Towns conquer: a gamified application to collect geographical names (vernacular names/toponyms)

The traditional model for geospatial crowd sourcing asks the public to use their free time collecting geospatial data for no obvious reward. This model has shown to work very well on projects such as Open Street Map, but comes with some clear disadvantages such as reliance on small communities of ‘Neo-geographers’ and variability in quality and content of collected data. This project aims at tackling these problems by providing alternative motivation specifically a smartphone based computer game service. Geographical names (vernacular names/ toponyms) have been identified as potential targets as they are difficult to collect on a large scale and easy to collect locally, thus ideal for crowd sourcing. The data set will be a toponyms database provided by the Spanish National Geographic Institute (IGN Spain). A location based game is targeted as it is easy to guide data collection with in-game rewards (prizes, points, badges etc.). Android is chosen for its accessible API and wide use

Approach to Facilitating Geospatial Data and Metadata Publication Using a Standard Geoservice

Nowadays, the existence of metadata is one of the most important aspects of effective discovery of geospatial data published in Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs). However, due to lack of efficient mechanisms integrated in the data workflow, to assist users in metadata generation, a lot of low quality and outdated metadata are stored in the catalogues. This paper presents a mechanism for generating and publishing metadata through a publication service. This mechanism is provided as a web service implemented with a standard interface called a web processing service, which improves interoperability between other SDI components. This work extends previous research, in which a publication service has been designed in the framework of the European Directive Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE) as a solution to assist users in automatically publishing geospatial data and metadata in order to improve, among other aspects, SDI maintenance and usability. Also, this work adds more extra features in order to support more geospatial formats, such as sensor data.Sergio Trilles has been funded by the postdoctoral programme Vali+d (GVA) (grant number APOSTD/2016/058). This work has been funded by the European Commission through the GEO-C project (H2020-MSCA-ITN-2014, Grant Agreement number 642332, http://www.geo-c.eu/)

Monitorización de datos de calidad de aire

Cada vez más somos testigos del despliegue de redes de sensores que miden el estado del entorno en el que vivimos. Estas redes aportan grandes volúmenes de información en formatos y escalas muy diversas. Encontramos ejemplos de datos de diversa naturaleza, desde condiciones climáticas, hasta concentraciones de elementos contaminantes debido a la actividad humana como el transporte, y la industria. En este trabajo describimos como la publicación de estos datos mediante servicios que proporcionen un acceso estructurado y basado en estándares permite una mejor integración de estos datos, tanto para su visualización desde diversas plataformas (web o móvil) como para su consumo mediante procesos de análisis que permitan extraer valor añadido y asistir en la toma de decisiones. Uno de los principales objetivos es incrementar la interoperabilidad de acceso a estos datos y que un usuario a través de diferentes dispositivos pueda conocer en tiempo real las condiciones de una ubicación concreta.We are progressively witnessing how more and more sensor networks measure the environment where we live. These networks provide big data volumes in different formats and scales. We find examples of very diverse data, be it from climatic conditions to the levels of concentration of polluting elements following the human activity, such as those related to transport and industries. This article describes how the publication of this data through services providing a structured and standard-based access allows a better integration of the said data, both for its visualisation from different platforms (web, or mobile devices) and its consumption through analysis processes allowing to extract added value and assist in the decision making process. One of its main aims is to increase the interoperability of access to this data so that any user may know in real time and through different devices the conditions of a given location

A Location Aware Mobile Tool for Direct and Indirect Climate Data Sensors

Access to GIS data from mobile platforms continues to be a challenge and there is a wide range of fields where it is extremely useful. In this work, we combined three key aspects: climate data sensors, mobile platforms and spatial proximity operations. We published and made use of a web 2.0 network of climate data, where content is user-collected, by means of their meteorological stations, and exposed as available information for the virtual community. Moreover, we enriched this data by giving the users the opportunity to directly inform the system with different climate measures. In general, management of this type of information from a mobile application could result in an important decision tool, as it enables us to provide climate-related data according to a context and a geographical location. Therefore, we implemented a native mobile application for iPhone and iPad platforms by using ArcGIS SDK for iOS and by integrating a series of ArcGIS webmaps, which allows us to perform geospatial queries based on the user's location, offering, at the same time, access to all the data provided by the climate data sensor network and from direct users

Measuring complexity in OGC web services XML schemas: pragmatic use and solutions

The use of standards in the geospatial domain, such as those defined by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), for exchanging data has brought a great deal of interoperability upon which systems can be built in a reliable way. Unfortunately, these standards are becoming increasingly complex, making their implementation an arduous task. The use of appropriate software metrics can be very useful to quantify different properties of the standards that ultimately may suggest different solutions to deal with problems related to their complexity. In this regard, we present in this article an attempt to measure the complexity of the schemas associated with the OGC implementation specifications. We use a comprehensive set of metrics to provide a multidimensional view of this complexity. These metrics can be used to evaluate the impact of design decisions, study the evolution of schemas, and so on. We also present and evaluate different solutions that could be applied to overcome some of the problems associated with the complexity of the schemas

