Evaluating the spraycan:understanding participant interaction with a PPGIS

Whilst widely accepted as an important facet of software design, the evaluation of PPGIS usability is often overlooked in research. This work comprises a novel approach to the evaluation of the Spraycan PPGIS, whereby rich insights into participant behaviour are drawn from data that are natively collected by the platform as opposed to through additional questionnaires, log files or similar. The approach will be validated against a ‘traditional’ questionnaire, before conclusions are drawn relating to the usability of the Spraycan as a platform for the collection of vague spatial data, in the hope of developing a greater understanding into the way in which people interact with geographic problems

Formalizing space and place

International audienceThe space/place dichotomy has long been recognized in geography, and more broadly in the social sciences. The geographic information technologies that have emerged in the past few decades are almost exclusively spatial, however. The concepts, principles, and tools of the spatial perspective are reviewed, along with their importance in facilitating multidisciplinary social science. Arguments for a comparable placial perspective are presented and discussed

Fuzzy Bayesian inference for mapping vague and place-based regions:a case study of sectarian territory

The problem of mapping regions with socially-derived boundaries has been a topic of discussion in the GIS literature for many years. Fuzzy approaches have frequently been suggested as solutions, but none have been adopted. This is likely due to difficulties associated with determining suitable membership functions, which are often as arbitrary as the crisp boundaries that they seek to replace. This paper presents a novel approach to fuzzy geographical modelling that replaces the membership function with a possibility distribution that is estimated using Bayesian inference. In this method, data from multiple sources are combined to estimate the degree to which a given location is a member of a given set and the level of uncertainty associated with that estimate. The Fuzzy Bayesian Inference approach is demonstrated through a case study in which census data are combined with perceptual and behavioural evidence to model the territory of two segregated groups (Catholics and Protestants) in Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK. This novel method provides a robust empirical basis for the use of fuzzy models in GIS, and therefore has applications for mapping a range of socially-derived and otherwise vague boundaries

Exploring segregation and sharing in a divided city: A PGIS approach

This article presents a novel exploratory investigation into the location and characteristics of spaces that are segregated and shared between Protestant and Catholic communities in Belfast, Northern Ireland (UK). Focusing on a particularly segregated part of the city, this study uses state-of-the-art participatory geographic information systems (PGIS) and visualization techniques to create qualitative, bottom-up maps of segregation and sharing within the city, as experienced by the people who live there. In doing so, it identifies important and previously unreported patterns in segregation and sharing between sectarian communities, challenging normative approaches to PGIS, illustrating how alternative methods might provide deeper insights into complex social geographies such as those of segregation. Finally, the findings of this work are formulated into a set of hypotheses that can contribute to a future research agenda into segregation and sharing, both in Belfast and in other divided cities

Investigating behavioural and computational approaches for defining imprecise regions

People often communicate with reference to informally agreedplaces, such as “the city centre”. However, views of the spatial extent of such areas may vary, resulting in imprecise regions. We compare perceptions of Sheffield’s City Centre from a street survey to extents derived from various web-based sources. Such automated approaches have advantages of speed, cost and repeatability. We show that footprints from web sources are often in concordance with models derived from more labour-intensive methods. Notable exceptions however were found with sources advertising or selling residential property. Agreement between sources was measured by aggregating them to identify locations of consensus

Geospatial Semantics

Geospatial semantics is a broad field that involves a variety of research areas. The term semantics refers to the meaning of things, and is in contrast with the term syntactics. Accordingly, studies on geospatial semantics usually focus on understanding the meaning of geographic entities as well as their counterparts in the cognitive and digital world, such as cognitive geographic concepts and digital gazetteers. Geospatial semantics can also facilitate the design of geographic information systems (GIS) by enhancing the interoperability of distributed systems and developing more intelligent interfaces for user interactions. During the past years, a lot of research has been conducted, approaching geospatial semantics from different perspectives, using a variety of methods, and targeting different problems. Meanwhile, the arrival of big geo data, especially the large amount of unstructured text data on the Web, and the fast development of natural language processing methods enable new research directions in geospatial semantics. This chapter, therefore, provides a systematic review on the existing geospatial semantic research. Six major research areas are identified and discussed, including semantic interoperability, digital gazetteers, geographic information retrieval, geospatial Semantic Web, place semantics, and cognitive geographic concepts.Comment: Yingjie Hu (2017). Geospatial Semantics. In Bo Huang, Thomas J. Cova, and Ming-Hsiang Tsou et al. (Eds): Comprehensive Geographic Information Systems, Elsevier. Oxford, U

A Study of Colloquial Place Names through Geotagged Social Media Data

Place is a rich but vague geographic concept. Much work has been done to explore the collective understanding and perceived location of place. The last few decades have seen rapid expansion in the use of online social media and data sharing services, which provide a large amount of valuable data for research of colloquial place names. This study explored how geotagged social media data can be used to understand geographic place names, and delimit the perceived geographic extent of a place. The author proposes a probabilistic method to map the perceived geographic extent of a place using Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) based on the geotagged data uploaded by users. The author also used spatio-temporal analysis methods in GIS to explore characteristics, hidden patterns, and trends of the places. Flickr, a popular online social networking service that features image hosting and sharing, was selected as the main data source for this project. The results show that outcomes of KDE with different functions and parameters differ from each other; therefore, it is crucial to select the proper KDE bandwidth in order to obtain appropriate geographic extents. Official boundaries and reference boundaries can be used to assess the geographic extents. Google Maps Street View is another useful source to examine the visual characteristics of places. Spatio-temporal analysis of the geographic extents over time reveals significant location changes of the places composed of man-made structures. Besides names and variations of place names, related colloquial terms, like Cades Cove of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, are also useful sources when delimiting a place. Several examples are analyzed and discussed. Studies like this research can improve our understanding of geotagged Online Social Network (OSN) data in the study of colloquial place names as well as provide a temporal perspective to the analysis of their perceived geographic extents

THE EFFECT OF ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS ON FRANCHISE SUCCESS IN THE NBA\u27S DEVELOPMENT LEAGUE: AN APPLICATION OF ORGANIZATIONAL THEORY

In 2001 the National Basketball Association (NBA) formed its own minor league: The National Basketball Development League (D-League). The D-League was originally designed as a vertical extension of the NBA and to act as a farm-system for the NBA. There has been instability in the make-up of the teams within in the D-League since the inception of the League. Instability is a shared characteristic among all minor league basketball operations. However, unlike its minor league counterparts, the D-League has promise to endure long-term. In this study, external environmental factors that are linked to competition, demographics and structure are analyzed. Organizational theory takes into account the role of the external environment in regards to the survival of a new firm. Factors analyzed were: market size, per-capita income, market education, presence of other professional sports teams, presence of NCAA Division I mens collegiate basketball teams, stadium location, stadium age, stadium ownership, the number of large businesses within the market place, and business ownership model were all considered.\u2