Spatial video and GIS

GIS elemental unit representations of spatial data are often defined in terms of points, lines and areas. However, another type of spatial data that is becoming frequently captured, but as yet is largely ignored in GIS, is that of video. While digital video recording is a commonly encountered medium in modern society and encompasses many forms, from simple personal camcorders through to sophisticated survey and surveillance systems, its geographical representation in a GIS has not been fully examined or realised. In the majority of cases the video footage is usually captured while the device and/or the objects being viewed are in motion. What is of particular interest is when video streams can be, or have been, associated with spatial data such as location and orientation to create geographically referenced videographic data, which, for simplicity, will be defined as spatial video. Fundamentally, the nature of video is to record space, so when spatial properties can be accurately acquired and associated with this footage, an important geographical element can be considered for integration and analysis within a GIS.

Existing spatial video systems, both commercial and research, are predominantly used in survey or LBS roles and are usually bespoke and application specific. These systems do not model spatial video to any recognised standards that is generalised to be both data and platform independent. They do not support GIS integration and/or analysis from a purely spatial content perspective. A video-image/remote-sensing centric approach prevails where usage options range from simple visualisation interfaces to interactive computer vision systems. What has been largely overlooked is a spatial approach where the inherent geographical extent recorded in each video frame can be modelled and used in a geo-spatial analysis context. While this modelling approach has not been fully realised, it does exist in a GIS form based on Open Geospatial Consortium standards, where the spatial context of video is defined in a structure called a ViewCone. However, a ViewCone only defines a 2D model of the geographical extent of each frame and is restricted to a three-or-five sided polygon representation.

Thus, this article examines the potential of modelling spatial video through the use of elemental data types within GIS; gives some examples of using this approach; describes some problems in using spatial video within GIS; and then demonstrates how these problems are being solved. This is done in three stages: Firstly, a detailed overview of spatial video in its current GIS role is provided – this is achieved through a complete introduction to the distinct elements of spatial video followed by a review of its use in both commercial and academic application areas. Secondly, a brief theoretical overview of an alternative GIS-constrained ViewCone data structure is given that defines a more flexible spatial video model for both 2D and 3D GIS analysis and visualisation. Thirdly, a selective sample of results is presented based on an implementation of this approach being applied to a constrained spatial video data source in a specific study area.     

Integration of GIS and video surveillance

This paper discusses the integration of three-dimensional (3D) geographic information systems (GIS) and video surveillance systems using augmented reality (AR) techniques. The motivation for this integration is to overcome problems faced by conventional video surveillance systems. Explicit information concerning which camera currently monitors what area in such systems is missing; therefore, insight into the situation depends heavily on the operator’s training and experience. To ensure the complete coordination and monitoring of a situation in a system with multiple cameras, it is necessary to introduce a single reference system. GIS arises as a natural solution because it not only provides a solid ground truth but also provides semantic information that can be highly important in certain video surveillance applications. To integrate information into a GIS application, that information must be georeferenced. Based on our previous research regarding the addition of georeferencing information to surveillance video, this paper introduces models that can be applied to help integrate video and GIS. With an analogy to Milgram’s continuum between the real world and virtual reality, and analogous to the augmented reality and augmented virtuality in Milgram’s continuum, two models of integration are defined here: GIS-augmented video and video-augmented GIS. Then, we define the architecture of GIS-based video surveillance based on these proposed integration models, and finally, a prototype is implemented. The implemented prototype serves as a basis for analysing possible applications of real-world systems based on the integration of GIS and video.     

洋山港海域与长江口相似性研究

根据洋山港海域的水文泥沙观测资料和长江口的研究文献分析，洋山港海域与长江口存在较多相似现象。2者均存在滞流区现象是产生其它相似现象的根本原因。即高悬沙浓度区分布特征，表层沉积特征和浅滩区分布特征的相似性是滞流区现象的衍生效应。洋山港海域与长江口的诸多相似现象揭示：（1）滞流区的动力平衡作用是最大浑浊带和拦门沙浅滩形成的主导因素；（2）滞沙区通常位于滞流区地形束窄一侧；（3）滞流区的细颗粒物质沉积区与滞流点位置（或滞流区形态）有着较为一致的吻合性，洋山港海域与长江口区间属于未来开发的热点地区，对2者的相似现象开展深入的研究将有着较深的理论和实际意义。     

