Towards a geocomputational landscape epidemiology: surveillance,modelling, and interventions

The ability to explicitly represent infectious disease distributions and their risk factors over massive geographical and temporal scales has transformed how we investigate how environment impacts health. While landscape epidemiology studies have shed light on many aspects of disease distribution and risk differentials across geographies, new computational methods combined with new data sources such as citizen sensors, global spatial datasets, sensor networks, and growing availability and variety of satellite imagery offer opportunities for a more integrated approach to understanding these relationships. Additionally, a large number of new modelling and mapping methods have been developed in recent years to support the adoption of these new tools. The complexity of this research context results in study-dependent solutions and prevents landscape approaches from deeper integration into operational models and tools. In this paper we consider three common research contexts for spatial epidemiology; surveillance, modelling to estimate a spatial risk distribution and the need for intervention, and evaluating interventions and improving healthcare. A framework is proposed and a categorization of existing methods is presented. A case study into leptospirosis in Sri Lanka provides a working example of how the different phases of the framework relate to real research problems. The new framework for geocomputational landscape epidemiology encompasses four key phases: characterizing assemblages, characterizing functions, mapping interdependencies, and examining outcomes. Results from Sri Lanka provide evidence that the framework provides a useful way to structure and interpret analyses. The framework reported here is a new way to structure existing methods and tools of geocomputation that are increasingly relevant to researchers working on spatially explicit disease-landscape studies.     

Spatialities of data: mapping social media ‘beyond the geotag’

As emerging sources of so-called ‘big data’ are increasingly utilized in order to understand social and spatial processes, so too have these new data sources become the subject of harsh criticism from more critically-oriented geographers and social scientists. This paper argues that one of the major issues preventing a more productive dialogue between critical human geographers and those already engaging in the mapping and analysis of these new data sources is around the ways that space and spatiality are conceptualized in social media mapping. As such, this paper draws on and extends earlier critiques of the ‘spatial ontology of the geotag’, in which the geographic analysis of geotagged social media data over-privileges the single latitude/longitude coordinate pair attached to each individual data point, often leading to the kind of simplistic mappings and interpretations prevalent today. The goals of this paper are two-fold: first, to demonstrate how the spatial ontology of the geotag is implicitly operationalized within mainstream social media mapping exercises, and how this understanding of space remains incongruent with existing conceptions of space drawn from human geography. Second, using the example of tweeting in the wake of the August 2014 killing of an unarmed African–American teenager by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, this paper demonstrates how a more geographically-situated analysis of this kind of data, inspired by relational or multidimensional conceptualizations of space, can yield alternative understandings of the social processes embedded in such data.     

Extensible, not relational: finding bodies in the landscape of electronic information with wireless body area networks

This article examines a medical biotechnology known as a wireless body area network (WBAN) as a way to discuss how electronic information infrastructure is spatially extending human bodies into physical landscapes. The term extensible body is introduced, framed by the object-oriented philosophy of Graham Harman. WBANs are sensors placed on or inside of the human body to measure, record, and transmit data about the biological processes of a medical patient. I argue that these body-data should be considered components of bodies themselves, not representations of them. Further, I argue that the geographical discourse on relationality should be less about object relations and more about object extensions. Harman’s explication of the “quadruple object,” and specifically his use of real and sensual objects makes this possible. This questions the spatial beginnings and ends of categorical objects such as bodies and information, the implications of which could have profound impacts on how policies are framed in sectors such as public health, environment, planning, and medicine. The notion of extensibility is crucial in theorizing how, and where, the Geoweb exists as a spatial-technical assemblage of objects and information. The case of WBANs shows that a theorization of the Geoweb must include the built infrastructure of data storage as a spatial extension of being human.     

The spatial knowledge politics of crisis mapping for community development

Crisis mapping, the combination of software-as-a-service mapping and reporting aimed at large numbers of individuals, is proposed for chronic problems as well as acute issues; it is universalized for global south disasters as well as global north community development. It supposedly affords a new spatial knowledge politics (SKP) that unfolds in local communities. We tested the role of spatial knowledge politics in crisis mapping for community development by co-developing, with local organizations, four applications based on the prominent mapping-telecommunications crisis platform, Crowdmap by Ushahidi. We assessed crisis mapping’s effectiveness in North American community based activities in Francophone and Anglophone Canada. We found persistent technical challenges, consistent with the literature, although crisis mapping allowed increased opportunities for the developer to insert their knowledge. Analysis of the contributions illustrated the use of crisis mapping to report on place-based features that enabled contributors to connect, but also limited the ability to express location and place in 160 characters. It revealed tensions in conceptualization of local spatial knowledge politics as witness versus political influence. Crisis mapping could simultaneously aid and disrupt traditional place-based politics of community based organizations. Our critique serves as a test of crisis mapping’s universality for other fields and its promise of a new SKP.     

