What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?: the potential of spatial-temporal analysis methods to interpret early Christian literature

The early Christian apologist Tertullian (ca. 160 - ca. 230 CE) queries in his Depraescriptione haereticorum: “What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church? What between heretics and Christians?” As the question raised by Tertullian is about the relation between different disciplines and possible mutual relevance, it shows resemblance with this research:what does spatial-temporal analysis have to do with the interpretation of early Christian literature? Are these two disciplines in some way compatible with each other?This research hypothesizes that spatial-temporal analyses could bringadditional and new insights to the interpretation of early Christian literature. The main question in this research is: in which way can spatial-temporal analysis methods contribute to the interpretation of early Christian literature?To answer this question, an inventory of relevant work in related disciplines is made and a case-study approach is applied to demonstrate the application ofspatial-temporal analysis methods for the interpretation of early Christian literature. Furthermore, the potential and limitations of developed methods and data solutions are assessed. The study concludes by suggesting improvements and further developments to advance the use of spatial-temporal analysis in the interpretation of texts.Urban Data Scienc

Context-aware Thinning of Artificial Water Networks for Map Generalization

This paper summarizes the research conducted to improve the automatic generalization of man-made water networks for topographic maps by context-dependent pruning (Altena, 2014). The aim of this study was to improve existing thinning methods for map generalization by accounting for landscape types. The results show that it is possible to improve the thinning of water networks by taking into account separate landscape types. On a more abstract level, the study delivers a methodology for the pruning of man-made networks with regard to landscape typology. In addition, it provides a method for evaluating the quality of generalization results for networks. First, previous research on both thinning and evaluation of thinning results is described. Secondly, a selection of existing algorithms are implemented and evaluated by several experiments: identification of landscape variation based on feature morphology and humidity; selection of representative test areas; and geometric network improvement. Results show that the connectivity of the network can be significantly increased. This is important to obtain better generalization results. The final experiments investigated the effectiveness on various landscape types of three different thinning algorithms. The results are evaluated in terms of the amount of thinning, the resemblance of the results to the input data, and the deviation in connectivity. The findings of this research can be used to improve the thinning of artificial networks by applying a customized thinning method to each unique landscape type. In addition, the proposed metrics to measure the effectivity of thinning algorithms – reduction, resemblance and connectivity – have been proved to be appropriate criteria for the comparison of results of alternative thinning approaches.ISBN 978-3-7001-7988-73D Geo-Informatio

Iouδαíαν in Acts 2:9: a Diachronic Overview of its Conjectured Emendations

The appearance of ουδα » αν in the table of nations (Acts 2:9-11) has troubled interpreters for centuries. Several scholars have proposed to emendate the text. The argumentations for such conjectures vary in elaboration and support. This article gives a diachronic overview of the conjectured emendations. It concludes with an evaluation of the discussion from a phenomenological perspective and a summary of the used argumentation, thereby providing input for a reversed engineering approach to the issue. Urban Data Scienc

GIS as a heuristic tool to interpret ancient historiography: A case study to reconstruct what could plausibly have happened according to the accounts in New Testament texts

This article examines how GIS can be used as a heuristic tool to reconstruct spatial–temporal events from narratives in order to examine whether a scenario is conceivable within the narrative world. The narrative about Paul's escape from Berea (Acts 17:14–15) is used as a case study. Several interpretive issues related to spatial and temporal questions surround these texts. In the case study, three methods are applied: (a) least-cost path analysis on elevation data to construct journeys and travel times for Roman roads; (b) network analysis to find seafaring routes valid for ancient times; and (c) the integration of spatial and temporal data in a space-time cube. Our main finding is that the method yields insights into the spatial–temporal dynamics of the narrative. This helps a modern reader to better understand the narrative conceivability of a story in the mind of a first-century reader.Urban Data Scienc