Geographic age and gender representation in volunteered cycling safety data: A case study of BikeMaps.org

There has been growing interest in using volunteered geographic information (VGI) for transportation planning, such as route data from fitness tracking applications and route mapping smartphone applications, as a compliment to traditional data collection approaches. In particular, cycling safety data from traditional sources are limited since bike crashes are under-reported and there are no central mechanisms for recording near misses. BikeMaps.org is a globally available website for cycling safety VGI, with a focus on spatial analyses of previously unrecorded near misses and collisions. The goal of this paper is to understand how age and gender are related to the use of BikeMaps.org compared to broader ridership and the geographic distribution of incidents for the Capital Regional District (CRD), British Columbia, Canada. Males aged 24–35 reported more incidents than other cohorts, which had similar relative proportions to the regional cycling population in origin-destination survey data. In general, there were higher levels of interaction with the website by younger people (i.e. submitting incidents vs. viewing incidents). Females and people under 35 years of age reported more incidents in central urban areas. People over 35 years of age reported incidents that were more spatially dispersed and covered a broader extent. These findings are indicative of both cycling behaviour and the use of technology. A target group for growth in cycling, females may benefit from improved cycling facilities in city centers. Older people may ride in cities more often if better facilities are provided. Understanding gaps in representation can help target more deliberate campaigns to complete data and inform the effective use of complementary data sources by planners.     

Probability studies of floods

Floods are common hazards which recur at various frequencies and intensities. For rational planning of water resources development, the risks of floods should be determined in probabilistic terms. Many parts of the world have a sparse hydrometric network, however, and the records are often not very long. In this paper, two approaches that extract salient information from short-term records are presented and a method that estimates the probability distribution of flood characteristics for ungauged basins is also given. Studies were made using northern Ontario as an example. The experience gained in analysing the floods of this region can be applied profitably to those countries where hydrological data are limited.     

Co-evolutionary dynamics and institutions: Innovation in a guild community in Norway

ABSTRACT

The video game industry is often portrayed as a ‘footloose industry’ in which electronic goods can be produced and distributed from any location without positive or negative effects from factors such as resources or proximity to market. Hence, a conventional assumption is that the role of place is greatly diminished in the case of such industries. The author tests this assumption by analysing firms’ practice in a game developer community in Bergen, Norway, and the spatiality of linkages between the community and the environment. He proposes an alternative analytical framework for understanding practice in the industry, one that recognizes that a firm's practice is either embedded within or related to networks and institutional structures. The question of how contextual conditions, embeddedness and networks are treated in the literature on innovation is discussed, and the concept of community as an analytical concept is introduced and applied. After showing how practice in the case community has evolved within the cultural, social and territorial context, the author concludes that a portrayal of the game industry as a ‘footloose industry’ disembedded from its surroundings should be avoided, and instead the dynamic relationship between actors, context and practice should be heeded.     

Interpreting magnetic data by integral moments

The use of the integral moments for interpreting magnetic data is based on a very elegant property of potential fields, but in the past it has not been completely exploited due to problems concerning real data. We describe a new 3-D development of previous 2-D results aimed at determining the magnetization direction, extending the calculation to second-order moments to recover the centre of mass of the magnetization distribution. The method is enhanced to reduce the effects of the regional field that often alters the first-order solutions. Moreover, we introduce an iterative correction to properly assess the errors coming from finite-size surveys or interaction with neighbouring anomalies, which are the most important causes of the failing of the method for real data. We test the method on some synthetic examples, and finally, we show the results obtained by analysing the aeromagnetic anomaly of the Monte Vulture volcano in Southern Italy.     

基于骑行指数的南京中心城区公园广场服务水平研究

公园广场作为城市休闲空间的组成部分,其服务水平对市民游憩和城市休闲资源的合理配置具有重要意义。已有针对公园广场服务水平的评价方法多通过建立指标体系或结合空间可达性进行研究,而从骑行角度展开的研究较少。该文以南京市中心城区为研究区,利用微信宜出行数据,在空间可达性的基础上,从格网和街道尺度分别构建骑行指数对公园广场的服务水平进行评价,弥补了现有评价方法的单一性缺陷。结果表明:主城区大部分公园广场骑行便捷度高,设施数量充足;东山副城公园广场分布合理,但数量应适当增加;江北副城大部分区域的公园广场数量和分布情况亟待提升和改进;仙林副城人口和公园广场分布较为稀疏,可作为城市建设的一个方向。研究结果可为南京市中心城区公园广场的规划建设和布局调整提供参考。     

