Modeling Human Mobility Entropy as a Function of Spatial and Temporal Quantizations

The knowledge of human mobility is an integral component of several different branches of research and planning, including delay tolerant network routing, cellular network planning, disease prevention, and urban planning. The uncertainty associated with a person's movement plays a central role in movement predictability studies. The uncertainty can be quantified in a succinct manner using entropy rate, which is based on the information theoretic entropy. The entropy rate is usually calculated from past mobility traces. While the uncertainty, and therefore, the entropy rate depend on the human behavior, the entropy rate is not invariant to spatial resolution and sampling interval employed to collect mobility traces. The entropy rate of a person is a manifestation of the observable features in the person's mobility traces. Like entropy rate, these features are also dependent on spatio-temporal quantization. Different mobility studies are carried out using different spatio-temporal quantization, which can obscure the behavioral differences of the study populations. But these behavioral differences are important for population-specific planning. The goal of dissertation is to develop a theoretical model that will address this shortcoming of mobility studies by separating parameters pertaining to human behavior from the spatial and temporal parameters

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

Contextual Social Networking

The thesis centers around the multi-faceted research question of how contexts may be detected and derived that can be used for new context aware Social Networking services and for improving the usefulness of existing Social Networking services, giving rise to the notion of Contextual Social Networking. In a first foundational part, we characterize the closely related fields of Contextual-, Mobile-, and Decentralized Social Networking using different methods and focusing on different detailed aspects. A second part focuses on the question of how short-term and long-term social contexts as especially interesting forms of context for Social Networking may be derived. We focus on NLP based methods for the characterization of social relations as a typical form of long-term social contexts and on Mobile Social Signal Processing methods for deriving short-term social contexts on the basis of geometry of interaction and audio. We furthermore investigate, how personal social agents may combine such social context elements on various levels of abstraction. The third part discusses new and improved context aware Social Networking service concepts. We investigate special forms of awareness services, new forms of social information retrieval, social recommender systems, context aware privacy concepts and services and platforms supporting Open Innovation and creative processes. This version of the thesis does not contain the included publications because of copyrights of the journals etc. Contact in terms of the version with all included publications: Georg Groh, [email protected] zentrale Gegenstand der vorliegenden Arbeit ist die vielschichtige Frage, wie Kontexte detektiert und abgeleitet werden können, die dazu dienen können, neuartige kontextbewusste Social Networking Dienste zu schaffen und bestehende Dienste in ihrem Nutzwert zu verbessern. Die (noch nicht abgeschlossene) erfolgreiche Umsetzung dieses Programmes führt auf ein Konzept, das man als Contextual Social Networking bezeichnen kann. In einem grundlegenden ersten Teil werden die eng zusammenhängenden Gebiete Contextual Social Networking, Mobile Social Networking und Decentralized Social Networking mit verschiedenen Methoden und unter Fokussierung auf verschiedene Detail-Aspekte näher beleuchtet und in Zusammenhang gesetzt. Ein zweiter Teil behandelt die Frage, wie soziale Kurzzeit- und Langzeit-Kontexte als für das Social Networking besonders interessante Formen von Kontext gemessen und abgeleitet werden können. Ein Fokus liegt hierbei auf NLP Methoden zur Charakterisierung sozialer Beziehungen als einer typischen Form von sozialem Langzeit-Kontext. Ein weiterer Schwerpunkt liegt auf Methoden aus dem Mobile Social Signal Processing zur Ableitung sinnvoller sozialer Kurzzeit-Kontexte auf der Basis von Interaktionsgeometrien und Audio-Daten. Es wird ferner untersucht, wie persönliche soziale Agenten Kontext-Elemente verschiedener Abstraktionsgrade miteinander kombinieren können. Der dritte Teil behandelt neuartige und verbesserte Konzepte für kontextbewusste Social Networking Dienste. Es werden spezielle Formen von Awareness Diensten, neue Formen von sozialem Information Retrieval, Konzepte für kontextbewusstes Privacy Management und Dienste und Plattformen zur Unterstützung von Open Innovation und Kreativität untersucht und vorgestellt. Diese Version der Habilitationsschrift enthält die inkludierten Publikationen zurVermeidung von Copyright-Verletzungen auf Seiten der Journals u.a. nicht. Kontakt in Bezug auf die Version mit allen inkludierten Publikationen: Georg Groh, [email protected]

