level of detail. The technical challenge is to simplify the models to use in mobile platforms and maintain the level of realism. The Communication will present a case study of 3D modelling with UAV data and their representation in an Augmented Reality environment through mobile platforms

Map-Making Informing a Framework for Effective Theory-Building

As academic scholars in an applied field our central mission is to develop theory that both contributes knowledge to the academic discipline and applies that knowledge to practice. However, our efforts in this regard are being impacted by communication deficits that in turn limit the effectiveness of our theories. The goal of this paper is twofold: a diagnostic one, which reviews the causes of the communication deficits but primarily a therapeutic one whereby we propose a course of treatment for content and presentation issues. While the \u27ultimate criterion\u27 for determining the effectiveness of theory is market acceptance this does not prevent us in this paper from putting forward principles, a model, and a method to assist the IS scholar in building effective theory. These tools are derived after considered reflection on the ancient craft and science of map-making. We finish by asking ourselves and our readers whether we need a design science of theory-building

MAP-MAKING AND THEORY-BUILDING: PRINCIPLES FOR ACHIEVING PRESENTATION AND CONTENT EFFECTIVENESS

As academic scholars in an applied field our central mission is to develop theory that both contributes knowledge to the academic discipline and applies that knowledge to practice. However, our efforts in this regard are impacted by communication deficits, which limit the effectiveness of our theories. The effectiveness of theory is attributable to the quality of both its presentation and its content. We put forward a model and principles to assist in building effective theory. The conceptual basis for this paper is the ancient craft and science of map-making. Perhaps controversially, we posit that theory-building efforts should focus primarily on ‘effective theory’ rather than ‘good theory’. We conclude by proposing that in future our theories should be viewed as cognitive devices and that we need to understand which of their features contribute to making them successes or failures in different environments as well as why and how they work

Taking off to the Third Dimension, Schematization of Virtual Environments

Virtual environments are increasingly popular in different areas in both research and industry. However, interaction with these environments is challenging, posing a variety of difficulties to human users. In this paper, we explore how well known principles of abstraction and information reduction for 2D spatial representations, which we term schematization, can be transferred to the 3D representations of virtual environments in order to ease interaction and to increase their utility

Ideology and the making of built form : a contemporary museum of South African colonial history.

Master of Architecture. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2014.The aim of the study is to ascertain the prevalence of colonial ideology within contemporary museological practise. The Empire exhibition of 1936 is used as the basis from which to understand how colonial ideology constructed the built environment and therefore the ideological narratives that continue to inform contemporary post‐colonial museological settings.In the literature review and analysis components of the dissertation the researcher introduced a remedy for the disuniting historical praxis from which the research emerged. By proposing that through a theoretical framework that is founded on Ideology, Post‐Colonial theory and Alterity, one may begin the process of creating an architecture that will serve to acknowledge the Empire Exhibition… an architecture which seizes to be a vestige of colonialism and fosters a positive collective memory in all its visitors. In order to successfully complete the research, the researcher engaged in both primary and secondary data collection and a ualitative approach to data collection was used. Primary data collection was conducted through the use of 14 semi‐structured expert interviews and afocus group of 8 building users. These semi‐structured interviews were conducted in relationto two museum case studies in the Johannesburg area. A third research method was conducted by the researcher in the form of a visual account/ audit of the buildings themselves. Coupling these interviews with thorough case studies of the buildings provides an accurate impression of the effective and ineffective measures in place. Ultimately, the recommendations and conclusions of the dissertation relate directly to the architecture of a proposed Contemporary Museum of South African Colonial History that addresses both the aims and objectives of the study by using the research to determine in what ways architecture was used to create perceptions of the Union of South Africa and its’ indigenous people during the Empire Exhibition of 1936, with particular focus on its role in the mobilisation of colonial ideological narratives and furthermore, proposes the design of a Contemporary Museum of South African Colonial History that creates spaces where an unbiased story of South Africa’s colonial past can be told

Reasoning with Mixed Qualitative-Quantitative Representations of Spatial Knowledge

