Collaborative Mapping of London Using Google Maps: The LondonProfiler

This paper begins by reviewing the ways in which the innovation of Google Maps has transformed our ability to reference and view geographically referenced data. We describe the ways in which the GMap Creator tool developed under the ESRC National Centre for E Social Science programme enables users to ‘mashup’ thematic choropleth maps using the Google API. We illustrate the application of GMap Creator using the example of www.londonprofiler.org, which makes it possible to view a range of health, education and other socioeconomic datasets against a backcloth of Google Maps data. Our conclusions address the ways in which Google Map mashups developed using GMap Creator facilitate online exploratory cartographic visualisation in a range of areas of policy concern

Hol tartanak a mai magyar családnévatlasz munkálatai?

How far have we got in the work of compiling ‘The Atlas of Contemporary Hungarian Surnames’?     The first part of the paper reports on the present state of the work of compiling ‘The Atlas of Contemporary Hungarian Surnames’. The author speaks about the development of the search engine and the geographic information system needed to generate the maps for the Atlas, as well as about the elaboration of the necessary mathematical support programs. The author also discusses the theoretical and methodological approaches adopted in the compilation of frequency lists and in the definition of lexical types. The second part of the paper, based on thematic maps on the surname Orsós, gives us an insight into the process of how one can make some valid statements about the relationship between the observed surname and the Hungarian Beas Gypsies, when showing on maps the geographical distribution of the relevant data stored in MMCsA / DHS (A mai magyar családnevek adatbázisa / The Database of Hungarian Surnames), including more than 10 million surnames

Hot Routes: Developing a New Technique for the Spatial Analysis of Crime

The use of hotspot mapping techniques such as KDE to represent the geographical spread of linear events can be problematic. Network-constrained data (for example transport-related crime) require a different approach to visualize concentration. We propose a methodology called Hot Routes, which measures the risk distribution of crime along a linear network by calculating the rate of crimes per section of road. This method has been designed for everyday crime analysts, and requires only a Geographical Information System (GIS), and suitable data to calculate. A demonstration is provided using crime data collected from London bus routes

Geographical information retrieval with ontologies of place

Geographical context is required of many information retrieval tasks in which the target of the search may be documents, images or records which are referenced to geographical space only by means of place names. Often there may be an imprecise match between the query name and the names associated with candidate sources of information. There is a need therefore for geographical information retrieval facilities that can rank the relevance of candidate information with respect to geographical closeness of place as well as semantic closeness with respect to the information of interest. Here we present an ontology of place that combines limited coordinate data with semantic and qualitative spatial relationships between places. This parsimonious model of geographical place supports maintenance of knowledge of place names that relate to extensive regions of the Earth at multiple levels of granularity. The ontology has been implemented with a semantic modelling system linking non-spatial conceptual hierarchies with the place ontology. An hierarchical spatial distance measure is combined with Euclidean distance between place centroids to create a hybrid spatial distance measure. This is integrated with thematic distance, based on classification semantics, to create an integrated semantic closeness measure that can be used for a relevance ranking of retrieved objects

Promotion of Eco-Tourism Using the Practice of Wikipedia: The Case-Study of Environmental and Cultural Paths in Zakynthos

The development of sustainable eco tourism and cultural tourism could have positive effects in many socioeconomic factors of a country. A way of promoting eco-tourism is by using the knowledge and the experiences of different people for presenting the natural and cultural resources. This can be achieved using the practice of Wikipedia, in which anyone can submit information on a subject, in our case the environment, and an administrator reviews what will be published. In this work, we focus on the submission of cartographical data concerning the paths and routes that present environmental and cultural interest. These data have been collected and processed using GIS, Remote Sensing and GPS technologies. For each path a description of the type of the path, the terrain involved, experience needed, estimated time required and a classification of the paths according to the difficulty is attempted. In this paper, we present in detail the collection of data and their submission in the platform

Re-reading the Map of Middle-earth: Fan Cartography\u27s Engagement with Tolkien\u27s Legendarium

J.R.R. Tolkien provided an elaborate textual history for his writings about Middle-earth, but did not do so for his now-iconic maps. This paper examines how this difference, in concert with the general tendency of readers to treat maps as objective records of geography, has manifested in Tolkien\u27s work and fan works based upon it. An examination of fan cartography shows a strong tendency to treat the published maps as records of geographical fact rather than historical documents from within Middle-earth