Extracting Computational Representations of Place with Social Sensing

Place-based GIS are at the forefront of GIScience research and characterized by textual descriptions, human conceptualizations as well as the spatial-semantic relationships among places. The concepts of places are difficult to handle in geographic information science and systems because of their intrinsic vagueness. They arise from the complex interaction of individuals, society, and the environment. The exact delineation of vague regions is challenging as their borders are vague and the membership within a region varies non-monotonically and as a function of context. Consequently, vague regions are difficult to handle computationally, e.g., in spatial analysis, cartography, geographic information retrieval, and GIS workflows in general. The emergence of big data brings new opportunities for us to understand the place semantics from large-scale volunteered geographic information and data streams, such as geotags, texts, activity streams, and GPS trajectories. The term "social sensing" describes such individual-level big geospatial data and the associated analysis methods. In this dissertation, I present a generalizable, data-driven framework that complements classical top-down approaches by extracting the representations of vague cognitive regions and function regions from bottom-up approaches using spatial statistics and machine learning techniques with various social sensing sources. I demonstrate how to derive crisp boundaries for cognitive and functional regions from points of interest data, and show how natural language processing techniques can enrich our understanding of places and form a foundation for the semantic characterization of place types and the generalization of regions. This work makes contributions to the development of computational methodologies for extracting vague cognitive regions and functional regions using data-driven approaches as well as the novel semantic generalization processing technique

Heterosexual penile/anal intercourse and HIV in five sub-Saharan African countries

The HIV epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa is understood to be primarily 'sexually transmitted'. The majority of HIV prevention efforts in the region have focused on 'heterosexual sex' as the key transmission vector, without defining what 'heterosexual sex' refers to. Penile-anal intercourse (PAI) has the highest per act risk of HIV acquisition sexually and potentially accounts for a large proportion of HIV infection. Inclusion of PAI in HIV programming has typically only been in reference to men who have sex with men. Despite evidence suggesting that heterosexual PAI is common practice in sub-Saharan Africa, and is likely to be a significant contributor to HIV transmission, it has been largely excluded from HIV interventions. Greater understanding of sexual decision-making and risk-taking related to heterosexual PAI would enable evidence-based HIV intervention. This thesis presents data on conceptualisations and perceptions of heterosexual PAI and associated practices in sub-Saharan Africa, language and discourse pertaining to PAI, as well as challenges in conducting research on it. Qualitative data were gathered in five sub-Saharan African countries between 2010 and 2014. These findings demonstrate that heterosexual PAI is practiced in sub-Saharan Africa for a variety of reasons, some of which have implications for HIV transmission. Many of the factors that influence sexual decision-making and risk-taking related to heterosexual PAI are specific to this sexual behaviour. In addition, the relationship contexts in which heterosexual PAI takes place, gendered power dynamics, sexual agency and 'sexual scripts' framing PAI behaviour, are distinct from those for penile/vaginal intercourse. HIV transmission risks associated with PAI are exacerbated by taboos, social stigmatisation and sexual communication norms, impeding effective communication and safe sex negotiation, limiting individuals' ability to make informed decisions, and impacting on the reporting of PAI in research and clinical settings. Drawing on socio-behavioural theories to guide the data analysis, I developed theoretical models to explain and understand heterosexual PAI practice. The findings presented in this thesis make a unique contribution to the field, being the first in-depth description and analysis of heterosexual PAI behaviour and related practices in sub-Saharan Africa. This research highlights the importance of paying careful attention to the role of heterosexual PAI in HIV transmission in Africa

Geographic Knowledge Graph Summarization

Geographic knowledge graphs play a significant role in the geospatial semantics paradigm for fulfilling the interoperability, the accessibility, and the conceptualization demands in geographic information science. However, due to the immense quantity of information accompanying and the enormous diversity of geographic knowledge graphs, there are many challenges that hinder the applicability and mass adoption of such useful structured knowledge. In order to tackle these challenges, this dissertation focuses on devising ways in which geographic knowledge graphs can be digested and summarized. Such a summarization task, on the one hand lifts the burden of information overload for end users, on the other hand facilitates the reduction of data storage, speeds up queries, and helps eliminate noise. The main contribution of this dissertation is that it introduces the general concept of geospatial inductive bias and explains different ways this idea can be used in the geographic knowledge graph summarization task. By decomposing the task into separate but related components, this dissertation is based upon three peer-reviewed articles which focus on the hierarchical place type structure, multimedia leaf nodes, and general relation and entity components respectively. A spatial knowledge map interface that illustrates the effectiveness of summarizing geographic knowledge graphs is presented. Throughout the dissertation, top-down knowledge engineering and bottom-up knowledge learning methods are integrated. We hope this dissertation would promote the awareness of this fascinating area and motivate researchers to investigate related questions