(Re)Connecting spatial literacy with children’s geographies: GPS,Google Earth and children’s everyday lives

This article sets out an agenda for research that (re)connects research on children’s geographies and childhood studies with studies of spatial literacy. Research on children’s environmental cognition and, latterly, spatial literacy, has been artificially and problematically separated from the majority of research in childhood studies. Our fundamental aim in this article is to argue for – and to evidence – greater attention to how spatial literacy and children’s everyday lives are embedded in one another. To support our broader call for a synthetic research agenda, we draw on some more focussed, qualitative empirical material taken from a large-scale project about children’s mobilities and everyday lives in newly-built urban communities. Our analysis focuses upon children’s interpretations of Global Positioning Systems (GPS) tracks of their mobilities, set against a background of Google Earth imagery. In doing so, we showcase one suite of ways in which research on environmental cognition and children’s geographies might proceed together. We demonstrate that children not only displayed analytical skills (for instance, in relation to scaling effects and pattern recognition) but that many also exercised higher-level, critical analysis, especially in relation to errors on Google Earth outputs. Simultaneously, we interrogate the recursive articulation of a range of qualitative indicators of spatial literacy, with children’s everyday mobilities, routines, emotions and memories. The paper analyses how new conceptual languages and technologies being propounded by spatial literacy scholars could afford a more enriched understanding of key contemporary concerns for children’s geographers, and, recursively, what spatial literacy scholars might gain from engaging with (especially qualitative) research prompted by those concerns.     

寒区环境中的古DNA分子

寒区埋藏环境常年处于负温条件下,土壤冻结或冰的形成过程产生封闭作用,可以隔离造成埋藏生物遗体同DNA氧化分解的氧气之间的接触.由于液态水含量极大地减少和冰胶结作用,使得主要依赖于液态水而发生的生物大分子的化学分解以及生物降解反应作用减慢,有机体没有成岩过程中降解以及水解作用,从而使古DNA分子可以得到较好的保存.目前绝大多数关于古DNA研究的重要成果所使用生物材料均来自寒区环境,最为引人注目的有关猛犸象、棕熊和企鹅化石古DNA的研究.这些研究分别从个体、种群和同一种群在不同时间尺度上描绘了它们与现代生物种之间的亲缘关系、过去发生的生物迁移和空间隔离以及特定生物分子水平上的时间演化.从目前来看,大量的生物标本很好地保存在那里,以至于单一考贝基因都可以获得,因此是获取古DNA并获得相应遗传信息的理想地区.     

Exploring how alternative mapping approaches influence fireshed assessment and human community exposure to wildfire

Attaining fire-adapted human communities has become a key focus of collaborative planning on landscapes across the western United States and elsewhere. The coupling of fire simulation with GIS has expanded the analytical base to support such planning efforts, particularly through the “fireshed” concept that identifies areas where wildfires could ignite and reach a human community. Previous research has identified mismatches in scale between localized community wildfire planning and the broader fireshed considering patterns of wildfire activity across landscapes. Here we expand upon this work by investigating the degree to which alternative geospatial characterizations of human communities could influence assessment of community exposure and characterization of the fireshed. We use three methods of mapping human communities (point, raster, and polygon) and develop three fireshed metrics (size, number of fires reaching houses, and number of houses exposed), and apply this analytical framework on a 2.3 million ha case study landscape encompassing the Sierra National Forest in California, USA. We simulated fire occurrence and growth using FSim for 10,000 iterations (fire seasons) at 180-m resolution. The simulation resulted in 3.9 large fires per million ha per year, with a mean size of 3432 ha. Results exhibit similarities and differences in how exposure is quantified, specifically indicating that polygons representing recognized community boundaries led to the lowest exposure levels. These results highlight how choice of the mapping approach could lead to misestimating the scope of the problem or targeting mitigation efforts in the wrong areas, and underscore the importance of clarity and spatial fidelity in geospatial data representing communities at risk.     

