Prototyping Information Visualization in 3D City Models: a Model-based Approach

When creating 3D city models, selecting relevant visualization techniques is a particularly difficult user interface design task. A first obstacle is that current geodata-oriented tools, e.g. ArcGIS, have limited 3D capabilities and limited sets of visualization techniques. Another important obstacle is the lack of unified description of information visualization techniques for 3D city models. If many techniques have been devised for different types of data or information (wind flows, air quality fields, historic or legal texts, etc.) they are generally described in articles, and not really formalized. In this paper we address the problem of visualizing information in (rich) 3D city models by presenting a model-based approach for the rapid prototyping of visualization techniques. We propose to represent visualization techniques as the composition of graph transformations. We show that these transformations can be specified with SPARQL construction operations over RDF graphs. These specifications can then be used in a prototype generator to produce 3D scenes that contain the 3D city model augmented with data represented using the desired technique.Comment: Proc. of 3DGeoInfo 2014 Conference, Dubai, November 201

Extracting discourse elements and annotating scientific documents using the SciAnnotDoc model: a use case in gender documents

When scientists are searching for informa- tion, they generally have a precise objective in mind. Instead of looking for documents “about a topic T”, they try to answer specific questions such as finding the definition of a concept, finding results for a particular problem, checking whether an idea has already been tested, or comparing the scientific conclusions of two articles. Answering these precise or complex queries on a corpus of scientific documents requires precise mod- elling of the full content of the documents. In particu- lar, each document element must be characterised by its discourse type (hypothesis, definition, result, method, etc.). In this paper we present a scientific document model (SciAnnotDoc ontology), developed from an em- pirical study conducted with scientists, that models the discourse types. We developed an automated process that analyse documents effectively identifying the dis- course types of each element. Using syntactic rules (pat- terns), we evaluated the process output in terms of pre- cision and recall using a previously annotated corpus in Gender Studies. We chose to annotate documents in Humanities, as these documents are well known to be less formalised than those in “hard science”. The process output has been used to create a SciAnnotDoc representation of the corpus on top of which we built a faceted search interface. Experiments with users show that searches using with this interface clearly outper- form standard keyword searches for precise or complex queries

Towards an Integrated Visualization Of Semantically Enriched 3D City Models: An Ontology of 3D Visualization Techniques

3D city models - which represent in 3 dimensions the geometric elements of a city - are increasingly used for an intended wide range of applications. Such uses are made possible by using semantically enriched 3D city models and by presenting such enriched 3D city models in a way that allows decision-making processes to be carried out from the best choices among sets of objectives, and across issues and scales. In order to help in such a decision-making process we have defined a framework to find the best visualization technique(s) for a set of potentially heterogeneous data that have to be visualized within the same 3D city model, in order to perform a given task in a specific context. We have chosen an ontology-based approach. This approach and the specification and use of the resulting ontology of 3D visualization techniques are described in this paper

An automatic method for reporting the quality of thesauri

Thesauri are knowledge models commonly used for information classification and retrieval whose structure is defined by standards such as the ISO 25964. However, when creators do not correctly follow the specifications, they construct models with inadequate concepts or relations that provide a limited usability. This paper describes a process that automatically analyzes the thesaurus properties and relations with respect to ISO 25964 specification, and suggests the correction of potential problems. It performs a lexical and syntactic analysis of the concept labels, and a structural and semantic analyses of the relations. The process has been tested with Urbamet and Gemet thesauri and the results have been analyzed to determine how well the proposed process works

Contextual ontologies motivations, challenges, and solutions

Contextual ontologies are ontologies that characterize a concept by a set of properties that vary according to context. Contextual ontologies are now crucial for users who intend to exchange information in a domain. Existing ontology languages are not capable of defining such type of ontologies. The objective of this paper is to formally define a contextual ontology language to support the development of contextual ontologies. In this paper, we use description logics as an ontology language and then we extend it by introducing a new contextual constructor. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006

A Conceptual Model for Participants and Activities in Citizen Science Projects

24 pages, 4 figures, 3 tablesInterest in the formal representation of citizen science comes from portals, platforms, and catalogues of citizen science projects; scientists using citizen science data for their research; and funding agencies and governments interested in the impact of citizen science initiatives. Having a common understanding and representation of citizen science projects, their participants, and their outcomes is key to enabling seamless knowledge and data sharing. In this chapter, we provide a conceptual model comprised of the core citizen science concepts with which projects and data can be described in a standardised manner, focusing on the description of the participants and their activities. The conceptual model is the outcome of a working group from the COST Action CA15212 Citizen Science to Promote Creativity, Scientific Literacy, and Innovation throughout Europe, established to improve data standardisation and interoperability in citizen science activities. It utilises past models and contributes to current standardisation efforts, such as the Public Participation in Scientific Research (PPSR) Common Conceptual Model and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards. Its design is intended to fulfil the needs of different stakeholders, as illustrated by several case studies which demonstrate the model’s applicabilityPeer reviewe