Twitter and Academic Geography through the Lens of #AAG2018

Twitter has emerged as a global social network of active users who share conversations with one another in an online setting. Academics are one community that has increasingly taken to Twitter as a means of connecting with other scholars, sharing research, and obtaining meaningful feedback. Tweeting has become especially popular during academic conferences where conference attendees use Twitter hashtags to filter conference conversations into a separate dialogue. For geographers, the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers (AAG) represents one such occasion to use Twitter to discuss contemporary developments in geographic research. In this article, we provide an overview of Twitter as well as the ways in which the academic community uses the platform. Following this, we discuss the tweets sent using the hashtag for the 2018 AAG Annual Meeting, #AAG2018. To analyze these tweets, we collected all tweets with this hashtag for a period of four weeks and examined the content using word clouds and sentiment analysis to explore general feelings and trends associated with geography and the AAG Annual Meeting. We conclude with suggestions for future research avenues that could use Twitter data to gauge the pulse of the geographic discipline. Key Words: academic conferences, American Association of Geographers, geography, sentiment analysis, Twitter.     

基于资源效率的国土空间布局及支撑体系框架

形成国土空间开发保护新格局是生态文明建设的首要任务之一,关键在于城镇、农业和生态空间的合理配置,重点是以较小的资源损耗支撑社会经济可持续发展,而深入理解资源效率的作用成效是科学优化国土空间布局的前提。本文框架以城镇利用、农业生产和生态转换效率测算为逻辑起点,构建以上述效率为核心的国土空间开发保护情景方案和评价指标体系,引入体现决策偏好差异模型评价国土空间发展潜力,定量刻画不同情景方案下的国土空间布局蓝图,最后通过综合性分析范式对不同决策导向的国土空间政策工具（布局蓝图）进行模拟和优选。本文通过揭示资源效率对国土空间开发保护的作用成效,提炼国土空间布局蓝图定量刻画的具体规律,构建权衡多方利弊的全局优化策略,为国家生态文明建设和自然资源统筹管理提供理论参考。     

A Review of: “Remote Sensing of Soils and Vegetation in the USSR”. By P. J. CURRAN,G. M. FOODY,K. YA. KONDRATYEV,V. V. KOZODEROV and P. P. FEDCHENKO. (London: Taylor & Francis, 1990.) [Pp. 200.] Price £30·00. ISBN 085066 4020.

As they increase in popularity, social media are regarded as important sources of information on geographical phenomena. Studies have also shown that people rely on social media to communicate during disasters and emergency situation, and that the exchanged messages can be used to get an insight into the situation. Spatial data mining techniques are one way to extract relevant information from social media. In this article, our aim is to contribute to this field by investigating how graph clustering can be applied to support the detection of geo-located communities in Twitter in disaster situations. For this purpose, we have enhanced the fast-greedy optimization of modularity (FGM) clustering algorithm with semantic similarity so that it can deal with the complex social graphs extracted from Twitter. Then, we have coupled the enhanced FGM with the varied density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise spatial clustering algorithm to obtain spatial clusters at different temporal snapshots. The method was experimented with a case study on typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, and Twitter’s different interaction modes were compared to create the graph of users and to detect communities. The experiments show that communities that are relevant to identify areas where disaster-related incidents were reported can be extracted, and that the enhanced algorithm outperforms the generic one in this task.     

Spatial crime distribution and prediction for sporting events using social media

ABSTRACT

Sporting events attract high volumes of people, which in turn leads to increased use of social media. In addition, research shows that sporting events may trigger violent behavior that can lead to crime. This study analyses the spatial relationships between crime occurrences, demographic, socio-economic and environmental variables, together with geo-located Twitter messages and their ‘violent’ subsets. The analysis compares basketball and hockey game days and non-game days. Moreover, this research aims to analyze crime prediction models using historical crime data as a basis and then introducing tweets and additional variables in their role as covariates of crime. First, this study investigates the spatial distribution of and correlation between crime and tweets during the same temporal periods. Feature selection models are applied in order to identify the best explanatory variables. Then, we apply localized kernel density estimation model for crime prediction during basketball and hockey games, and on non-game days. Findings from this study show that Twitter data, and a subset of violent tweets, are useful in building prediction models for the seven investigated crime types for home and away sporting events, and non-game days, with different levels of improvement.     

