Technology Integration around the Geographic Information: A State of the Art

One of the elements that have popularized and facilitated the use of geographical information on a variety of computational applications has been the use of Web maps; this has opened new research challenges on different subjects, from locating places and people, the study of social behavior or the analyzing of the hidden structures of the terms used in a natural language query used for locating a place. However, the use of geographic information under technological features is not new, instead it has been part of a development and technological integration process. This paper presents a state of the art review about the application of geographic information under different approaches: its use on location based services, the collaborative user participation on it, its contextual-awareness, its use in the Semantic Web and the challenges of its use in natural languge queries. Finally, a prototype that integrates most of these areas is presented

Using Visualization to Support Data Mining of Large Existing Databases

In this paper. we present ideas how visualization technology can be used to improve the difficult process of querying very large databases. With our VisDB system, we try to provide visual support not only for the query specification process. but also for evaluating query results and. thereafter, refining the query accordingly. The main idea of our system is to represent as many data items as possible by the pixels of the display device. By arranging and coloring the pixels according to the relevance for the query, the user gets a visual impression of the resulting data set and of its relevance for the query. Using an interactive query interface, the user may change the query dynamically and receives immediate feedback by the visual representation of the resulting data set. By using multiple windows for different parts of the query, the user gets visual feedback for each part of the query and, therefore, may easier understand the overall result. To support complex queries, we introduce the notion of approximate joins which allow the user to find data items that only approximately fulfill join conditions. We also present ideas how our technique may be extended to support the interoperation of heterogeneous databases. Finally, we discuss the performance problems that are caused by interfacing to existing database systems and present ideas to solve these problems by using data structures supporting a multidimensional search of the database

Investigating the use of semantic technologies in spatial mapping applications

Semantic Web Technologies are ideally suited to build context-aware information retrieval applications. However, the geospatial aspect of context awareness presents unique challenges such as the semantic modelling of geographical references for efficient handling of spatial queries, the reconciliation of the heterogeneity at the semantic and geo-representation levels, maintaining the quality of service and scalability of communicating, and the efficient rendering of the spatial queries' results. In this paper, we describe the modelling decisions taken to solve these challenges by analysing our implementation of an intelligent planning and recommendation tool that provides location-aware advice for a specific application domain. This paper contributes to the methodology of integrating heterogeneous geo-referenced data into semantic knowledgebases, and also proposes mechanisms for efficient spatial interrogation of the semantic knowledgebase and optimising the rendering of the dynamically retrieved context-relevant information on a web frontend

User-interface to a CCTV video search system

The proliferation of CCTV surveillance systems creates a problem of how to effectively navigate and search the resulting video archive, in a variety of security scenarios. We are concerned here with a situation where a searcher must locate all occurrences of a given person or object within a specified timeframe and with constraints on which camera(s) footage is valid to search. Conventional approaches based on browsing time/camera based combinations are inadequate. We advocate using automatically detected video objects as a basis for search, linking and browsing. In this paper we present a system under development based on users interacting with detected video objects. We outline the suite of technologies needed to achieve such a system and for each we describe where we are in terms of realizing those technologies. We also present a system interface to this system, designed with user needs and user tasks in mind

Using geographical information systems for management of back-pain data

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2002 MCB UP LtdIn the medical world, statistical visualisation has largely been confined to the realm of relatively simple geographical applications. This remains the case, even though hospitals have been collecting spatial data relating to patients. In particular, hospitals have a wealth of back pain information, which includes pain drawings, usually detailing the spatial distribution and type of pain suffered by back-pain patients. Proposes several technological solutions, which permit data within back-pain datasets to be digitally linked to the pain drawings in order to provide methods of computer-based data management and analysis. In particular, proposes the use of geographical information systems (GIS), up till now a tool used mainly in the geographic and cartographic domains, to provide novel and powerful ways of visualising and managing back-pain data. A comparative evaluation of the proposed solutions shows that, although adding complexity and cost, the GIS-based solution is the one most appropriate for visualisation and analysis of back-pain datasets

A content-based retrieval system for UAV-like video and associated metadata

In this paper we provide an overview of a content-based retrieval (CBR) system that has been specifically designed for handling UAV video and associated meta-data. Our emphasis in designing this system is on managing large quantities of such information and providing intuitive and efficient access mechanisms to this content, rather than on analysis of the video content. The retrieval unit in our system is termed a "trip". At capture time, each trip consists of an MPEG-1 video stream and a set of time stamped GPS locations. An analysis process automatically selects and associates GPS locations with the video timeline. The indexed trip is then stored in a shared trip repository. The repository forms the backend of a MPEG-211 compliant Web 2.0 application for subsequent querying, browsing, annotation and video playback. The system interface allows users to search/browse across the entire archive of trips and, depending on their access rights, to annotate other users' trips with additional information. Interaction with the CBR system is via a novel interactive map-based interface. This interface supports content access by time, date, region of interest on the map, previously annotated specific locations of interest and combinations of these. To develop such a system and investigate its practical usefulness in real world scenarios, clearly a significant amount of appropriate data is required. In the absence of a large volume of UAV data with which to work, we have simulated UAV-like data using GPS tagged video content captured from moving vehicles

The Ubiquity of Large Graphs and Surprising Challenges of Graph Processing: Extended Survey

Graph processing is becoming increasingly prevalent across many application domains. In spite of this prevalence, there is little research about how graphs are actually used in practice. We performed an extensive study that consisted of an online survey of 89 users, a review of the mailing lists, source repositories, and whitepapers of a large suite of graph software products, and in-person interviews with 6 users and 2 developers of these products. Our online survey aimed at understanding: (i) the types of graphs users have; (ii) the graph computations users run; (iii) the types of graph software users use; and (iv) the major challenges users face when processing their graphs. We describe the participants' responses to our questions highlighting common patterns and challenges. Based on our interviews and survey of the rest of our sources, we were able to answer some new questions that were raised by participants' responses to our online survey and understand the specific applications that use graph data and software. Our study revealed surprising facts about graph processing in practice. In particular, real-world graphs represent a very diverse range of entities and are often very large, scalability and visualization are undeniably the most pressing challenges faced by participants, and data integration, recommendations, and fraud detection are very popular applications supported by existing graph software. We hope these findings can guide future research