Hybrid Vigor: An Analysis of Land Tenure Arrangements in Addressing Land Security for Urban Community Gardens

Urban community gardens (UCGs) are receiving greater attention as an ever-growing body of research documents the economic, environmental and social benefits that community gardens are bringing to urban neighborhoods. However, land insecurity remains one of the critical barriers to the future success of UCGs; loss of land to both private and public entities has frustrated many efforts and has stimulated investigations into alternative strategies for increasing land security. This thesis explores the diversity of land tenure solutions -- with a particular respect to land trusts -- that have been implemented to address this issue. Land security is objectively defined by legal property rights and subjectively shaped through the notion of 'ownership in use' and by encouraging the formation of mobilized communities. We analyze the variety of organizational modes -- differentiated by tenurial arrangement, organizational capacity, political leverage and organizational mission/internal governance relations -- and the resulting impacts on the type and level of land security. Data was collected through transcribed interviews with practitioners from sixteen land trust organizations engaged in urban community gardening and summarized along emergent themes regarding organizational modes and resulting land security implications. We find that major tradeoffs exist between maximizing land tenure security and operating a larger number of UCG sites under less secure tenure arrangements. It concludes that underutilized opportunities exist to increase UCG land security through an increased public sector role and broader cross-sectoral partnerships

Expanding our horizons: an exploration of hominin landscape use in the Lower Palaeolithic of Britain and the question of upland home bases or lowland living sites.

The majority of Lower Palaeolithic assemblages are recovered from lowland fluvial locations, and hence most interpretation is based around these. It is clear, however, that these represent only a small fraction of the hominin landscape and this bias is potentially limiting our understanding of hominin organisation to only a single facet of behaviour. While recent authors have recognised the importance of upland sites, and other non-fluvial contexts, research is currently limited to highly specific studies (such as Boxgrove), and often fail to extend the purview to incorporate the wider landscape. Consequently we are still a long way from answering basic questions such as: how and why were hominids utilising particular locations? How, if at all, does behaviour respond to landscape context? Is the same pattern seen in continental Europe? This research applies a landscape approach to the British Palaeolithic, combining a technological, typological and chaîne opératoire methodology to determine assemblage signatures for a variety of landscape types (lowland riverine, lacustrine, grassland plains and uplands). An exploratory Geographical Information Systems (GIS)approach is applied to the upland study areas to gain a better understanding of settlement structuring and how behaviour responds to landscape context. The results are then considered in terms of behavioural variation, site choice, specialisation and provisioning across the landscape

Cultural diversity and meta-population dynamics in Australian palm cockatoos (Probosciger aterrimus); the legacy of landscape and biogeographic history

Understanding dispersal dynamics is important for conservation of vulnerable species because they effect whether populations recover or disappear following decline or disturbance, especially in species with slow life-histories that cannot replenish quickly. Palm cockatoos have one of the slowest reproductive rates for any parrot, and likely face steep decline in at least one location on Cape York Peninsula (CYP), north-eastern Australia. Traditional methods of measuring dispersal, such as capture and fitting of tracking devices, identification markers or tissue sampling for genetic analyses, are inappropriate in this species due to their susceptibility to stress. While handling chicks for DNA sample collection does not cause harm, locating nests requires too much focused effort at spatial scales relevant for conservation. In this thesis, I assess the utility of cultural methods for determining population connectivity based on published literature, and employ a combination of cultural and genetic methods to assess connectivity among Australian palm cockatoo populations. I then use a landscape ‘resistance’ modelling approach based on electrical circuit theory to identify connectivity corridors. Finally, I use population viability analysis (PVA) to determine the effects of dispersal dynamics on viability for both individual populations and the combined meta-population in Australia. Based on the literature I concluded that geographic variation in cultural behaviour among populations of a species can help fill important knowledge gaps about their population level processes, especially when comparisons to similar species and alternative data are available. My assessments of vocal and genetic variation among populations revealed differentiation among populations on Cape York Peninsula, separating east coast palm cockatoos at Iron Range from other Australian populations with some evidence of gene flow between them. My landscape ‘resistance’ analysis identified the Great Dividing Range as a barrier, and rainforest patches as important corridors for interaction among separate populations. However, the level of connectivity we determined appears not to provide enough support via dispersal to buffer the decline predicted for Iron Range. Furthermore, other populations require much better reproductive success than data suggests for Iron Range if individuals dispersing to there are to be replenished. I emphasise the importance of managing local declines for the preservation of genetic and behavioural diversity in Australian palm cockatoos