Volunteered geographic information: future research directions motivated by critical, participatory, and feminist GIS

New interactive web services are dramatically altering the way in which ordinary citizens can create digital spatial data and maps, individually and collectively, to produce new forms of digital spatial data that some term ‘volunteered geographic information’ (VGI). This article examines the early literature on this phenomenon, illustrating its shared propositions that these new technologies are part of shifts in the social and technological processes through which digital spatial data are produced, with accompanying implications for the content and characteristics of geospatial data, and the social and political practices promoted through their use. I illustrate how these debates about VGI conceive of spatial data as socially embedded, and suggest ways in which future research might productively draw upon conceptualizations from participatory, feminist, and critical GIS research that have emerged from similar foundations.     

Doing space relationally: Exploring the meaningful geographies of local government in Wales

Recent years have seen significant advancements in the theorising of relational space through conceptual frameworks which recognise the polymorphic organisation of sociospatial relations (e.g. Territory, Place, Scale and Network). Less understood, however, are the methodological challenges inherent in ‘thinking space relationally’. In particular, how can such conceptual vocabularies be sustained through the contingent practices of doing research? In this article, we address these concerns empirically through an analysis of the sociospatial responsibilities of local government actors across Wales, as new modes of spatial planning require them to think and act across administrative boundaries and policy areas. We introduce the notion of ‘patch’ as a means for eliciting conceptually open and grounded accounts of relational space as situated within personal/professional interests, cultures and ideologies. We identify different ways in which patch is relationally located, and how understandings of its boundaries and coherences relate to public policy remits. Yet while invoking different kinds of material and imagined spatiality, patch remains largely defined by the responsibilities and resources tied to local government boundaries. Institutional configurations continue to inform the way different spaces are discursively organised and practised. We conclude by reflecting on the need for accounts of relational space to be open to its everyday material groundings in relations of fixity and flow. Gesturing towards recent studies which display complementary concerns, we consider where attentiveness to patch and other ‘meaningful’ spatial frames has the potential to develop geographical analyses in new directions.     

Scale,causality, and the new organism–environment interaction

The fallout from environmental determinism of the early 20th century steered geography away from biological and evolutionary thought. Yet it also set in motion the diversification of how geographers conceive environment, how these environments shape and are shaped by humans, and how scaling negotiates the interpretation of this causality. I illustrate how this plurality of scalar perspectives and practices in geography is embedded in the organism–environment interaction recently articulated in the life sciences. I describe the new fields of epigenetics and niche construction to communicate how ideas about scale from human and physical geography come together in the life sciences. I argue that the two subdisciplinary modes or ‘moments’ of scalar thinking in geography are compatible, even necessary, through their embodiment in organisms. To procure predictability, organisms practice an epistemological scaling to rework the mental and material boundaries and scales in their environment. Yet organisms are also embedded in ontological flux. Boundaries and scales do not remain static because of the agency of other organisms to shape their own predictability. I formally define biological scaling as arising from the interplay of epistemological and ontological moments of scale. This third moment of scale creates local assemblages or topologies with a propensity for persistence. These ‘lumpy’ material outcomes of the new organism–environment interaction have analogues in posthuman and new materialist geographies. They also give formerly discredited Lamarckian modes of inheritance a renewed, but revised acceptance. This article argues for a biological view of scale and causality in geography.     

Participation constrained: Generating buy-in and rationalizing carbon forestry labor through participatory mapping in Southern Mexico

In recent years diverse actors have hailed participatory practice as an effective means to empowering people in payment for ecosystem services (PES) work. In Chiapas, Mexico participation is a central component of the Scolel’ Te carbon forestry program, the cornerstone of which includes Plan Vivo participatory mapping. Plan Vivo mapping is used by the managing NGO, AMBIO, to build trust relations between participating farmers and program managers so as to ensure the successful production of carbon credits. However, I argue that it is also used to instill in farmers a series of behavioral and attitudinal transformations designed to align farmer land-use activities and attitudes with the program’s carbon credit production objectives. Yet, despite these ambitions, the ability of the mapping activity in Scolel’ Te to achieve its stated goals is challenged on the ground. In order to explain this discrepancy between the aspirations tied to the mapping activity and the mapping experience, I assess Plan Vivo mapping as a situated discourse and as a labor process. Taking the former perspective, I show how the managing NGO uses a paternalistic discourse to justify participatory mapping, one that presents farmers as misguided resource managers in need of external intervention. Then, using a labor process approach, I show how PVM acts to reorient farmer relationships to their land and to development organizations by intervening in farmer land-use practices and by establishing trust relations. It is, however, a process that consists of inequalities that stand to potentially limit the effectiveness of the activity.     