A Typology of Socio-Economic Advantage and Disadvantage in Australia's Large Non-Metropolitan Cities,Towns and Regions

Australia's large regional cities and towns display a wide variation in their adjustment to the socio-economic transitions that have occurred over the past decade. In terms of socio-economic advantage and disadvantage, these changes, often associated with globalisation, wider economic and technological restructuring, the changing demographics of the population and shifts in public policy, are not evenly dispersed across non-metropolitan regions. Such outcomes have been discussed across a variety of academic disciplines using a variety of data and methods, and the research undertaken has provided a useful grounding for contemporary studies both theoretically and methodologically. Analysis of new data provides an opportunity to extend and update our understanding. This paper presents an analysis of secondary data aimed at analysing non-metropolitan cities, towns and regions based on differential levels of socio-economic performance. Using an alternative clustering method, this paper groups non-metropolitan cities, towns and regions according to the degree to which they share similar socio-economic and demographic outcomes. These clusters form the basis of a typology representing the range of socio-economic and demographic outcomes at the non-metropolitan level.     

Nutrient cycling in primary and old secondary rainforests

The popular view of primary and old secondary tropical rainforests is that they occur on infertile soils, have most of the nutrients in the above-ground living matter, and maintain a high production by rapid and efficient nutrient cycling. This paradigm pervades much land use planning rationale in forested areas in the tropics.In this paper, rainforest nutrient cycles are outlined and the methodological difficulties of work on them are emphasized. There is a shortage of information on nearly every aspect. It is concluded that the popular view is not fully justified even from the available data. Some rainforests occur on fertile soils with a high proportion of at least some nutrients below ground. In some cases there appears to be a substantial yearly loss of nutrients from the ecosystem and sometimes nutrient cycling is slow.Rainforest nutrition is immensely complex and shows many differences from one area to another. It is concluded that much more research is necessary before useful generalizations are possible.     

“Clusters” or “communities”? Analysing the spatial agglomeration of video game companies in Australia

In this paper, I question whether agglomerations of video game companies in Australia function as clusters (spatially bound) or rather as communities (not spatially bound). The two case studies included in the analysis are the main agglomerations of video companies in Australia—Brisbane and Melbourne. The data have been collected through 21 semi-structured interviews performed between 2012 and 2014. The main findings are as follows: (1) the primary reason that video game companies come together is to share tacit knowledge and skilled labour; (2) these agglomerations do not have the attributes of “creative clusters”; and (3) new technologies enable experienced game developers to operate at the geographic periphery of the main agglomeration of developers. Therefore, to paint a more accurate picture of why some video game companies are successful—beyond simply positive externalities associated with co-localization—I propose the term “networked communities.” This recognizes that social networks at varying scales (local, national, international) are being developed by video game firms in order to thrive and reach a global audience.     

Modelling three‐dimensional geoscientific fields with the Voronoi diagram and its dual

Fields as found in the geosciences have properties that are not usually found in other disciplines: the phenomena studied are often three‐dimensional (3D), they tend to change continuously over time, and the collection of samples to study the phenomena is problematic, which often results in highly anisotropic distributions of samples. In the geographical information system (GIS) community, raster structures (voxels or octrees) are the most popular solutions, but, as we show in this paper, they have shortcomings for modelling and analysing 3D geoscientific fields. As an alternative to using rasters, we propose a new spatial model based on the Voronoi diagram (VD) and its dual the Delaunay tetrahedralisation (DT), and argue that they have many advantages over other tessellations. We discuss the main properties of the 3D VD/DT, present some GIS operations that are greatly simplified when the VD/DT is used, and, to analyse two or more fields, we also present a variant of the map algebra framework where all the operations are performed directly on VDs. The usefulness of this Voronoi‐based spatial model is demonstrated with a series of potential applications.     