Using SWE Standards for Ubiquitous Environmental Sensing: A Performance Analysis

Although smartphone applications represent the most typical data consumer tool from the citizen perspective in environmental applications, they can also be used for in-situ data collection and production in varied scenarios, such as geological sciences and biodiversity. The use of standard protocols, such as SWE, to exchange information between smartphones and sensor infrastructures brings benefits such as interoperability and scalability, but their reliance on XML is a potential problem when large volumes of data are transferred, due to limited bandwidth and processing capabilities on mobile phones. In this article we present a performance analysis about the use of SWE standards in smartphone applications to consume and produce environmental sensor data, analysing to what extent the performance problems related to XML can be alleviated by using alternative uncompressed and compressed formats

An IoT Platform Based on Microservices and Serverless Paradigms for Smart Farming Purposes

Nowadays, the concept of “Everything is connected to Everything” has spread to reach increasingly diverse scenarios, due to the benefits of constantly being able to know, in real-time, the status of your factory, your city, your health or your smallholding. This wide variety of scenarios creates different challenges such as the heterogeneity of IoT devices, support for large numbers of connected devices, reliable and safe systems, energy efficiency and the possibility of using this system by third-parties in other scenarios. A transversal middleware in all IoT solutions is called an IoT platform. the IoT platform is a piece of software that works like a kind of “glue” to combine platforms and orchestrate capabilities that connect devices, users and applications/services in a “cyber-physical” world. In this way, the IoT platform can help solve the challenges listed above. This paper proposes an IoT agnostic architecture, highlighting the role of the IoT platform, within a broader ecosystem of interconnected tools, aiming at increasing scalability, stability, interoperability and reusability. For that purpose, different paradigms of computing will be used, such as microservices architecture and serverless computing. Additionally, a technological proposal of the architecture, called SEnviro Connect, is presented. This proposal is validated in the IoT scenario of smart farming, where five IoT devices (SEnviro nodes) have been deployed to improve wine production. A comprehensive performance evaluation is carried out to guarantee a scalable and stable platform

Construyendo un sistema de indexación y búsqueda de recursos georreferenciados

Comunicació presentada a les VI Jornadas SIG Libre celebrades a Girona, els dies 21, 22 i 23 de març de 2012La cantidad y variedad de recursos georreferenciados disponibles en la web crece día a día. Este hecho demuestra el interés de los usuarios y el papel fundamental que la información con contexto geográfico juega en la sociedad. Actualmente existen numerosos servicios Web especializados en tipos concretos de recursos como imágenes, video o texto que nos permiten realizar búsquedas en base a una localización. Por otra parte, de manera más formal, en el contexto de los Sistemas de Información Geográfica (SIG) se han realizado grandes esfuerzos en generar grandes catálogos de metadatos. Sin embargo, debido entre otros, a que la generación y publicación de metadatos es un proceso manual, existe una escasez de ellos y aún resulta complicado encontrar contenidos georreferenciados relevantes de una forma integrada y sencilla. Podemos tomar como referencia el mundo web, donde inicialmente era muy complicado encontrar los contenidos que eran relevantes. La revolución llego con los buscadores, empresas como Yahoo! o Google se dieron cuenta de las deficiencias del sistema y empezaron a recopilar ellos mismos información de cada recurso cuyos creadores dejaban accesible. Esta labor es realizada por los conocidos robots o crawlers, que se dedican a recorrer sistemáticamente los recursos disponibles con el fin de obtener de ellos el máximo de información (metadatos) que su tecnología les permite. En base a estos metadatos se podrán indexar los recursos de una forma más exacta y eficiente proporcionando resultados más relevantes y exactos a las búsquedas realizadas por los usuarios. Tal ha sido el éxito de estos buscadores que hoy es inimaginable la búsqueda de información y la navegación por la red sin acceder a alguno de estos servicios. Por ello, en este trabajo se presenta una primera aproximación para desarrollar un sistema de indexación y búsqueda de recursos georreferenciados. Mediante este sistema se pretende mejorar el descubrimiento y consecuentemente la accesibilidad a la información, nuestro objetivo inicial.Este trabajo ha sido parcialmente financiado por una beca predoctoral de la Universitat Jaume I (PREDOC/2008/06), por una ayuda de movilidad de la Fundació Caixa Castelló-Bancaixa (E-2011-12) y por el proyecto “España Virtual” (ref. CENIT 2008-1030) a través del Instituto Geográfico Nacional (IGN) de España