Connecting Local to Global: Geographic Information Systems and Ecological Footprints as Tools for Sustainability

Tools that support public engagement with sustainability are essential for local sustainability planning. This research investigates the ability of two geographic information system (GIS)-based tools to promote discussion of sustainability in a suburban context. A local ecological footprint tool and a community environmental atlas (an environmentally themed online mapping system) were created for seven suburban boroughs of Montreal. Variations of both tools have been used to support sustainability efforts, but their use has not been widely evaluated. Working from a public participation GIS (PPGIS) framework that recognizes the powerful influence of data representation, this research uses focus groups to evaluate how well these tools address three criteria that have emerged from the literature on public engagement in sustainability: interdependency across systems, reflexivity about personal and social decision making, and interactions across spatial scales. Whereas the atlas remains advantageous for discussing local spatial specifics, it was found that the ecological footprint helped people see the interconnections among systems, integrate local and global aspects of sustainability, and reflect on the values and assumptions underlying current social and economic structures.     

空间视角下的能源—经济—环境关系研究进展与展望

在全球气候变化和国际地缘政治复杂的背景之下,地理学的空间视角为能源—经济—环境关系研究提供了新的研究思路。论文通过梳理、评述能源—经济、能源—环境以及能源—经济—环境关系研究文献发现：① 能源—经济关系研究出现“空间转向”趋势,区位特征被用于解释能源—经济关系的空间异质性;② 能源—环境关系研究多关注能源污染及政策的空间效应,出现了能源景观研究等新研究话题;③ 能源—经济—环境关系研究刚刚兴起,出现了因果关系实证、耦合协调度评价、多目标规划预测3种研究思路;④ 当前研究存在实证分析高度同质化、空间差异机制解释不足、可再生能源相关研究较少等不足之处。据此,论文尝试构建了空间视角下能源—经济—环境(3E)关系研究基础框架,并基于中国研究现状提出未来的研究展望,即完善理论框架建设、加强可再生能源研究以及开展碳减排目标下的能源—经济—环境系统模拟预测,从而为中国碳达峰、碳中和目标的实现提供理论与实证支撑。     

A Review of “The Impossible Land”

The movements of ideas and content between locations and languages are unquestionably crucial concerns to researchers of the information age, and Twitter has emerged as a central, global platform on which hundreds of millions of people share knowledge and information. A variety of research has attempted to harvest locational and linguistic metadata from tweets to understand important questions related to the 300 million tweets that flow through the platform each day. Much of this work is carried out with only limited understandings of how best to work with the spatial and linguistic contexts in which the information was produced, however. Furthermore, standard, well-accepted practices have yet to emerge. As such, this article studies the reliability of key methods used to determine language and location of content in Twitter. It compares three automated language identification packages to Twitter's user interface language setting and to a human coding of languages to identify common sources of disagreement. The article also demonstrates that in many cases user-entered profile locations differ from the physical locations from which users are actually tweeting. As such, these open-ended, user-generated profile locations cannot be used as useful proxies for the physical locations from which information is published to Twitter.     

