Multi-sensory Integration for a digital earth nervous system

Ponencias, comunicaciones y pósters presentados en el 17th AGILE Conference on Geographic Information Science "Connecting a Digital Europe through Location and Place", celebrado en la Universitat Jaume I del 3 al 6 de junio de 2014.The amount of geospatial data is increasing, but interoperability issues hinder integrated discovery, view and analysis. This paper suggests an illustrative and extensible solution to some of the underlying challenges, by extending a previously suggested Digital Earth Nervous System with multi-sensory integration capacities. In doing so, it proposes the combination of multiple ways of sensing our environment with a memory for storing relevant data sets and integration methods for extracting valuable information out of the rich inputs. Potential building blocks for the implementation of such an advanced nervous system are sketched and briefly analysed. The paper stimulates more detailed considerations by concluding with challenges for future research and requesting a multidisciplinary development approach – including computer sciences, environmental sciences, cognitive and neurosciences, as well as engineering

Beyond data collection: Objectives and methods of research using VGI and geo-social media for disaster management

This paper investigates research using VGI and geo-social media in the disaster management context. Relying on the method of systematic mapping, it develops a classification schema that captures three levels of main category, focus, and intended use, and analyzes the relationships with the employed data sources and analysis methods. It focuses the scope to the pioneering field of disaster management, but the described approach and the developed classification schema are easily adaptable to different application domains or future developments. The results show that a hypothesized consolidation of research, characterized through the building of canonical bodies of knowledge and advanced application cases with refined methodology, has not yet happened. The majority of the studies investigate the challenges and potential solutions of data handling, with fewer studies focusing on socio-technological issues or advanced applications. This trend is currently showing no sign of change, highlighting that VGI research is still very much technology-driven as opposed to theory- or application-driven. From the results of the systematic mapping study, the authors formulate and discuss several research objectives for future work, which could lead to a stronger, more theory-driven treatment of the topic VGI in GIScience.Carlos Granell has been partly funded by the Ramón y Cajal Programme (grant number RYC-2014-16913

Multi-sensory Integration for a Digital Earth Nervous System

The amount of geospatial data is increasing, but interoperability issues hinder integrated discovery, view and analysis. This paper suggests an illustrative and extensible solution to some of the underlying challenges, by extending a previously suggested Digital Earth Nervous System with multi-sensory integration capacities. In doing so, it proposes the combination of multiple ways of sensing our environment with a memory for storing relevant data sets and integration methods for extracting valuable information out of the rich inputs. Potential building blocks for the implementation of such an advanced nervous system are sketched and briefly analysed. The paper stimulates more detailed considerations by concluding with challenges for future research and requesting a multidisciplinary development approach – including computer sciences, environmental sciences, cognitive and neurosciences, as well as engineering.JRC.H.6-Digital Earth and Reference Dat

Are Alcohol Excise Taxes Good For Us? Short and Long-Term Effects on Mortality Rates

Regression results from a 30-year panel of the state-level data indicate that changes in alcohol-excise taxes cause a reduction in drinking and lower all-cause mortality in the short run. But those results do not fully capture the long-term mortality effects of a permanent change in drinking levels. In particular, since moderate drinking has a protective effect against heart disease in middle age, it is possible that a reduction in per capita drinking will result in some people drinking "too little" and dying sooner than they otherwise would. To explore that possibility, we simulate the effect of a one percent reduction in drinking on all-cause mortality for the age group 35-69, using several alternative assumptions about how the reduction is distributed across this population. We find that the long-term mortality effect of a one percent reduction in drinking is essentially nil.

Geospatial Analysis and Internet of Things in Environmental Informatics

Geospatial analysis offers large potential for better understanding, modelling and visualizing our natural and artificial ecosystems, using Internet of Things as a pervasive sensing infrastructure. This paper performs a review of research work based on the IoT, in which geospatial analysis has been employed in environmental informatics. Six different geospatial analysis methods have been identified, presented together with 26 relevant IoT initiatives adopting some of these techniques. Analysis is performed in relation to the type of IoT devices used, their deployment status and data transmission standards, data types employed, and reliability of measurements. This paper scratches the surface of this combination of technologies and techniques, providing indications of how IoT, together with geospatial analysis, are currently being used in the domain of environmental research.Comment: Applying Internet of Things Technologies in Environmental Research Workshop, Proc. of EnviroInfo 201

Improving reproducibility of geospatial conference papers: lessons learned from a first implementation of reproducibility reviews

