Modelling,encoding and transforming of open geographic data to examine interoperability between GIS applications

The interoperability of geographic data sets is required between geo-information system applications to use geographic data sets effectively. Thus, international standardisation organisation/technical committee 211 standards supporting model-driven architecture were examined to test the ability of producing interoperable geographic data sets. With Turkey case, unified modelling language application schemas were designed for base geographic data themes and encoded to data interchange model based on geography markup language. To test the applicability of the open data models, extract-transform-load (ETL) tools were developed and applied for case applications such as topographic map and web urban atlas. This study gives a methodology and indicates that ETL tools should be created to enable multiple uses of geo-data sets without spending time and labour. However, data model design should be refined and kept as simple as possible because data transformation is laborious to use the models in the applications.     

The Roles of Web Feature and Web Map Services in Real-time Geospatial Data Sharing for Time-critical Applications

Many time-critical applications such as emergency response, location-based services, and real time traffic management need instant access to diverse data to make quick decisions and take instantaneous actions. However, two issues block time-critical applications to quickly acquire and integrate spatial data over the web: (1) the heterogeneity of existing GIS systems, and (2) the file-level data sharing systems over the web. This research examines current open standards, protocols, and technologies capable of solving the two issues for real-time spatial data sharing over the web. Focusing on investigating the role of Web Feature Services (WFS) and Web Map Services (WMS), this research has developed a solution for real-time geospatial data sharing at the feature level over the web. A prototype has been implemented to query, extract, create, delete, update, and map geographic features stored in web-accessible OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) simple feature datastores for transportation emergency applications. The prototype results show that the OGC WFS and WMS play important roles in real-time geospatial data sharing and exchange from heterogeneous sources at the feature level for time-critical applications. The WFS and WMS eliminate time-consuming data translation and facilitate reuse of existing geospatial data over the web. Several issues related to the solution are also discussed in the paper.     

A points of interest matching method using a multivariate weighting function with gradient descent optimization

Volunteered geographic information contains abundant valuable data, which can be applied to various spatiotemporal geographical analyses. While the useful information may be distributed in different, low‐quality data sources, this issue can be solved by data integration. Generally, the primary task of integration is data matching. Unfortunately, due to the complexity and irregularities of multi‐source data, existing studies have found it difficult to efficiently establish the correspondence between different sources. Therefore, we present a multi‐stage method to match multi‐source data using points of interest. A spatial filter is constructed to obtain candidate sets for geographical entities. The weights of non‐spatial characteristics are examined by a machine learning‐related algorithm with artificially labeled random samples. A case study on Fuzhou reveals that an average of 95% of instances are accurately matched. Thus, our study provides a novel solution for researchers who are engaged in data mining and related work to accurately match multi‐source data via knowledge obtained by the idea and methods of machine learning.     

基于GeoNames和Solr的地名数据全文检索

地名数据是一种重要的地理信息资源,目前我国的地名数据库建设多局限于国内地名,缺少国外数据。传统地名数据的检索多为关键字查询,查询效率低且无法用于复杂地名查询。文中提出一种基于开源地名数据库GeoNames和开源搜索引擎Solr的地名数据全文检索方法,通过分析GeoNames的数据类型和结构,构建MySQL地名数据库,并利用Solr建立地名索引,提供基于Web服务的地名数据全文检索。实验表明,基于Solr的地名数据全文检索能够显著提高地名数据检索效率,对于复杂地名查询,也能进行有效地检索。     

Automatic Region Building for Spatial Analysis

High‐resolution spatial data have become increasingly available with modern data collection techniques and efforts. However, it is often inappropriate to use the default geographic units to perform spatial analysis due to unstable estimates with small areas (e.g. cancer rates for census blocks or tracts). Regionalization is aggregating small units into relatively larger areas while optimizing a homogeneity measure (such as the sum of squared differences). For exploratory spatial analysis, regionalization may help remove spurious data variation through aggregation and discover hidden patterns in data (such as areas of unusually high cancer rates). Towards this goal, this research introduces several improvements to a recent group of regionalization methods – REDCAP ( Guo 2008 ) and conducts evaluation experiments with synthetic data sets to assess and compare the capability of regionalization methods for exploratory spatial analysis. One of the major improvements is the integration of a local empirical Bayes smoother (EBS) with the regionalization methods. We generate a large number of synthetic data sets with controlled spatial patterns to evaluate the performance of both new and existing methods. Evaluation results show that the new methods (integrated with EBS) perform significantly better than their original versions and other methods (including the EBS method on its own) in terms of detecting the true patterns in the synthetic data sets.     

