Issues in the Cognition and Representation of Internet Based Public Transport Maps

Spatial content and maps are no longer unusual on the Internet. Public transport operators have realised that the Internet is currently the most powerful medium for the dissemination of up-to-date scheduling and timetabling information. Transportation information is now of vital interest in our daily lives. Journey planning systems are innovative uses of the WWW providing geospatial information about transportation with maps and schematic routing diagrams being used in these systems. Transportation maps are now amongst the most important and influential cartographic works in the world [Thrower]. A public transport journey planning system ptInfo [Mooney] has been developed to allow users to plan journeys on public transport systems. The system returns detailed journey itinerary specifications including interchange points. ptInfo uses digital maps as its principal means of journey specification and user interaction

Using moment invariants for classifying shapes on large scale maps

Automated feature extraction and object recognition are large research areas in the field of image processing and computer vision. Recognition is largely based on the matching of descriptions of shapes. Numerous shapes description techniques have been developed, such as scalar features (dimension, area, number of corners etc.), Fourier descriptors and moment invariants. These techniques numerically describe shapes independent of translation, scale and rotation and can be easily applied to topographical data. The applicability of the moment invariants technique to classify objects on large-scale maps is described. From the test data used, moments are fairly reliable at distinguishing certain classes of topographic object. However, their effectiveness will increase when fused with the results of other techniques

Tram and Bus Tracker: A Dynamic Web Application for Public Transit Reliability

Currently transit quality information such as timetable adherence, bus arrival times and route performance has usually been disseminated through static environments on web-pages, paper documents or other different media. This paper describes a dynamic Geographic Information Systembased Web application which displays the same information through a dynamic web application. Using data collected from an Automatic Vehicle Location System (AVL), a map-based interface has been created to allow travellers and operators to see routes, stops and buses in motion. The collected information is archived for off-line analysis. The system allows users to query and display day-to-day management of operations as well as to generate static performance reports to provide a complete view of the transit system reliability

Topographic Object Recognition Through Shape

Automatic structuring (feature coding and object recognition) of topographic data, such as that derived from air survey or raster scanning large-scale paper maps, requires the classification of objects such as buildings, roads, rivers, fields and railways. The recognition of objects in computer vision is largely based on the matching of descriptions of shapes. Fourier descriptors, moment invariants, boundary chain coding and scalar descriptors are methods that have been widely used and have been developed to describe shape irrespective of position, orientation and scale. The applicability of the above four methods to topographic shapes is described and their usefulness evaluated. All methods derive descriptors consisting of a small number of real values from the object's polygonal boundary. Two large corpora representing data sets from Ordnance Survey maps of Purbeck and Plymouth were available. The effectiveness of each description technique was evaluated by using one corpus as a training-set to derive distributions for the values for supervised learning. This was then used to reclassify the objects in both data sets using each individual descriptor to evaluate their effectiveness. No individual descriptor or method produced consistent correct classification. Various models for the fusion of the classification results from individual descriptors were implemented. These were used to experiment with different combinations of descriptors in order to improve results. Overall results show that Moment Invariants fused with the minfusion rule gave the best performance with the two data sets. Much further work remains to be done as enumerated in the concluding section

Data Fusion for Topographic Object Classification

This paper presents research conducted into the automatic recognition of features and objects on topographic maps (for example, buildings, roads, land parcels etc.) using a selection of shape description methods developed mostly in the field of computer vision. In particular the work here focuses on the proposal and evaluation of fusion techniques (at the decision level of representation) for the classification of topographic data. A set of Ordnance Survey large-scale digital data (1:1250 and 1:2500) was used to evaluate the classification performance of the shape recognition methods used. Each technique proved partially successful in distinguishing classes of objects, however, no one technique provided a general solution to the problem. Further outlined experiments combine these techniques, using a data fusion methodology, on the real-world problem of checking and assigning feature codes in large-scale Ordnance Survey digital data

Representations of Environmental Data in Web-based GIS

The GIS community is using the vast potential of the Internet to disseminate geospatial information. Web-based GIS software and services are key components in distribution of geospatial data. Web-based GIS provide government departments, local authorities and environmental agencies with unprecedented opportunities to offer online access to their environmental information and related services for citizens. Web-based GIS offers access to information services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. In order for web-GIS to be successful in delivering environmental information the representation of the input datasets and output delivery formats/structures must be suitable to both the Internet delivery medium and the intended audience. In the majority of cases this will involve conversion and re-modelling of existing data resources. This paper discusses representations of environmental data for delivery and dissemination using web-based GIS in order to serve a variety of stakeholders : policy makers, scientists, media, and the general public. We summarise the major issues for delivering complex geospatial data about the environment using this medium. Prioritisation of metadata collection and geospatial data interoperability are crucial factors in delivering effective web-GIS tools. The INSPIRE Directive will greatly increase the number of available data sources and the use of webbased GIS for environmental information provision in the future will be discussed

