IT Convergence between Data Centres Pilot Study

The purpose of this document is to report on the pilot portal developed for the IT Convergence between Data Centres Pilot Study. It details the data and services that have been included, illustrates how the services were developed, describes any problems that occurred during its development and highlights potential issues.JRC.DDG.H.6-Spatial data infrastructure

Citizens as Sensors for Crisis Event: Sensor Web Enablement for Volunteered Geographic Information

A set of developments within the field of geosensors is to engage citizens to act as sensors, thus providing so-called Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI). There is a long tradition of non specialists contributing to the collection of geo-referenced information. Furthermore thanks to recent convergence of greater access to broadband connections, the availability of Global Positioning Systems at affordable prices, and more participative forms of interaction on the Web (Web 2.0) vast numbers of individuals are able to create and share geographic information. The potential of up to 6 billion human sensors to monitor the state of the environment, validate global models with local knowledge, contribute to crisis situations awareness and provide information that only humans can capture (e.g. emotions and perceptions like fear of crime) is vast and has yet to be fully exploited. However, integrating VGI into Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) is a major challenge, as it is often regarded as insufficiently structured, documented or validated according to scientific standards. Early instances of SDIs used to have limited ability to manage and process geosensor-based data (beyond remotely sensed imagery snapshots), which tend to arrive in continuous streams of real-time information. The current works on standards for Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) aim to fill this gap. This paper shows how such SWE standards can be applied to VGI, thus converting it in a timely, cost-effective and valuable source of information for SDIs. By doing so, we extend previous works describing a workflow for VGI integration into SDI and further advance an initial set of VGI Sensing and event detection techniques. In particular, an example of how such VGI Sensing techniques can support crisis information system is provided.JRC.DDG.H.6-Spatial data infrastructure

Citizen-based sensing of crisis events: sensor web enablement for volunteered geographic information

Thanks to recent convergence of greater access to broadband connections, the availability of Global Positioning Systems in small packages at affordable prices and more participative forms of interaction on the Web (Web 2.0), vast numbers of individuals became able to create and share Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI). The potential of up to six billion persons to monitor the state of the environment, validate global models with local knowledge, contribute to crisis situations awareness, and provide information that only humans can capture is vast and has yet to be fully exploited. Integrating VGI into Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) is a major challenge, as it is often regarded as insufficiently structured, documented, or validated according to scientific standards. Early instances of SDIs used to have limited ability to manage and process geosensor-based data (beyond remotely sensed imagery), which tend to arrive in continuous streams of real-time information. The current works on standards for Sensor Web Enablement fill this gap. This paper shows how such standards can be applied to VGI, thus converting it in a timely, cost-effective and valuable source of information for SDIs. By doing so, we extend previous efforts describing a workflow for VGI integration into SDI and further advance an initial set of VGI Sensing and event detection techniques. Examples of how such VGI Sensing techniques can support crisis information system are provided. The presented approach serves central building blocks for a Digital Earth’s nervous system, which is required to develop the next generation of (geospatial) information infrastructures

EuReCa ONE—27 Nations, ONE Europe, ONE Registry A prospective one month analysis of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest outcomes in 27 countries in Europe

AbstractIntroductionThe aim of the EuReCa ONE study was to determine the incidence, process, and outcome for out of hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) throughout Europe.MethodsThis was an international, prospective, multi-centre one-month study. Patients who suffered an OHCA during October 2014 who were attended and/or treated by an Emergency Medical Service (EMS) were eligible for inclusion in the study. Data were extracted from national, regional or local registries.ResultsData on 10,682 confirmed OHCAs from 248 regions in 27 countries, covering an estimated population of 174 million. In 7146 (66%) cases, CPR was started by a bystander or by the EMS. The incidence of CPR attempts ranged from 19.0 to 104.0 per 100,000 population per year. 1735 had ROSC on arrival at hospital (25.2%), Overall, 662/6414 (10.3%) in all cases with CPR attempted survived for at least 30 days or to hospital discharge.ConclusionThe results of EuReCa ONE highlight that OHCA is still a major public health problem accounting for a substantial number of deaths in Europe.EuReCa ONE very clearly demonstrates marked differences in the processes for data collection and reported outcomes following OHCA all over Europe. Using these data and analyses, different countries, regions, systems, and concepts can benchmark themselves and may learn from each other to further improve survival following one of our major health care events

Citizens as Earth observation sources : a workflow for volunteered geographic information sensing

This research introduces the notion of Volunteered Information Sensing (VGI Sensing) as the set of standards, methods and techniques required to streamline georeferenced contents published online by citizens into a timely, reliable and cost-effective source of Geoinformation for Earth Observation purposes. VGI Sensing is proposed as an emerging sub-field of research at the conjunction of Geographic Information Science, Data Mining and (Web) Knowledge Discovery. It is expected to have many practical applications requiring pervasive and/or real-time geospatial data such as health epidemics, crisis management, environmental monitoring, crime analysis, or socio-economic studies. After presenting background works and formulating research objectives in the Introduction, this thesis explores the information potential of VGI (Chapter 1) in the context of natural hazards management, then proposes a generic workflow for VGI Sensing (Chapter 2) – which is exemplified to a real-life use case. Technical optimisations of key steps of the VGI Sensing workflow are then studied in details (Chapter 3), and finally, the concept of VGI Sensing is presented in the wider perspective of the Digital Earth Nervous System (Chapter 4). By doing so, it gives significant contribution to the sub-field of Geomatics that aims at converting information shared on the Internet by citizens as a reliable source of Earth Observation data, and opens perspectives for further research - which are discussed in the final chapter. An additional commentary is then proposed, addressing the questions related to the limitations and ethics of VGI Sensing.(AGRO - Sciences agronomiques et ingénierie biologique) -- UCL, 201