地理视频数据模型及其应用开发研究

讨论地理视频的基本概念和数据模型,尝试提出地理视频数据的实体-关系图,并在网络环境中进行地理视频应用开发.地理视频数据模型的核心要素是:对视频帧进行位置和语义描述,建立视频片段的轨迹图层和元数据,并在轨迹图层中扩充视频帧线性参照.通过空间参照、线性参照和语义参照将视频数据与地理数据集成,实现地理视频的查询、检索、播放和地图跟踪.以河南大学校园和开封市公路网络为例,采集地理视频数据,建立地理视频数据库,发布网络地图和视频服务,并分别采用最新的Adobe Flex框架、ArcGIS Server ADF和JavaScript Mashup方式,开发网络视频GIS应用系统.原型系统开发表明,地理视频数据模型适用于网络视频GIS开发,且在技术实现上较为简单.     

Planning for Peri-urban Agriculture: a geographically-specific,evidence-based approach from Sydney

Agriculture on the fringes of cities across the Global North is increasingly perceived as making an important contribution to urban sustainability. As Australian cities continue to expand and encroach on their peri-urban peripheries, there is rising concern about loss of farmland to housing. Such concerns are especially urgent in the Sydney Basin, due to population growth, and topographical and land-use constraints. Accounting for the Basin's farmlands, however, remains opaque, not unrelated to difficulties in acquiring reliable data on the area and value of Sydney's agricultural industries. The problem is not simply that there are no data available but rather that the nature of existing data is (often hotly) contested. Critical questions for urban planners therefore remain unanswered, including: is peri-urban agriculture as important as advocates suggest? Are metropolitan food supplies under threat? If peri-urban farmland is important, what should be done to preserve it? In collating and analysing existing Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and non-ABS data on Sydney agriculture between 1992 and 2011, we outline the need for more reliable and consistent longitudinal data to enable better planning for Sydney's farmland into the future. Notwithstanding limitations of available data sources, our findings reveal trends in Sydney Basin agriculture that invite debate on many assumptions about the nature of peri-urban agriculture. These findings emphasise the importance of geographically specific, evidence-based analysis as a basis for planning for peri-urban agriculture.     

Geographic information systems and the BBC's Domesday interactive videodisk

Abstract

The Domesday Project is an ambitious attempt by BBC Enterprises Ltd to present a contemporary snapshot of the United Kingdom in the 1980s on interactive video disk. Two disks are being produced: the first, the local or community disk, consists essentially of information collected by the British people. The second, the national disk, has (amongst other material) a selection of data from both government and quasi-government sources. In total, the disks will hold about 250 Mb vies of digital data. ;is well as some 50000 photographs and around 20 million words of text. The paper introduces the idea of interactive video and the local disk. It then concentrates on methods of access to, and cartographic display of, data on the national disk. We conclude that it is a significant geographical information system which will ultimately form one of the most widely-used data base systems for the foreseeable future.     

Kinematic multistation discriminator between local quarry blasts and earthquakes

It has long been known that S waves on seismograms of local explosions are often accompanied by strong low-frequency, low-velocity, Rg surface wave trains, often significantly diminished for earthquakes. We utilize this fact to construct a new formal discriminator between earthquakes and explosions by measuring the S -surface-wave group velocity. The method is based on analysing the velogram; that is, the display of the envelope of ground motion versus group velocity V = R/T , where R is the epicentral distance and T  the traveltime. We examine the distribution of seismic energy in time and space using envelopes of records from the Israel Seismic Network (ISN), from which we compute the velograms and observe differences in the velograms of quarry blasts and earthquakes. The data include 143 seismic events occurring in three areas (Galilee, Dead Sea, and Gilad) monitored by the ISN; the magnitude range is M _L = 1.0–2.8 at distances of 15–310 km. From the velograms we measure the group velocity, V _{m s} , within the 1–4 km s⁻¹ range at which the velogram reaches its maximum for each available station. The resulting V _{m s} (R) function is closely fitted by the empirical relationship a + b  ln  R , with a and b coefficients varying from event to event. A simple linear function c = b + 0.33a at a threshold C = 0.69 completely separates ( a,b ) pairs for the 67 Galilee events, and, for the 76 remaining events, one earthquake and four explosions are wrongly classified. After data validation and application of the Fisher linear discriminator, adapted to the events from Galilee, only two misidentified events remain for the whole data set.     