Spaces of sustainable development in the Lower Hunter Regional Strategy: An application of the ‘cultural sociology of space’

Sustainable development was introduced as an approach to overcoming growing concerns about consumption and the limitations of the natural resource base upon which society depends. It advocates a system in which economic growth can still occur, but within natural resource limits and such as not to disadvantage either current or future generations. However the implementation of sustainable development has proven problematic due to definitional problems, institutional constraints and unresponsive socio-political systems. This paper examines the mechanisms through which an aspatial policy such as the Australian Government’s National Strategy for Ecological Sustainable Development is reinterpreted through the recent spatial planning processes of Lower Hunter Regional Strategy. This paper applies the cultural sociology of space theoretical framework which considers the dialectical relationship between material practices and the symbolic meanings that people attach to their environment. The framework provides insights into how within this spatial planning process, through a combination of language and representation, spatial practices and power rationalities produce discourses and spaces. Applying the framework also shows how a desired “sustainable future” is achieved through the predominance of land development rationality.     

Stochastic and deterministic controls on stratigraphic completeness and fidelity

Compilations of sedimentation rates determined across a large range of time spans and different sedimentary environments attest to the discontinuous nature of sedimentation and support the reasoning that hiatuses pervade sedimentary successions at multiple spatial and temporal scales. The relationship between sedimentation rate and time span of observation also emphasises how stratigraphic completeness is a time span-dependent concept. The scaling of stratigraphic completeness with time span alludes to the likely stochastic, and fractal, nature of the stratigraphic record. It also implies that the relationship between stratal thickness and time is inherently non-linear and this has obvious implications for the way we should expect temporal processes to be recorded stratigraphically. Order within the stratigraphic record may arise from deterministic processes in stratigraphy, most notably through astronomically influenced sedimentation. Intuitively, a strongly ordered stratigraphic record due to the presence of cyclicity in sedimentation increases stratigraphic completeness at time spans equal to and longer than the time span of the cyclicity and minimises the non-linearity between stratal thickness and time. Here, geological data and simple modelling are used to support this supposition, but these results also highlight how stochastic variability inherent in depositional processes may sensitise certain successions to missed cycles and incompleteness, even in the presence of strong cyclicity. This stochastic variability has the potential to mask evidence of astronomical forcing of sedimentation. It is also shown how hiatuses affect the ability of a succession to faithfully record temporal processes, and this is true regardless of whether hiatuses are deterministically controlled or random, or indeed whether a succession is considered complete or not. Consequently, stratigraphic completeness and stratigraphic fidelity are not synonymous terms.     

A Monte Carlo-based framework for risk-return analysis in mineral prospectivity mapping

Quantification of a mineral prospectivity mapping (MPM) heavily relies on geological, geophysical and geochemical analysis, which combines various evidence layers into a single map. However, MPM is subject to considerable uncertainty due to lack of understanding of the metallogenesis and limited spatial data samples. In this paper, we provide a framework that addresses how uncertainty in the evidence layers can be quantified and how such uncertainty is propagated to the prediction of mineral potential. More specifically, we use Monte Carlo simulation to jointly quantify uncertainties on all uncertain evidence variables, categorized into geological, geochemical and geophysical. On stochastically simulated sets of the multiple input layers, logistic regression is employed to produce different quantifications of the mineral potential in terms of probability. Uncertainties we address lie in the downscaling of magnetic data to a scale that makes such data comparable with known mineral deposits. Additionally, we deal with the limited spatial sampling of geochemistry that leads to spatial uncertainty. Next, we deal with the conceptual geological uncertainty related to how the spatial extent of the influence of evidential geological features such as faults, granite intrusions and sedimentary formations. Finally, we provide a novel way to interpret the established uncertainty in a risk-return analysis to decide areas with high potential but at the same time low uncertainty on that potential. Our methods are illustrated and compared with traditional deterministic MPM on a real case study of prospecting skarn Fe deposition in southwestern Fujian, China.     