基于条件随机场的中文地名识别方法

在互联网迅速发展的现代化信息社会,大量地理信息都以非结构化的文本形式存在,而地名识别是挖掘这些地理信息的重要基础。目前已有的地名识别方法主要是从自然语言处理的角度来实现,并没有充分考虑到地名的构成和使用习惯等特征,造成识别率偏低或过拟合等问题。本文引入语言学相关知识,分析中文地名用字特征,在传统的地名专名+通名的结构上,更细致地划分地名的词素类型,总结归纳各词素类型的特征,将这些特征融入条件随机场的方法中,使地名识别问题转化为序列标注问题。并根据中文地名的特征,制定形式化规则,设计基于字的标注规范。在此基础上,设计中文地名特征模板,通过条件随机场模型训练和预测,识别自然语言文本中的中文地名。采用170万字的人民日报标注语料进行实验验证,结果表明本文方法对中文地名识别的召回率、准确率和F值分别达到92.69%、96.73%和94.67%,优于已有研究成果,能为地理信息科学领域的研究和应用提供更有效的地名服务。     

宽泛地理注记的投放模型

针对网络地图服务环境中的地理注记评价问题,对传统地理注记内容进行非结构化文本形式扩展,定义宽泛地理注记,用投放过程来模型化标注行为首先,依据词频分类方法确定地理注记文本内容分类,并根据Voronoi k阶邻近关系建立投放邻域的空间相关性定量收敛描述,进而结合地理注记文本与地理注记存在邻域构建基于地理注记类型与类型转化的投放模型实验结果表明,在已知两种类型地理注记集的实际情况下,投放模型能够有效地对新增地理注记进行合理性评价.     

MaskMy.XYZ: An easy‐to‐use tool for protecting geoprivacy using geographic masks

Geographic masks are techniques used to protect privacy when publishing sensitive data in maps, but are not well adopted among researchers and may be difficult to execute for some GIS users. We developed a client‐side web application called MaskMy.XYZ that makes geographic masking easy to perform. It executes donut geomasking, a well‐known geographic mask, on thousands of points in seconds, and visualizes the original and masked point patterns in an integrated web map for visual comparison. MaskMy.XYZ also features metrics for both privacy protection and information loss, and allows users to rapidly and iteratively adjust masking parameters based on these metrics. The user interface was designed to prioritize usability, and clear documentation has been included to educate users about geographic masks, which is otherwise only found in niche literatures. By developing this application, we hope that geographic masks will be more widely adopted such that privacy is better protected in research.     

Crowdsourcing the character of a place: Character‐level convolutional networks for multilingual geographic text classification

This article presents a new character‐level convolutional neural network model that can classify multilingual text written using any character set that can be encoded with UTF‐8, a standard and widely used 8‐bit character encoding. For geographic classification of text, we demonstrate that this approach is competitive with state‐of‐the‐art word‐based text classification methods. The model was tested on four crowdsourced data sets made up of Wikipedia articles, online travel blogs, Geonames toponyms, and Twitter posts. Unlike word‐based methods, which require data cleaning and pre‐processing, the proposed model works for any language without modification and with classification accuracy comparable to existing methods. Using a synthetic data set with introduced character‐level errors, we show it is more robust to noise than word‐level classification algorithms. The results indicate that UTF‐8 character‐level convolutional neural networks are a promising technique for georeferencing noisy text, such as found in colloquial social media posts and texts scanned with optical character recognition. However, word‐based methods currently require less computation time to train, so currently are preferable for classifying well‐formatted and cleaned texts in single languages.     

基于Web服务和GML的空间数据发布

针对当前信息共享存在的问题,提出Web服务和GML解决问题的思路,并讨论在基于Web服务和GML的空间数据发布中采用的关键技术。     

网格环境下地理数据服务集成模式

在分析我国地理信息集成服务应用现状的基础上,比较现有网格环境下地理数据服务集成模式及其问题,讨论面向地理数据服务的地理数据集成模式的优势。并将Web Service技术引入到传统的地理数据服务集成中,构建一种基于网格的分布式地理数据集成模式,提出地理数据服务集成框架。     

快速开发WebGIS应用系统的地理信息平台

由于不同WebGIS业务系统类型存在建设周期长、开发成本高、维护困难等问题,本文提出设计并开发地理信息平台.文中讨论了平台的结构、功能以及实现的关键技术.在GIS平台上实现了空间数据的统一管理和共享;提供统一的接入标准和开放的应用框架,实现各经济社会业务系统的无缝集成与访问;能够利用其可视化配置技术根据业务需求快速搭建...     

Building Web-Based Spatial Information Solutions around Open Specifications and Open Source Software

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are moving from isolated, standalone, monolithic, proprietary systems working in a client‐server architecture to smaller web‐based applications and components offering specific geo‐processing functionality and transparently exchanging data among them. Interoperability is at the core of this new web services model. Compliance with Open Specifications (OS) enables interoperability. Web‐GIS software's high costs, complexity and special requirements have prevented many organizations from deploying their data and geo‐processing capabilities over the World Wide Web. There are no‐cost Open Source Software (OSS) alternatives to proprietary software for operating systems, web servers, and Relational Database Management Systems. We tested the potential of the combined use of OS and OSS to create web‐based spatial information solutions. We present in detail the steps taken in creating a prototype system to support land use planning in Mexico with web‐based geo‐processing capabilities currently not present in commercial web‐GIS products. We show that the process is straightforward and accessible to a broad audience of geographic information scientists and developers. We conclude that OS and OSS allow the development of web‐based spatial information solutions that are low‐cost, simple to implement, compatible with existing information technology infrastructure, and have the potential of interoperating with other systems and applications in the future.     