Disturbance indicators for time series reconstruction and marine ecosystem health impact assessment

A systematic reconstruction of Multiple Marine Ecological Disturbances (MMEDs) involving disease occurrence, morbidity and mortality events has been undertaken so that a taxonomy of globally distributed marine disturbance types can be better quantified and common forcing factors identified. Combined disturbance data include indices of morbidity, mortality and disease events affecting humans, marine invertebrates, flora and wildlife populations. In the search for the best disturbance indicators of ecosystem change, the unifying solution for joining data from disparate fields is to organize data into space/time/topic hierarchies that permit convergence of data due to shared and appropriate scaling. The scale of the data selects for compatible methodologies, leading to better data integration, dine series reconstruction and the discovery of new relationships. Information technology approaches designed to assist this process include bibliographic keyword searches, data-mining, data-modeling and geographic information system design. Expert consensus, spatial, temporal, categorical and statistical data reduction methods are used to reclassify thousands of independent anomaly observations into eight functional impact groups representing anoxic-hypoxic, biotoxin-exposure, disease, keystone-chronic, mass-lethal, new-novel-invasive, physically forced and trophic-magnification disturbances. Data extracted from the relational database and Internet (http://www.heedmd.org) geographic information system demonstrate non-random patterns relative to expected dependencies. When data are combined they better reflect response to exogenous forcing factors at larger scales (e.g. North Atlantic and Southern Ocean Oscillation index scales) than is apparent without grouping. New hypotheses have been generated linking MMEDs to climate system forcing , variability and changes within the Northwestern Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea. A more general global survey known collectively as the Health Ecological and Economic Dimensions (HEED) project demonstrates the potential application of the methodology to the Baltic Sea and other large marine ecosystems. The rescue of multi-decadal climatic, oceanographic, fisheries economic, and public health anomaly data combined with MMED data provides a tool to help researchers create regional disturbance regimes to illustrate disturbance impact. A recommendation for a central data repository is proposed to better coordinate the many data observers, resource managers, and agencies collecting pieces of marine disturbance information needed for monitoring ecosystem condition

UAV-based investigations into the hydrology and dynamics of the Greenland Ice Sheet

Variation in the rate of meltwater input into the subglacial system of the Greenland Ice Sheet can force dynamic responses on a range of scales from hourly to interannual. Observations of the ice sheet dynamic response are commonly made either through ground-based Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) measurements, which can provide continuous and accurate point measurements, or through satellite remote sensing, which can provide regional-scale observations but at coarse temporal resolutions. This thesis investigates the potential of Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to provide intermediate-level observations of the interactions between ice sheet hydrology and dynamics at a fast-flowing, marine terminating glacier in West Greenland. I first describe the development of a low- cost UAV suitable for deriving ice sheet velocity fields from Structure-from-Motion photogrammetry. In order to geolocate products without using ground control, image locations are determined directly using an on-board L1 GNSS receiver. I validate this method, showing that accuracies are sufficient for producing velocity fields in the ice sheet interior. Next, this method is used, alongside in-situ geophysical observations, to characterise the causes and dynamic influence of a rapid supraglacial lake drainage. I show that rapid drainage can induce a significant dynamic response up to 4 km away from the lake itself, and that fracture history can exert controls on interannual lake drainage behaviour. Finally, I upscale UAV ob- servations using satellite datasets over a ~3,000 km² area, exploring dynamic controls on crevasse hydrology. I find that in compressive mean stress compressive regimes, crevasses are more likely to display ponding and rapid hydrofracture than in extensional regimes, where continuous slow drainage is typical. Continued high-resolution observations are necessary to further identify key controls on the hydrological influences of Greenland Ice Sheet dynamics.Funded by a Natural Environment Research Council studentship awarded through the Cambridge Earth System Science Doctoral Training Partnership (Grant NE/L002507/1). Research logistics funded by the European Research Council as part of the RESPONDER project under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant 683043)