Multi-scale issues in cross-border comparative analysis

Cross-border studies have recently received increasing attention in many disciplines, stimulated by globalisation, international trade and migration. In this paper, we take the analysis of the determinants of educational attainment on both sides of the international border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland to demonstrate how the impacts of the changing areal units and extent on social processes can be examined through spatial statistical analysis. A statistical model is constructed to relate the proportion of people with a post-secondary degree in a small area to a series of socio-economic characteristics of that area. We utilise both a traditional ‘global’ regression model and the local technique of Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR). Both models are calibrated on various cross-border data sets. The results also highlight the multi-scalar effects of the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP) which are partially relevant in cross-border statistical analysis. They also demonstrate the potential of GWR to highlight cross-border differences in social processes.     

地基GPS气象学研究的主要问题及最新进展

目前大多数映射函数在低高度角时精度都比较差，发展适应低高度角的映射函数，提高低高度角观测值的利用率，研究大气的水平梯度是目前地基GPS气象学的主要研究任务，发展随时空变化的动态映射函数也是国际上的一个主要研究问题。由于PWV不能提供水汽分布的三维信息，求定GPS信号斜路径方向上的水汽SWV，以及利用SWV层析大气的垂直结构是目前国际上 GPS气象学的研究前沿。文中总结了目前国际上SWV的求定及层析水汽三维结构的主要方法，及存在的问题。把GPS探测的水汽同化到数值天气预报中，以提高数值预报的能力是GPS气象学研究的目的，作者介绍了目前水汽在数值预报模型中的同化情况。另外还回顾了利用GPS观测结果进行全球气候变化和大气折射环境研究的进展。     

用于构建生物系统发育树的古DNA序列

主要综述了古 DNA研究进展以及结合古 DNA序列和基因库中的数据构建系统发育树。这些研究能解决许多有关演化生物学、考古学、人类演化及迁移、动植物的家养和驯化过程及早期农业的发展、考古点的动植物残骸的精确鉴定及地质演化等问题。另外 ,还列举了一些重要的实例     

Mapping the Risk of Burning in the Brazilian Amazon with the Use of Logistic Regression and Fuzzy Inference

Through the PRODESDIGITAL Project, the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) has been mapping vegetal coverage in the Brazilian Legal Amazon using Landsat satellite images. INPE not only identifies deforested areas but also releases a daily map of burning areas. Burning is frequently used as the cheapest way to deforest, to clear areas for farming and to increase the soil’s fertility in a short period of time. In many instances, these fires get out of control and end up accidentally invading areas of forest exploited by the lumber industry, agricultural plantations and pastures. However, the deforestation and burning area maps alone are insufficient for monitoring and control on a regional scale. It is necessary to know in an analytical way how actions (deforestation and burnings) that characterize human occupation are occurring in a region. In this research, two methods are used that allow the inclusion of co-variation in the estimation of variables of interest: logistic regression, which is a statistical method that considers a categorical or discrete response variable and discrete and/or continuous co-variation; and fuzzy logic, which makes use of artificial intelligence methods to incorporate into computational models information based on the knowledge or experience of a specialist. In both methods, the response variable may be related to the probability of occurrence of the environmental variable under study.     

空间信息技术的发展及其在地球科学中的应用

空间信息技术有两个分支：其一是空间图形信息技术,即地理信息系统（ＧＩＳ）;其二是地质统计学。两种技术在本质上是相通的。ＧＩＳ的核心是建立图形元素的拓扑关系与建立空间数据库与属性数据库的联动关系。正是立足于这两个重要关系,使对千变万化的地学图形信息进行灵活高效的编辑、检索与显示成为可能。在迄今为止所有的计算机应用系统中,ＧＩＳ无疑将在地学中产生最重要的影响。地质统计学是一种空间数字处理技术,它是传统统计学的空间版本。用包含多元统计学的传统统计方法研究地质问题存在严重的缺陷,因为传统统计学忽略变量的空间存在,而地质过程具有强烈的空间性。地质统计学恰恰是立足于变量的空间关系发展起来的统计科学,因此它特别适用于地球科学。正如空间图形与空间数字可以相互转换一样,两种空间信息技术也存在内在的关系。利用ＧＩＳ与地质统计学这两种空间信息技术,使我们能不断地在空间图形与空间数字这两种状态间穿越。空间信息技术为地质学家在进行矿产资源预测、物化遥数据分析、地质环境评价、地质灾害评价与矿产资源管理等方面提供了强有力的工具。空间信息技术特别适合于地球科学,它不仅能大幅度地提高地球科学对图形的编制和研究的效率和水平,而且也将转变传统的?