Drastic transformations in human settlements are caused by extreme events. As a consequence, descriptions of an environment struck by an extreme event, based on spatial data collected before the event, become suddenly unreliable. On the other hand, time critical actions taken for responding to extreme events require up-to-date spatial information. Traditional methods for spatial data collection are not able to provide updated information rapidly enough, calling for the development of new data collection methods. Reports provided by actors involved in the response operations can be considered as an alternative source of spatial information. Indeed, reports often convey spatial descriptions of the environment. The extraction of spatial descriptions from such reports can serve a fundamental role to update existing information which is usually maintained within, and by means of, Geographic Information Systems. However, spatial information conveyed by human reports has qualitative characteristics, that strongly differ from the quantitative nature of spatial information stored in Geographic Information Systems. Methodologies for integrating qualitative and quantitative spatial information are required in order to exploit human reports for updating existing descriptions of spatial knowledge. Although a significant amount of research has been carried on how to represent and reason on qualitative data and qualitative information, relatively little work exists on developing techniques to combine the different methodologies. The work presented in this thesis extends previous works by introducing a hybrid reasoning system--able to deal with mixed qualitative-quantitative representations of spatial knowledge--combining techniques developed separately for qualitative spatial reasoning and quantitative data analysis. The system produces descriptions of the spatial extent of those entities that have been modified by the event (such as collapsed buildings), or that were not existing before the event (such as fire or ash clouds). Furthermore, qualitative descriptions are produced for all entities in the environment. The former descriptions allow for overlaying on a map the information interpreted from human reports, while the latter triggers warning messages to people involved in decision making operations. Three main system functionalities are investigated in this work: The first allows for translating qualitative information into quantitative descriptions. The second aims at translating quantitative information into qualitative relations. Finally, the third allows for performing inference operations with information given partly qualitatively and partly quantitatively for boosting the spatial knowledge the system is able to produce

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

Avaliação multitemporal de alteração da cobertura vegetal equatoriana por meio de imagens landsat e redes neurais artificiais

Orientador : Prof. Dr. Alzir Felippe Buffara AntunesDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal do Paraná, Setor de Ciências da Terra, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciências Geodésicas. Defesa: Curitiba, 31/07/2015Inclui referências : f. 106-112Resumo: A classificação e detecção de mudanças da cobertura vegetal em grandes áreas pode ser realizada mediante o uso das tecnologias associadas ao Sensoriamento Remoto. Imagens de satélite de média e alta resolução espacial e espectral contrastadas com informação coletada em campo, constituem ferramentas indispensáveis quando o objetivo de projetos e pesquisas é a discriminação entre distintos tipos de cobertura vegetal e suas variações temporais. As tarefas antes mencionadas de forma geral envolvem grandes investimentos em recursos humanos e econômicos, os resultados nem sempre são satisfatórios com a aplicação de algoritmos e técnicas orientadas à automatização do processo de classificação das distintas feições contidas na imagem, e em geral é requerida uma etapa de interpretação visual. As técnicas de Inteligência Artificial (IA), no caso específico das Redes Neurais Artificiais (RNAs) mostram ser um mecanismo adequado para realizar a classificação automática de imagens de satélite quando o objetivo é identificar mudanças na cobertura vegetal, sendo que o desempenho da técnica depende fundamentalmente do conjunto de dados de treinamento e da arquitetura da RNA. No presente trabalho, o método é testado em uma região da Amazônia equatoriana, o uso da técnica de RNAs para a detecção de alterações mediante imagens de satélite, apresentou melhores resultados do que aqueles obtidos com o método tradicional de máxima verossimilhança em termos de acurácia global e o coeficiente Kappa (superior a 0,8). Em geral, as alterações detectadas na cobertura vegetal natural estão associadas a fenómenos relacionadas com a expansão de áreas agrícolas e urbanas. Palavras-chave: Redes Neurais Artificiais, Detecção de mudanças, Classificação, Segmentação.Abstract: The classification and change detection in vegetation cover over large areas can be accomplished using technologies associated with Remote Sensing. Satellite images of middle and high spatial and spectral resolution contrasted with information collected in the field are indispensable tools when the purpose of projects and research is discrimination between different types of vegetation and their temporal variations. The tasks mentioned above generally involve large investments in human and economic resources, the results are not always satisfactory with the application of algorithms and techniques aimed at the automation of the classification process of the different features contained in the image, and is usually required one-step visual interpretation. The Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques, in the specific case of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) prove to be an adequate mechanism for automating the satellite image classification when the goal is to identify changes in vegetation cover, and the technical performance depends the set of RNA training data. In this paper the method is tested in a region of the Ecuadorian Amazon, getting in terms of agreement, achieve a kappa index above 0,8. Key-words: Artificial Neural Networks, Change Detection, Classification, Segmentation

THREE TYPES OF ENVIRONMENTAL REPRESENTATIONS AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN SPATIAL NAVIGATION

Master'sMASTER OF SOCIAL SCIENCE