“一带一路”建设模式研究——基于制度与文化视角

推动“一带一路”建设向高质量发展转变,对学术界提出了新命题,需要对已有建设模式和建设项目进行深入剖析,总结经验和教训,提出对“一带一路”建设具有指导意义的理论知识。以往地理学主要关注企业对外直接投资,而“一带一路”建设项目涉及的范畴要大得多,既包括中国的直接投资,也包括中国提供融资并承建的项目,还包括一些新兴的混合项目。已经进行的“一带一路”建设案例研究表明,中国企业“走出去”比较容易忽视的因素是中国与东道国之间在制度和文化上的差异。利用“制度和文化转向”研究思路来剖析“一带一路”建设项目,总结其建设模式,对于经济地理学的发展以及指导“一带一路”建设都具有重要意义。本文首先简要回顾了“制度和文化转向”出现的背景以及主要研究脉络;而后总结了“一带一路”建设项目的主要形式,提出了基于工程总承包（EPC）、基于特许经营和企业直接投资三大类建设模式;最后借鉴“制度和文化转向”的研究技巧,从“地域嵌入的广度和深度”和“技术及项目的‘破坏性’”两个维度,将“一带一路”建设项目分为变革性项目、支撑性项目、一般性项目和海外经贸合作园区4种类型,用以识别它们的制度和文化敏感性,并举例进行了说明。本文提出的分析框架为进行“一带一路”建设案例研究提供了一个思考方向。     

Activity patterns,socioeconomic status and urban spatial structure: what can social media data tell us?

ABSTRACT

Individual activity patterns are influenced by a wide variety of factors. The more important ones include socioeconomic status (SES) and urban spatial structure. While most previous studies relied heavily on the expensive travel-diary type data, the feasibility of using social media data to support activity pattern analysis has not been evaluated. Despite the various appealing aspects of social media data, including low acquisition cost and relatively wide geographical and international coverage, these data also have many limitations, including the lack of background information of users, such as home locations and SES. A major objective of this study is to explore the extent that Twitter data can be used to support activity pattern analysis. We introduce an approach to determine users’ home and work locations in order to examine the activity patterns of individuals. To infer the SES of individuals, we incorporate the American Community Survey (ACS) data. Using Twitter data for Washington, DC, we analyzed the activity patterns of Twitter users with different SESs. The study clearly demonstrates that while SES is highly important, the urban spatial structure, particularly where jobs are mainly found and the geographical layout of the region, plays a critical role in affecting the variation in activity patterns between users from different communities.     

全球区位论、非场所理论与襄樊都市区建设

依据全球区位论和非场所理论,运用定性定量相结合的方法,深入分析了襄樊都市区建设的背景、意义和现状条件,并在襄樊都市区中心城市建设,城市化进程和都市区的基本框架构筑,人流、物流和信息流快速通道建设,产业结构调整和企业竞争力培育,都市区内各县市协作以及经济社会环境持续发展等方面提出了相应的对策。     

Geo-temporal Twitter demographics

This paper seeks and uses highly disaggregate social media sources to characterize Greater London in terms of flows of people with modelled individual characteristics, as well as conventional measures of land use morphology and night-time residence. We conduct three analyses. First, we use the Shannon Entropy measure to characterize the geography of information creation across the city. Second, we create a geo-temporal demographic classification of Twitter users in London. Third, we begin to use Twitter data to characterize the links between different locations across the city. We see all three elements as data rich, highly disaggregate geo-temporal analysis of urban form and function, albeit one that pertains to no clearly defined population. Our conclusions reflect upon this severe shortcoming in analysis using social media data, and its implications for progressing our understanding of socio-spatial distributions within cities.     

解读海峡西岸经济区

2004年1月福建省委省政府提出建设海峡西岸经济区的发展战略.作者基于对中国宏观城市地理结构的研究,提出过一些类似的思想.在这篇文章里,作者以3个阶段的认识来解读海峡西岸经济区.早在1988年,作者在中国沿海6个都市连绵区的假设中,已经认为闽东南具有形成都市连绵区的潜在条件.在全国一级城市经济区的研究中发现,福建既不是长三角的紧密腹地,也不是珠三角的紧密腹地,而是它们二者共同的竞争腹地.在全国二级城市经济区框架中,福建省是一个相对完整的二级经济区.作者的研究和观点从理论和实证方面支持了海峡西岸经济区战略.最后对福建省未来的发展提出了几点建议.     