基于定位视频的车辆导航原型系统设计与关键技术研究

基于电子地图的导航系统相对抽象且缺乏沉浸感,不方便用户判别。为使导航效果更加直观和生动,该文提出基于定位视频的车辆导航思路,对车辆导航原型系统进行总体设计与实现,并探讨其关键技术。核心思想是建立道路定位视频(Geo-video)数据库,利用移动终端和固定目标的位置信息对定位视频数据库进行空间检索,将相应位置的视频图像传输给移动终端并实现路线和目标指引。试验证明该方法在技术上具有可行性。     

贵州典型森林植被群落营养元素生物循环空间信息模型构建

将生态过程模型中营养元素生物循环数值模拟、基于过程的植被生产力模型与遥感驱动的光能利用率模型相耦合,构建森林植被营养元素生物循环空间信息模型。模型弥补了营养元素生物循环过程模型中空间分析和参数获取复杂的不足,并在植被生产力光能利用率模型中引入营养元素胁迫的定量表达。将模型模块化,耦合于自主开发的EcoHAT系统(EcoHydrology Assessment Tools),以贵州典型森林群落为研究对象,对群落生产力和营养元素生物循环的关键过程的时空演变模式进行了模拟和研究。运用实验数据进行验证,取得良好的效果,可见模型计算可以较为真实地反映区域营养元素生物循环关键过程的时空格局。     

沙漠地物波谱特性测试数据精度分析

地物电磁波谱反射特性的测试和研究,是遥感技术的基础工作。多波段遥感仪器设计,选择波段,需要以地物波谱测定数据作为依据。遥感图象处理自动识别与自动分类指标的研究,也是在了解地物波谱特性的基础上进行的。测定、收集、处理各类沙漠、戈壁、沙生植物的反射光谱特征数据,解释不同沙漠地物波谱分异性、离散性的本质,进一步探求波谱特性在不同波段对遥感图象的影响,寻求数字相关关系,建立判读标志与识别模式,是沙漠遥感应用研究的重要课题之一。这些工作,都是以野外地物波谱测试数据的可靠性为前提的。     

Bridging the gap between ancient metal pollution and contemporary biogeochemistry

Paleolimnology provides long-term data that are often essential for understanding the current state of the environment. Even though there is great potential, paleolimnology is rarely used together with process-related studies to solve issues regarding cycling of elements in the environment. Clearly, this is a drawback because the cycling of many elements, which cause great concern in the present-day environment, was altered long before the advent of monitoring programs. The pioneering work of C.C. Patterson and his colleagues emphasized the importance of a long-term perspective for understanding the current cycling of metals, with a focus on lead, and in particular for estimating background concentrations and human-related impacts in the environment. In Sweden the first traces of atmospheric lead pollution are found in lake sediments dated to about 3500 years ago. The long-term changes in the pollution lead record in lake sediments led us to consider how lead biogeochemistry has changed over time in response to this historical deposition—where has this lead gone, and how much does this lead contribute to the present-day biogeochemical cycling of lead? How was lead distributed in ‘pre-industrial’ soils or more properly in natural soils not impacted by atmospheric pollution? There are many studies that have examined the effects of increased metal concentrations on soil biota, but what are the appropriate background conditions for comparison? Using lake sediments as our foundation we have analyzed lead, including its stable isotopes, in other environmental compartments, including peat, soil, and a range of boreal forest plant species, to develop a better understanding of the fate of lead derived from long-term pollution. Three important conclusions from our studies in Sweden are: (1) atmospheric lead deposition rates during the 20th century were 100 to as much as 1000 times higher than natural deposition rates a few thousand years ago. Even with stricter emission standards during the past three decades and the resultant reductions in deposition, lead deposition rates today are still 10–100 times greater than natural rates. This increase in deposition rates modeled from sediment and peat records is of a similar scale to estimated changes in body burdens of lead in modern versus ancient humans. (2) In Europe about half of the cumulative burden of atmospherically deposited lead was deposited before industrialization. In southern Sweden the cumulative burden of pollution lead during the past 3500 years is 2–5 g Pb m^?2 and in the ‘pristine’ northern parts of the country there is about 1 g Pb m^?2. (3) Predicted recovery rates for soils are slow; in the cold climate of Scandinavia, we find that the soil surface (O horizon), where most soil biota reside, retains lead deposited over the past 150–500 years. Therefore, although lead deposition rates in Europe, as well as N. America, are only 10% of those a few decades ago, it will take several decades or longer for lead concentrations in soils to respond appreciably. The slow turnover rates for lead in the environment and gradual immobilization of lead in deeper soil mineral horizons also inhibits a loss of lead to surface waters in areas removed from point sources.