Ponència presentada a The 15th Munin Conference on Scholarly Publishing celebrat a Tromsø, Noruega, el 18 de novembre de 2020In an attempt to increase the reproducibility of contributions to a long-running and established geospatial conference series, the 23rd AGILE Conference on Geographic Information Science 2020 (https://agile-online.org/conference-2020) for the first time provided guidelines on preparing reproducible papers (Nüst et al., 2020) and appointed a reproducibility committee to evaluate computational workflows of accepted papers ( https://www.agile-giscience-series.net/review_process.html). Here, the committee’s members report on the lessons learned from reviewing 23 accepted full papers and outline future plans for the conference series. In summary, six submissions were partially reproduced by reproducibility reviewers, whose reports are published openly on OSF ( https://osf.io/6k5fh/). These papers are promoted with badges on the proceedings’ website (https://agile-giss.copernicus.org/articles/1/index.html). Compared to previous years’ submissions (cf. Nüst et al. 2018), the guidelines and increased community awareness markedly improved reproducibility. However, the reproduction attempts also revealed problems, most importantly insufficient documentation. This was partly mitigated by the non-blind reproducibility review, conducted after paper acceptance, where interaction between reviewers and authors can provide the input and attention needed to increase reproducibility. However, the reviews also showed that anonymisation and public repositories, when properly documented, can enable a successful reproduction without interaction, as was the case with one manuscript. Individual and organisational challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the conference’s eventual cancellation increased the teething problems. Nevertheless, also under normal circumstances, future iterations will have to reduce the reviewer’s efforts to be sustainable, ideally by more readily executable workflows and a larger reproducibility committee. Furthermore, we discuss changes to the reproducibility review process and their challenges. Reproducibility reports could be made available to “regular” reviewers, or the reports could be considered equally for acceptance/rejection decisions. Insufficient information or invalid arguments for not disclosing material could then lead to a submission being rejected or not being sent out to peer review. Further organisational improvements are a publication of reviewers’ activities in public databases, making the guidelines mandatory, and collecting data on used tools/repositories, spent efforts, and communications. Finally, we summarise the revision of the guidelines, including their new section for reproducibility reviewers, and the status of the initiative “Reproducible Publications at AGILE Conferences” (https://reproducible-agile.github.io/initiative/), which we connect to related undertakings such as CODECHECK (Eglen et al., 2019). The AGILE Conference’s experiences may help other communities to transition towards more open and reproducible research publications

Frequency and clinical relevance of potential cytochrome P450 drug interactions in a psychiatric patient population – an analysis based on German insurance claims data

Background Numerous drugs used in the treatment of psychiatric disorders are substrates of cytochrome P450 enzymes and are potential candidates for drug- drug interactions (DDIs). Methods Claims data of a German statutory health insurance company from severely mentally ill patients who registered in an integrated care contract from August 2004 to December 2009 were analysed. We measured time periods of concomitant prescription of drugs that have been reported to interact via cytochrome P450, with a focus on drugs acting as strong inhibitors. Such drug-drug exposure (DDE) is an incontrovertible precursor of DDIs. We assessed whether potential DDIs were considered clinically relevant based on the prescribing information of the respective drugs. Results Among all 1221 patients, 186 patients (15.2 %; Clopper-Pearson 95 % confidence interval (CI): 13.3–17.4 %) had at least one DDE prescription, and 58 patients (4.8 %; 95 % CI 3.6–6.1) had at least one DDE prescription involving a strong cytochrome P450 inhibitor. In 59 patients, (4.8 %; 95 % CI: 3.7–6.2 %) five or more DDEs were identified, and five or more DDEs with a strong inhibitor were identified in 18 patients (1.5 %; 95 % CI: 0.9–2.3). The rates of DDEs were 0.27 (Garwood 95%CI: 0.25–0.28) per person-year and 0.07 (95 % CI: 0.07–0.08) for strong-inhibitor DDEs. Four of the ten most frequent DDEs were identified as clinically relevant, and seven of the eight most frequent DDEs involving a strong inhibitor were clinically relevant. Conclusions The number of patients with DDEs was not alarmingly high in our sample. Nevertheless, prescription information showed that some prescribed drug combinations could result in serious adverse consequences that are known to weaken or strengthen the effect of the drugs and should therefore be avoided

Reproducible Research and GIScience: An Evaluation Using GIScience Conference Papers

Ponencia presentada en: 11th International Conference on Geographic Information Science (GIScience 2021)GIScience conference authors and researchers face the same computational reproducibility challenges as authors and researchers from other disciplines who use computers to analyse data. Here, to assess the reproducibility of GIScience research, we apply a rubric for assessing the reproducibility of 75 conference papers published at the GIScience conference series in the years 2012-2018. Since the rubric and process were previously applied to the publications of the AGILE conference series, this paper itself is an attempt to replicate that analysis, however going beyond the previous work by evaluating and discussing proposed measures to improve reproducibility in the specific context of the GIScience conference series. The results of the GIScience paper assessment are in line with previous findings: although descriptions of workflows and the inclusion of the data and software suffice to explain the presented work, in most published papers they do not allow a third party to reproduce the results and findings with a reasonable effort. We summarise and adapt previous recommendations for improving this situation and propose the GIScience community to start a broad discussion on the reusability, quality, and openness of its research. Further, we critically reflect on the process of assessing paper reproducibility, and provide suggestions for improving future assessments

The nature of volunterreed geographic information

This contribution starts from the assumption that volunteered geographic information is a technological, cultural and scientific innovation. It therefore offers first some general background on the context that has fuelled the development of VGI and the lively scientific debates that have accompanied its success. The paper then focuses on the nature of this data by describing the main elements of VGI: the geographical reference (coordinates, geotag, etc.), the contents (texts, images, etc.) and the producers’ profiles. The opportunities and the criticalities offered by this data are described with examples drawn from recent literature and applications to highlight both the research challenges and the current state of the subject. The chapter aims to provide a guide to and a reference picture of this rapidly evolving subject