人类活动研究的新支点：Wi-Fi数据的特点、研究现状与应用前景

把握人类活动的时空特征是地理学研究中探究人地关系、提升人类福祉的重要基础和核心内容,日益普及的Wi-Fi网络能够为此提供可靠的数据支持。为明确Wi-Fi数据融入地理学研究的切入点和发展方向,论文通过与GPS、手机信令、蓝牙等位置感应数据的比较,认为Wi-Fi数据具有更高的采样精度和更强的采样代表性,能够获取个体在室内外各类城市空间的连续活动轨迹,支撑精细尺度下的人类活动研究。通过系统梳理人群活动状态监测、个体间的社会关系识别、建筑物的功能识别和降低隐私泄露风险等方面的研究进展,认为Wi-Fi数据将会在基于实时动态人口数据的城市功能设施规划、融合多源数据的人地关系探究、以居民福祉为导向的宜居城市建设等方面具有应用前景,有望成为地理学研究人类活动的新支点。     

自然资源调查监测技术体系构建的方向与任务

自然资源统一调查监测技术体系（简称《技术体系》）的构建与应用,是建立健全自然资源监管体制、推动资源集约节约利用、促进人与自然和谐共生的一项重要举措,也是一项内容众多、复杂艰巨的科技工程。本文根据自然资源统一调查监测的任务与要求,从调查监测信息过程的整体性特征和工程化业务实施的系统性特征出发,分析了《技术体系》构建所面临的基本问题,提出了基于整体性的《技术体系》的总体架构;继而以协同化数据感知、自动化信息处理、精细化场景管理、智能化知识服务等为主线,论述了《技术体系》的发展方向;然后根据先进性与适用性相结合的要求,分析了《技术体系》的数智化实现路径,提出了“空天地海网”一体化协同感知网络体系构建、信息自动处理平台研发、时空场景模型构建、自然资源时空知识服务系统研发、工程化技术重构等主要研发任务。为了切实地做好该技术体系的构建与推广应用,今后还应进一步加强战略需求分析,推动关键技术创新,促进跨学科交叉研究。     

Hydroelectric Infrastructure and Potential Groundwater Contamination in the Brazilian Amazon: Altamira and the Belo Monte Dam

Heavy investments in hydroelectric development are occurring throughout the Amazon Basin, which holds 42.2 percent of Brazil’s hydroelectric potential. The Belo Monte dam is the most recent and largest project in this region. The prevalence of septic systems in the Amazon, coupled with the widespread use of water wells and rising water table from filling the reservoir, create sanitation and health concerns for upstream communities. Using spatial analytical data and terrain analyses, we identify high-risk locations within the most densely populated neighborhoods in Altamira, Belo Monte’s host city. The purpose of this research is to develop a heuristic for identifying areas susceptible to groundwater and well contamination in relation to existing and proposed hydroelectric projects. Altamira’s city center persists as a high-risk location for contamination of wells because of its population density and relatively low elevation compared to other parts of the city. The methods, tools, and analyses presented in this article provide a framework that can be used to identify vulnerability to groundwater and drinking well contamination. The results presented here can guide implementation of public health and sanitation efforts in areas affected by large hydroelectric projects to avoid future water quality crises. Key Words: Belo Monte, groundwater contamination, hydroelectric infrastructure, risk assessment, spatial and terrain analyses.     

Digital Data-Centric Geography: Implications for Geography's Frontier

The debate regarding geographic information systems (GIS) as tool, toolbox, or science still lingers in geography departments and among geographers. Analysis of geographic information is a vital component of decision making among business, governments, researchers, and academics. GIS users, geographers and nongeographers alike, use and benefit from problem-solving methods in numerous fields and contexts, making the use of GIS and the core competencies associated with using GIS a topic of intense debate. Complicating this ongoing discussion is the rise of data-centric approaches to research in geography that further expand the capabilities of spatial analysis and add to the expected knowledge of a GIS user and analyst. Building on a panel discussion at the 2016 American Association of Geographers (AAG) annual meeting, as well as informal dialogues on Twitter and other social media platforms that navigate this issue in academics and industry, this article explores how skills in research computing and programming operate in geography and GIS, especially given the rise of data-centric approaches to research in these realms. Some topics, like the costs and benefits of open and closed source software, are familiar from previous discussions in geography and GIS. Others, though, like the reward structures and recognition for computing skills or programming ability, have not been widely considered given the current landscape.     