Removing the texture feature response to object boundaries

Texture is a spatial property and thus any features used to describe it must be calculated within a neighbourhood. This process of integrating information over a neighbourhood leads to what we will refer to as the texture boundary response problem, where an unwanted response is observed at object boundaries. This response is due to features being extracted from a mixture of textures and/or an intensity edge between objects. If segmentation is performed using these raw features this will lead to the generation of unwanted classes along object boundaries. To overcome this, post processing of feature images must be performed to remove this response before a classification algorithm can be applied. To date this problem has received little attention with no evaluation of the alternative solutions available in the literature of which we are aware. In this work we perform an evaluation of known solutions to the boundary response problem and discover separable median filtering to be the curre nt best choice. An in depth evaluation of the separable median filtering approach shows that it fails to remove certain parts or types of object boundary response. To overcome this failing we propose two alternative techniques which involve either post processing of the separable median filtered result or an alternative filtering technique

Issues in the Cognition and Representation of Internet Based Public Transport Maps

Spatial content and maps are no longer unusual on the Internet. Public transport operators have realised that the Internet is currently the most powerful medium for the dissemination of up-to-date scheduling and timetabling information. Transportation information is now of vital interest in our daily lives. Journey planning systems are innovative uses of the WWW providing geospatial information about transportation with maps and schematic routing diagrams being used in these systems. Transportation maps are now amongst the most important and influential cartographic works in the world [Thrower]. A public transport journey planning system ptInfo [Mooney] has been developed to allow users to plan journeys on public transport systems. The system returns detailed journey itinerary specifications including interchange points. ptInfo uses digital maps as its principal means of journey specification and user interaction

Mobile Location Based Services: Non-visual Feedback Using Haptics

Haptics is a feedback technology that takes advantage of the human sense of touch by applying forces, vibrations, and/or motions to a haptic-enabled device such as a mobile phone. Historically, human-computer interaction has been visual, text and images on the screen. In this paper, we discuss our Haptic Interaction Model which describes the integration of haptic feedback into Mobile Location Based Services such as knowledge discovery, pedestrian navigation and notification systems. A knowledge discovery system called the Haptic GeoWand is a low interaction system that allows users to query geo-tagged data around them by using a point-and-scan technique with their mobile device. Haptic Pedestrian is a navigation system for walkers. Four prototypes have been developed classified according to the user‟s guidance requirements, the user type (based on spatial skills), and overall system complexity. Haptic Alert is a notification system that provides spatial information to the users of public transport. In all these systems, haptic feedback is used to convey information about location, orientation, density and distance by use of the vibration alarm with varying frequencies and patterns to help understand the physical environment. User trials have elicited positive response from the users. Haptics integrated into a multi-modal navigation system and other mobile location based services provides more usable, less distracting but more effective interaction than conventional systems

Mobile Location Based Services: Non-visual Feedback Using Haptics

Haptics is a feedback technology that takes advantage of the human sense of touch by applying forces, vibrations, and/or motions to a haptic-enabled device such as a mobile phone. Historically, human-computer interaction has been visual, text and images on the screen. In this paper, we discuss our Haptic Interaction Model which describes the integration of haptic feedback into Mobile Location Based Services such as knowledge discovery, pedestrian navigation and notification systems. A knowledge discovery system called the Haptic GeoWand is a low interaction system that allows users to query geo-tagged data around them by using a point-and-scan technique with their mobile device. Haptic Pedestrian is a navigation system for walkers. Four prototypes have been developed classified according to the user‟s guidance requirements, the user type (based on spatial skills), and overall system complexity. Haptic Alert is a notification system that provides spatial information to the users of public transport. In all these systems, haptic feedback is used to convey information about location, orientation, density and distance by use of the vibration alarm with varying frequencies and patterns to help understand the physical environment. User trials have elicited positive response from the users. Haptics integrated into a multi-modal navigation system and other mobile location based services provides more usable, less distracting but more effective interaction than conventional systems