Community-Based Geoportals: The Next Generation? - Concepts and Methods for the Geospatial Web 2.0

The Web is going social, as shows the huge success of Social Networking Sites, but also the adjunction of community-based features on major existing websites. At the same time, technologies and standards making the web systems interoperable, like Web Services, RSS, XML, etc., have reached maturity. Social dimension and interoperability are the cornerstones of an emerging paradigm for information creation and sharing: the Web 2.0. Geoportals are World Wide Web Gateways that organise content and services related to Geographic Information. They are hence the most visible part of Spatial Data Infrastructures (i.e. distributed systems that allow acquiring, process, distributing, using, maintaining, and preserving spatial data). Today¿s Geoportals are focusing on interoperability through the implementation of standards for discovery and use of geographic data and services. Recent papers are arguing for deeper integration of the Web 2.0 paradigm with the geospatial web. This article aims to provide an overview supporting the next generation of developments for Geoportals, by defining the related concepts, by emphasising advantages and caveats of such approach, and proposing implementation strategies.JRC.DDG.H.6-Spatial data infrastructure

"OMG, from Here, I Can See the Flames!": A Use case of Mining Location Based Social Networks to Acquire Spatiotemporal Data on Forest Fires

The emergence of innovative web applications, often labelled as Web 2.0, has permitted an unprecedented increase of content created by non-specialist users. In particular, Location-based Social Networks (LBSN) are designed as platforms allowing the creation, storage and retrieval of vast amounts of georeferenced and user-generated contents. LBSN can thus be seen by Geographic Information specialists as a timely and cost-effective source of spatio-temporal information for many fields of application, provided that they can set up workflows to retrieve, validate and organise such information. This paper aims to improve the understanding on how LBSN can be used as a reliable source of spatio-temporal information, by analysing the temporal, spatial and social dynamics of Twitter activity during a major forest fire event in the South of France in July 2009.JRC.H.6-Spatial data infrastructure

La certification des modes de production de la viande sous label

peer reviewe

Addressing Vagueness in Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) - A Case Study

In times of climate change, people¿s perceptions of environmental phenomena might become an invaluable source of information if shared with the general public and the scientific community (Craglia et al., 2008). Such information is generally described as VGI, which stands for "Volunteered Geographic Information". However, in the environmental field, VGI can be also understood as "Vague Geographic Information". We will explain why: firstly, many environmental phenomena, like precipitation and temperature distribution, lack a precise location and extent. Secondly, these phenomena are perceived by people, and the resulting information should be seen as perceptions, that, unlike measurements, may differ with the individual¿s requirements on the environment: different individuals are affected by and notice different environmental characteristics depending on how they use the environment. Perceptions describe only a spatiotemporal and thematic snapshot of the entire phenomenon. The way in which VGI systems are built today is often based on the principle of putting pushpins on maps or on uploading GPS tracks. By doing so, VGI systems inherit the object-oriented vision of geographic information, implying a certain spatial precision. Very often VGI actually has this precision, as it is provided in form of addresses (¿my house¿ or ¿my favorite coffee bar¿) or as it has been encoded using a GPS device (¿my street¿) (Goodchild, 2007). However, as discussed in the previous paragraph, people¿s perceptions of environmental phenomena might not correspond to a precise street address or point on a map. Motivated by the above said, we formulate the following research question: How can the vagueness of stakeholder¿s perception of environmental phenomenon be reconciled with the ¿crisp objects¿ vision of current VGI, to build innovative VGI systems? We propose a hybrid strategy, combining an Open Gazetteer approach (Jones et al., 2008), and the concept of Degree of Truth (Fisher, 2000). The Open Gazetteer approach permits users to locate events using their own words and reference system. The concept of Degree of Truth includes elements of the fuzzy sets theory in the web based VGI system to reflect uncertainty of a given localization. The research is based on a real-world case study. Actors from forestry, fishing and reindeer husbandry sectors in the Barents region have been interviewed concerning their perception of how specific changes in climate (e.g., an earlier spring) would impact them according to their experience on the field (Keskiatlo, 2008). This data has been analyzed with respect to how people perceive and describe environmental phenomena and how they describe them, as well as which characteristics are important for them. This is the base for the proposed strategy of how to capture and represent such information. As a proof-of concept we design a web based system that can capture, store and portray this Volunteered and Vague Geographic Information, to effectively capture stakeholder testimonials on climate change. The web based system will be applied for an ongoing study of forestry, reindeer husbandry and tourism in selected locations in northern Sweden.JRC.DDG.H.6-Spatial data infrastructure