干旱区生态学研究中若干问题的思考

在分析目前干旱区生态学研究存在的主要问题的基础上,对未来干旱区生态学研究的核心、尺度和研究手段选择等问题进行了探讨,最后就干旱区生态学研究几个值得关注的研究领域进行了阐述。作者认为,干旱区生态学研究的核心应该是绿洲,从管理实践的角度,干旱区的生态学研究尺度应该是湖泊流域,而非以前被广泛采纳的河流流域。在干旱区生态学研究的手段上,随着高清晰度商业化遥感卫星的应用,结合过去的传统方法,与GIS和RS相结合的遥感手段应该是今后生态学研究所依赖的主要手段。而早春短命植物层片与短命动物研究、干旱区的城市森林建设、干旱区民族生态学与人地关系研究、生态用水的深化研究、绿洲景观生态过程及其规划实践研究等,应该是在不偏废过去研究工作的基础上,值得在未来关注的研究领域。     

中国县域市民化需求人口分布时空格局演变

在提出基于流动人口定居意愿的市民化需求人口测度方法的基础上,采用第五、六次人口普查数据,并借助ESDA等分析方法,对中国县域流入人口及市民化需求人口的时空格局演变规律进行探析。结果表明：① 整体格局上,流入人口比重及市民化需求人口比重均表现为东西部高于中部,区域差异明显且具有较强的经济指向性。② 时空演变方面,2000~2010年,中国县域市民化需求人口时空格局发生显著变化,三大区域之间的差异有所扩大,且不同城市群之间也存在显著差异。     

湿地水文过程与植被响应研究进展与案例分析

生态水文学是20世纪90年代兴起的一门研究生态过程和生态格局水文机制的新学科。湖泊湿地作为中国5大类天然湿地类型之一,湖泊湿地生态水文学的研究业已成为生态水文学的研究的一个重要对象和分支,其核心在于研究湖泊湿地生态系统中多时空尺度的水文与生物格局、过程的耦合特征及其相互作用。论文首先概述了湖泊湿地生态水文学的研究进展,包括其基本理论,内涵、外延及其主要研究内容;凝练了湖泊湿地生态水文学研究的方法体系、思路及框架;针对目前湖泊湿地生态水文学研究中存在的问题及薄弱环节,提出了湖泊湿地生态水文学未来研究的发展趋势和亟需加强研究的重点方向。在此基础上,以长江中游的典型通江湖泊湿地——鄱阳湖湿地为例,通过开展的湖泊湿地生态水文过程与模拟研究的典型案例,阐述了鄱阳湖湖泊湿地生态水文过程的变化及其植被响应研究的最新进展和研究成果。论文对于构建涵盖湖泊湿地水资源、湖泊湿地生态景观格局与流域管理、湖泊湿地生物多样性保育以及湿地资源可持续利用与生态管理等方向在内的战略研究体系,完善湿地生态水文研究与流域生态与管理的技术支撑体系具有重要的指导意义和实践价值。     

自然的社会建构：西方人文地理学对自然的再认识

自然的社会建构作为西方人文地理学界对自然的再思考,渐成为理解自然与社会互动的重要理论框架,并逐步成为推动人地和谐、可持续发展研究的新范式。通过梳理自然的社会建构研究理论源起并对西方涉及自然的社会建构的研究文献进行全面梳理发现,自然的社会建构并非单纯指基于建构主义视角考察自然的知识生产或价值与意义,还应该关注自然被生产与形构的商品化过程。现有议题主要聚焦于政治与自然、商品化与自然、社会情感与自然以及日常生活与自然四大方面。在此基础上,进一步提出了国内未来研究需要关注的重要方向。