'Iouδαíαν in Acts 2:9: Reverse engineering textual emendations

Building on a plethora of conjectured emendations for IOÏ'ΔAIAN, this article approaches the issue once again to test the viability of a quantitative tool and to establish the possibility of palaeographical confusion of IOÏ'ΔAIAN with an alternative topo- or demonym. The article starts with an experiment using Greek topo- and demonyms derived from contemporary Christian, Jewish, and Classical sources to establish a palaeographical confusion score. Next the likeliness of the "closest"alternatives in the geographical arrangement of Acts 2:9-11 is explored. The article ends with an evaluation of the possible implications for the text in Acts 2:9 as well as a critical appraisal of the method for conjectural criticism.Urban Data Scienc

Adding 3d GIS visualization and navigation to the sparqlquery loop

3D environments allow advanced spatial navigation and visualization, but have traditionally provided limited support for performing non-spatial data analysis operations like filtering, joining, and integrating data on-the-fly. Linked Open Data provides advanced support for performing filters and joins over datasets that can be dynamically combined through SPARQL federation. Unfortunately, Linked Data results often lack intuitive visualization capabilities, making it relatively difficult to interpret the data for a data analyst. In this paper we present our integration of 3D visualization into the read-evaluate-print-loop of SPARQL query execution. We show how the inclusion of 3D visualization has concrete benefits for the SPARQL query writing process, and how our integrated solution is used to answer specific use cases that could not be answered before.Urban Data Scienc

Spatial analysis of new testament textual emendations utilizing confusion distances

Before the interpretation of any text can start, the original wording of the text itself must be critically established. Conventionally, this is done following qualitative criteria. This article, however, explores the application of spatial analyses to New Testament textual criticism by demonstrating how the Levenshtein edit distance could be adapted to calculate confusion distances for variant readings in New Testament manuscripts, i.e. the possibility that a (combination of) letter(s) is confused by another (combination of) letter(s). Subsequently the outcomes are translated to Euclidian space using classical Multi-Dimensional Scaling, which enables visualisation and spatial analyses (in this case not related to geographical space). The article focuses on the data preparation and algorithm to make the data suitable for spatial analyses, thus providing the New Testament textual critic with new analytical tools.Urban Data Scienc

Automated generalisation within NMAs in 2016

Producing maps and geo-data at different scales is traditionally one of the main tasks of National (and regional) Mapping Agencies (NMAs). The derivation of low-scale maps (i.e. with less detail) from large-scale maps (with more detail), i.e. generalisation, used to be a manual task of cartographers. With the need for more up-to-date data as well as the development of automated generalisation solutions in both research and industry, NMAs are implementing automated generalisation production lines. To exchange experiences and identify remaining issues, a workshop was organised end 2015 by the Commission on Generalisation and Multirepresentation of the International Cartographic Association and the Commission on Modelling and Processing of the European Spatial Data Research. This paper reports about the workshop outcomes. It shows that, most NMAs have implemented a certain form of automation in their workflows, varying from generalisation of certain features while still maintaining a manual workflow; semiautomated editing and generalisation to a fully automated procedure.Urban Data Scienc

Generating, storing, updating and disseminating a countrywide 3D model

As in many countries, in The Netherlands governmental organisations are acquiring 3D city models to support their public tasks. However, this is still being done within individual organisation, resulting in differences in 3D city models within one country and sometimes covering the same area: i.e. differences in data structure, height references used, update cycle, data quality, use of the 3D data etc. In addition, often only large governmental organisations can afford investing in 3D city models (and the required knowledge) and not small organisations, like small municipalities. To address this problem, the Dutch Kadaster is collaborating with the 3D Geoinformation research group at TU Delft to generate and disseminate a 3D city model covering the whole of the Netherlands and to do this in a sustainable manner, i.e. with an implementation that ensures periodical updates and that aligns with the 3D city models of other governmental organisations, such as large cities. This article describes the workflow that has been developed and implemented. Urban Data Scienc