Geographic Visualization in Archaeology

Archaeologists are often considered frontrunners in employing spatial approaches within the social sciences and humanities, including geospatial technologies such as geographic information systems (GIS) that are now routinely used in archaeology. Since the late 1980s, GIS has mainly been used to support data collection and management as well as spatial analysis and modeling. While fruitful, these efforts have arguably neglected the potential contribution of advanced visualization methods to the generation of broader archaeological knowledge. This paper reviews the use of GIS in archaeology from a geographic visualization (geovisual) perspective and examines how these methods can broaden the scope of archaeological research in an era of more user-friendly cyber-infrastructures. Like most computational databases, GIS do not easily support temporal data. This limitation is particularly problematic in archaeology because processes and events are best understood in space and time. To deal with such shortcomings in existing tools, archaeologists often end up having to reduce the diversity and complexity of archaeological phenomena. Recent developments in geographic visualization begin to address some of these issues, and are pertinent in the globalized world as archaeologists amass vast new bodies of geo-referenced information and work towards integrating them with traditional archaeological data. Greater effort in developing geovisualization and geovisual analytics appropriate for archaeological data can create opportunities to visualize, navigate and assess different sources of information within the larger archaeological community, thus enhancing possibilities for collaborative research and new forms of critical inquiry

Assessment and Evaluation of GIScience Curriculum using the Geographic Information Science and Technology Body of Knowledge

This article, from Brandon Plewe and Steven Prager, outlines the University Consortium of Geographic Information Science's (UCGIS) Geographic Information Science and Technology Body of Knowledge, which is a curriculum meant "to identify the broad spectrum of knowledge, skills and techniques that make up the GIS&T domain." Through the article, "they address the potential benefits of using the Body of Knowledge through an evaluation of the learning objectives and curriculum of sample courses at two universities." The full text article may be viewed online or downloaded in PDF format

Addressing Uncertainties in Complex Manufacturing Environments: A Multidisciplinary Approach

With the introduction of intelligent and autonomous systems into factory environments, workplaces where human employees work alongside digital counterparts will become increasingly informational. We develop a generic framework for hypothetical workplaces to investigate how complexities create to uncertainties. Complexity may be explained through the Level of Abstractions used to model a system, and it is encountered in its dynamic form as an alteration of information flow between agents in a phenomenological relationship. Analyzing these systems as ‘information flows’ brings to light the uncertainity(ies) the workers of the future will have to cope with. We develop first concepts that can be used to develop heuristics to manage these uncertainties in complex manufacturing environments. These heuristics may also be useful in creating optimized workplaces that combine the individual abilities of both humans and machines. The framework proposed in this paper may be subject for an empirical validation of these heuristics in the future

Addressing Uncertainties in Complex Manufacturing Environments: A Multidisciplinary Approach

With the introduction of intelligent and autonomous systems into factory environments, workplaces where human employees work alongside digital counterparts will become increasingly informational. We develop a generic framework for hypothetical workplaces to investigate how complexities create to uncertainties. Complexity may be explained through the Level of Abstractions used to model a system, and it is encountered in its dynamic form as an alteration of information flow between agents in a phenomenological relationship. Analyzing these systems as ‘information flows’ brings to light the uncertainity(ies) the workers of the future will have to cope with. We develop first concepts that can be used to develop heuristics to manage these uncertainties in complex manufacturing environments. These heuristics may also be useful in creating optimized workplaces that combine the individual abilities of both humans and machines. The framework proposed in this paper may be subject for an empirical validation of these heuristics in the future

Assessment and Evaluation of GIScience Curriculum using the Geographic Information Science and Technology Body of Knowledge

Academic institutions are increasingly being held accountable for the quality of education which is, in turn, leading to an increased emphasis on curriculum assessment. This is especially true of geographic information science & technology (GIS&T), in which a rapidly growing profession demands that educational programs produce highly qualified graduates. In response to these demands, the University Consortium of Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) has developed the Geographic Information Science and Technology Body of Knowledge, to identify the broad spectrum of knowledge, skills and techniques that make up the GIS&T domain. An intended use of this document is to support the development and assessment of GIS&T curricula. The authors address the potential benefits of using the Body of Knowledge through an evaluation of the learning objectives and curriculum of sample courses at two universities. They find that the Body of Knowledge enables robust specification of objectives and curricula, and provides the platform for reproducible and consistent evaluation of both curriculum and, ultimately, student outcomes. It is also flexible in allowing programmes to evaluate curricula based on their own goals and missions, rather than against a single standard curriculum. The full text article may be viewed online or downloaded in PDF format

When design meets intelligence: Incorporating aesthetic intelligence in smart spaces

Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)8309 LNCS307-30

Addressing Uncertainties in Complex Manufacturing Environments: A Multidisciplinary Approach

With the introduction of intelligent and autonomous systems into factory environments, workplaces where human employees work alongside digital counterparts will become increasingly informational. We develop a generic framework for hypothetical workplaces to investigate how complexities create to uncertainties. Complexity may be explained through the Level of Abstractions used to model a system, and it is encountered in its dynamic form as an alteration of information flow between agents in a phenomenological relationship. Analyzing these systems as ‘information flows’ brings to light the uncertainity(ies) the workers of the future will have to cope with. We develop first concepts that can be used to develop heuristics to manage these uncertainties in complex manufacturing environments. These heuristics may also be useful in creating optimized workplaces that combine the individual abilities of both humans and machines. The framework proposed in this paper may be subject for an empirical validation of these heuristics in the future

Connecting Remote Teams: Cross-Media Integration to Support Remote Informal Encounters

This video presents the Hello.Wall artefact in a mixedmedia set-up to support spontaneous, informal encounters in two remote lounge spaces of a distributed team. The Hello.Walls are used as awareness tools to know more about the remote team’s state and at the same time as a tool to smoothen transitions to place-based video communication among the remote teams ’ members. This connecting-remote-teams scenario was tested in a livinglab evaluation for several weeks and proved to foster remote informal encounters and thereby contributed to smooth and fluent project work in our Ambient-Agoras project. Keywords Ambient display, informative art, social architecture, awareness, cross-media integration, place-based video conferencing, distributed teams, interaction zone