Possibilities of using raster data in client‐side web maps

Companies and individual developers have recently put serious effort into improving web mapping libraries. A significant front in this development is hardware‐accelerated vector graphics. Owing to those efforts, and the continuously evolving World Wide Web, users can visualize large vector layers, and even animate them. On the other hand, this rapid development cannot be observed with raster data. There are some data abstraction libraries for reading raster files, although web mapping libraries do not use them to offer raster capabilities. Since there are no mature raster management pipelines on the web, this study explores two inherently different techniques for handling raster data. One of them uses the traditional, texture‐based method. The other is a hybrid technique rendering raster layers as vectors, overcoming some limitations of the raster model. While the traditional technique gives a smooth user experience, the hybrid method shows promising results for rendering hexagonal coverages.     

An open source,server-side framework for analytical web mapping and its application to health

In this paper, we detail the design and the implementation of an open source, server-side web mapping framework for the analysis of health data. The framework forms part of a larger project, the goal of which is to provide an analytical web geographical information system (GIS) that enables health experts to analyse spatial aspects of health data. The aim of the framework is to provide a method for the dynamic and flexible spatial visualisation of health data to facilitate data exploration and analysis. Consequently, a dynamic thematic web mapping technique, an extension to the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) web map service standard, was developed. The technique combines a data query, processing technique and styling methodology on the fly to generate a thematic map. The resulting thematic map represents a virtual map layer that enables a user to rapidly visually summarise properties of a data-set. A test web interface was developed to assess the efficacy of the web mapping technique. As the dynamic web mapping method builds on existing OGC web mapping standards, it can be readily integrated with the existing lightweight slippy map web clients and virtual globes.     

Adobe Flex框架中的视频GIS系统设计与开发

根据Web服务概念,在AdobeFlex框架中,聚合地理信息服务、视频流媒体服务和XML文档服务,开发了富互联网应用(RIA)模式的视频GIS。系统开发实验表明,基于Flex框架中的网络视频GIS设计和开发简单快速,系统界面美观高效,有广阔的应用潜力。     

Location Based Social Networks – Definition,Current State of the Art and Research Agenda

The growing penetration of GPS equipped smartphones allowing users to constantly share geographic information on their current whereabouts has led the way to an augmentation of existing Social Network Sites with location‐based features or the creation of new ones exclusively around geographic information. Within these Location Based Social Networks vast amounts of geographic information are allocated, which attracted the attention of researchers with various scientific backgrounds. This article presents a comprehensive definition of this special type of Social Network Site and an overview of research activities, which are currently conducted using the data. Finally, a research agenda for GIScience is drawn from existing research directions.     

The Potential of Maps APIs for Internet GIS Applications

Since the launching of Maps Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) in 2005, many web developers, including geographers and non‐geographers, applauded the freely adaptable tools and used them to spawn numerous Internet applications. The success of the Maps APIs is largely attributable to its no‐cost policy, the availability of global data coverage, dynamic navigation, query capability, and ease of implementation. Despite its versatility in dynamic exploration of geographic data online, the existing Maps APIs lack Geographic Information System (GIS) functionalities compared to other Internet Mapping Services. The goal of this research was to review the potential of the Maps APIs for Internet GIS applications. This research employed the Google Maps API and developed a web prototype that disseminates spatial information of urban sprawl in Mundy Township, Michigan. The results revealed that both vector and raster data could be effectively represented by using the Maps API. Moreover, the Geographic Markup Language (GML) approach illustrated great potential for developing Internet GIS solutions around open specifications. This research suggested several potential solutions to expand the spectrum of GIS operations of the Maps APIs by incorporating the XML‐related technology and extending the JavaScript library.     

An open-source web service for creating quadrilateral grids based on the rHEALPix Discrete Global Grid System

ABSTRACT

The foundation of modern Digital Earth frameworks is the Discrete Global Grid System (DGGS). To standardize the DGGS model, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) recently created the DGGS Abstract Specification, which also aims to increase usability and interoperability between DGGSs. To support these demands and aid future research, open implementations are necessary. However, several OGC conformant DGGSs are not available for researchers to use. This has motivated us to develop an open-source web service that allows users to create quadrilateral grids based on the rHEALPix DGGS. In this paper, we describe the implementation of the web service, including issues and limitations, and demonstrate how discrete global grids and regional grids can be created. Lastly, we present examples that show how vector data sets can be modeled and integrated at different levels of resolution – a key benefit of the DGGS model.