A Temporal Approach to Defining Place Types based on User-Contributed Geosocial Content

Place is one of the foundational concepts on which the field of Geography has been built. Traditionally, GIScience research into place has been approached from a spatial perspective. While space is an integral feature of place, it represents only a single dimension (or a combination of three dimensions to be exact), in the complex, multidimensional concept that is place. Though existing research has shown that both spatial and thematic dimensions are valuable, time has historically been under-utilized in its ability to describe and define places and their types. The recent availability and access to user-generated geosocial content has allowed for a much deeper investigation of the temporal dimension of place. Multi-resolution temporal signatures are constructed based on these data permitting both place instances and place types to be compared through a robust set of (dis)similarity measures. The primary contribution of this work lies in demonstrating how places are defined through a better understanding of temporal user behavior. Furthermore, the results of this research present the argument that the temporal dimension is the most indicative placial dimension for classifying places by type

An assemblage of affective sounds: resistance and power through the Palestinian electronic music scene

This thesis is an exploratory, descriptive, conceptual research about the Palestinian electronic dance scene. First, it sets out to make sense of social relations and elements traversing and constituting this space, locating the scene chronologically, geographically and affectively through anecdotes, interviews and encounters in different dance floors and spaces. It explores how music, affect, class and space are bound together to produce a layered and mobile assemblage of people that relate in diverse ways to the practice of resistance. Second, this project focuses on the meanings and practices related to resistance within the scene. Departing from a critical standpoint on subcultural theory and traditional frameworks for resistance, I interrogate and amplify the meanings of resisting in this context. The idea of ‘generative resistance’ is articulated in this process and examined in terms of its production of new spaces, communities, affects, intimacies, alternatives and culture, disputing diverse power structures. This thesis uses a participant and feminist micro-ethnography. Developed between 2019- 2022, the methods employed are mainly participant and sensory observation, interviews and informal conversations, and online analysis. I conducted fieldwork in Ramallah (Palestine), Amman (Jordan), Berlin (Germany), Athens (Greece) and London (Britain). Through this process, I developed a critical ‘anti-research’ epistemology that questions my positionality and generates an ‘affective’ epistemology: a way of doing research and producing knowledge that is based on difference, discomfort, solidarity and transformation

The regulation of private security and its challenges in contemporary society: assessing the Security Industry Authority’s regulatory approach to door supervisors in the UK

Door supervisors (DS) are the largest licensable private security sector in the UK, with the SIA being the regulator responsible for administering and enforcing the regulatory regime. Previous research into the world of ‘bouncers’ has predominantly focused on their monoculture, associated with low professional standards, violence and criminality. Although these alleged qualities were the key drivers behind the introduction of regulation in 2001, the security industry is predominantly approached in previous studies as a general and homogeneous concept, resulting in a lack of in-depth research focus on how this vilified sector has developed in the post-regulation era. Against this backdrop, this study seeks to evaluate the SIA’s licensing and enforcement approach through documenting the narratives of the regulator and the DS sector (both on an individual and business level) and critically assessing the areas in which these converge or diverge with each other. The study draws upon the analysis of SIA annual reports, quantitative descriptive data, prosecution cases and interviews with SIA staff and DS, security companies and police officers across south-east Wales. Through exploring the transformation of the world of ‘bouncers’, this thesis reveals good progress in the SIA’s objective of ‘reform’; but it also highlights disparities between its strategic narrative and the occupational ‘lived realities’ in the sector. The findings also suggest that collaboration between the police and frontline operatives appeared to have improved, yet this is still essentially asymmetric, and there are specific micro dynamics that can enable or hinder cooperation. Overall, the regulatory response towards DS has been predominantly geared towards the ‘hard’ message, evident both at the point of being granted an SIA licence, as well as at translating the SIA’s enforcement-related activities into a clear-cut message that non-compliance is not tolerated. Yet, the SIA’s contribution in empowering the industry to address its contemporary challenges has not been equally dynamic when compared with its reform outputs. On the contrary, the regulatory approach towards DS companies has integrated the ‘soft’ message through supportive enforcement styles. However, this study’s findings suggest that regulatory proactivity in enforcement is restricted and therefore the SIA’s enforcement approach is largely premised on more reactive measures of limited effectiveness. The absence of regulatory oversight of security companies is identified as the key factor resulting in the lack of regulatory due diligence of corporate malpractices that affect both industry standards and public protection. Ultimately, this lopsided regulatory approach between the individual (DS) and business level is explored through the lens of ‘responsive regulation’ (Ayres and Braithwaite, 1992), yielding useful policy-related implications and recommendations for both the SIA and future regulatory research of the private security industry