Fuzzy spatial association rule mining to analyze the effect of environmental variables on the risk of allergic asthma prevalence

The prevalence of allergic diseases has greatly increased in recent decades, likely due to contamination of the environment with allergy irritants. One common treatment is identifying that allergy irritant, and then avoiding exposure to it. This article studies the relation between the prevalence of allergic asthma and certain allergy irritants that are related to environmental variables. To that end, we use spatial association rule mining to determine the association between the spatial distribution of allergic asthma prevalence and air pollutants such as CO, SO2, NO2, PM10, PM2.5, and O3 (from data compiled by air pollution monitoring stations), as well as other factors, such as the distance of residence from parks and roads. In order to clear up the uncertainties inherent in the attributes linked to the spatial data, the dimensions in question have been defined as fuzzy sets. Results for the case study (i.e. Tehran metropolitan area) indicate that distance to parks and roads, as well as CO, NO2, PM10, and PM2.5 levels are related to allergic asthma prevalence, while SO2 and O3 are not. Finally, we use the extracted association rules in fuzzy inference system to produce the spatial risk map of allergic asthma prevalence, which shows how much is the risk of allergic asthma prevalence at each point of the city

Creativity, diversification and learning processes in local economies

Este ensayo defiende la idea de que las profesiones creativas tienen la oportunidad de contribuir para el desarrollo de unalocalidad, una vez que, en gran medida, presentan flexibilidad y agilidad en la diversificación económica y apoyan su desarrolloen el aprendizaje, lo que se convierte en un factor decisivo en la gestión de personas y emprendimientos. El texto, con brevesejemplos de diversas iniciativas, presenta un enfoque teórico basado en el desarrollo, incluyendo también contribuciones de laaproximación entre las ciencias humanas y las ciencias naturales.This essay presents the idea that the creative professions show the possibility of contributing to a locality, inasmuch as toa large extent they present flexibility and agility in the economic diversification while sponsoring its development duringapprenticeship, which for the management of people and enterprises becomes a decisive factor. The text shows examplesof various initiatives, presents a theoretical approach based on development, relying also on contributions of the closenessbetween human sciences and natural sciences.Este ensaio defende a ideia de que as profissões criativas apresentam a possibilidade de contribuir para o desenvolvimentode uma localidade, uma vez que, em grande medida, apresentam flexibilidade e agilidade na diversificação econômica eapoiam seu desenvolvimento no aprendizado, o que, na gestão de pessoas e empreendimentos, torna-se fator decisivo.O texto, com breves exemplos de iniciativas variadas, apresenta uma abordagem teórica baseada no desenvolvimento,contando ainda com contribuições da aproximação entre as ciências humanas e as ciências naturais

2012, 'Cognitive Readability Enhancing of Cartographic Maps for Pedestrian Navigation

Abstract Hu man activit ies are embedded in the space. They frequently use their spatial cognition in familiar space, or navigation aids (e.g., cartographic maps and satellite navigation systems) in unfamiliar areas for positioning and way-finding purposes. Today, satellite navigation systems are widely used by even non-expert users because of their abilities in friendly interaction with the user. They find the optimu m path to a certain destination and navigate the user through it using automatically movement and rotation of the digital map regard ing the user's position as well as direction of movement. Dealing with cartographic maps, however, need prior knowledge and experience on map reading as well as enough spatial cognition. Users of cartographic maps must accomplish all of the way-finding, positioning and orientation tasks by themselves through connecting the elements of the environment and the map. Enhancing the cognitive readability of cartographic maps increases their usability fo r navigation mo re easily in unfamiliar environ ments. This paper represents the result of enriching cartographic maps with features used by pedestrians for navigation in urban areas

Examining contextual effects on walking observations

Along the demanding analysis of movement data, this paper proposes analysing walking observations to extract behavioural pattern of attributes (such as speed and heart rate) of a person to examine the effects of different conditions on behavioural movement patterns. Particularly, experiments were conducted to explore the effect of tiredness and gender of the person on “movement parameter profiles”. The initial results show that the gender of a person is among the contexts that considerably affect behavioural movement patterns in the case study

A VGI Quality Assessment Method for VGI based on Trustworthiness . GI_Forum|GI_Forum 2016, Volume 1 – open:spatial:interfaces|

Recent advances in technology have greatly transformed how geographic information is produced and have led to the phenomenon of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI). VGI allows people with little geographical knowledge to contribute in the creation of maps and other kinds of geographic information. Because VGI is gathered by individuals who often have no formal training, the credibility and reliability of VGI is challenging. In this paper, we study what kinds of things might contribute to an assessment of the trustworthiness of data and the reputation of contributors in a VGI system. We present a model for analysing these characteristics and a method for automatically creating trustworthiness and reputation scores in order to assess the quality of VGI features

A VGI Quality Assessment Method for VGI based on Trustworthiness . GI_Forum|GI_Forum 2016, Volume 1 – open:spatial:interfaces|

Recent advances in technology have greatly transformed how geographic information is produced and have led to the phenomenon of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI). VGI allows people with little geographical knowledge to contribute in the creation of maps and other kinds of geographic information. Because VGI is gathered by individuals who often have no formal training, the credibility and reliability of VGI is challenging. In this paper, we study what kinds of things might contribute to an assessment of the trustworthiness of data and the reputation of contributors in a VGI system. We present a model for analysing these characteristics and a method for automatically creating trustworthiness and reputation scores in order to assess the quality of VGI features

A context-aware dimension reduction framework for trajectory and health signal analyses

It is practical to collect a huge amount of movement data and environmental context information along with the health signals of individuals because there is the emergence of new generations of positioning and tracking technologies and rapid advancements of health sensors. The study of the relations between these datasets and their sequence similarity analysis is of interest to many applications such as health monitoring and recommender systems. However, entering all movement parameters and health signals can lead to the complexity of the problem and an increase in its computational load. In this situation, dimension reduction techniques can be used to avoid consideration of simultaneous dependent parameters in the process of similarity measurement of the trajectories. The present study provides a framework, named CaDRAW, to use spatial–temporal data and movement parameters along with independent context information in the process of measuring the similarity of trajectories. In this regard, the omission of dependent movement characteristic signals is conducted by using an unsupervised feature selection dimension reduction technique. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed framework, it was applied to a real contextualized movement and related health signal datasets of individuals. The results indicated the capability of the proposed framework in measuring the similarity and in decreasing the characteristic signals in such a way that the similarity results -before and after reduction of dependent characteristic signals- have small differences. The mean differences between the obtained results before and after reducing the dimension were 0.029 and 0.023 for the round path, respectively

How Much Do We Learn from Addresses? On the Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics of Addressing Systems

An address is a specification that refers to a unique location on Earth. While there has been a considerable amount of research on the syntactic structure of addressing systems in order to evaluate and improve their quality, aspects of semantics and pragmatics have been less explored. An address is primarily associated by humans to the elements of their spatial mental representations, but may also influence their spatial knowledge and activities through the level of detail it provides. Therefore, it is not only important how addressing components are structured, but it is also of interest to study their meaning as well as the pragmatics in relation to an interpreting agent. This article studies three forms of addresses (i.e., structured as in Austria, semi-formal as in Japan, and descriptive as in Iran) under the principles of semiotics (i.e., through levels of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics). Syntax is discussed through formal definitions of the addressing systems, while semantics and pragmatics are assessed through an agent-based model to explore how they influence spatial knowledge acquisition and growth