全球数据库数据研究的初步进展

人类已进入大数据和人工智能时代,其成果已惠及千家万户。然而,大数据和人工智能技术在科学研究领域的应用却相形见绌,还未真正得到重视。大数据和人工智能是一种方法,一种思路,它不同于传统的科学研究方法和思路。在科学研究中,什么是大数据研究呢?符合大数据3个技术取向的是大数据研究,采用全数据模式的是大数据研究,从数据出发的是大数据研究。文中介绍了我们利用全球数据库数据厘定的玄武岩、安山岩、大陆边缘弧玄武岩(CAB)构造环境判别图,其中安山岩判别图填补了学术界的空白。玄武岩(MORB、OIB、IAB)判别图也不同于学术界早先熟知的判别图,是根据元素之间的相关关系厘定的。文中还讨论了大数据研究带来的一些可能很有意义的科学问题。如:1.在判别图研究中发现了许多效果较好的图解,主要依赖的是主元素、过渡元素和金属元素之间的关系,上述关系有什么意义,为什么会起到判别的作用?2.数据挖掘发现,全球大洋中脊中酸性岩极度匮乏,是否说明上地幔严重缺水?3.研究发现,中新世是全球岩浆活动最发育的时期,这一时期全球还出现了许多重大地质事件,二者之间是否存在关联?4.中新世全球埃达克岩最发育,按照埃达克岩的出露,发现从青藏高原到喀尔巴阡可能存在一个巨型的欧亚高原;5.根据对新生代苦橄岩全球时空分布研究,提出了一个如何认识全球热点问题等。文中还提出了下一步研究的建议并强调指出,科学已经进入大数据和人工智能时代,在大数据和人工智能时代,科学划分的标准发生了变化:凡是能够用数据化表述的学科才称之为科学,而不能用数据化表述的学科就不是科学,看来,能否被数据化是科学与非科学的分水岭。在大数据和人工智能时代,地质学和矿床学遭遇了空前的危机。按照我们的预测,在可以预见的未来,地球物理学将远超地质学,空间科学将异军突起,而在地质学领域内地球化学一花独放的局面还将维系很长一段时间。文中最后还探讨了今后找矿靠什么的问题,认为物化探和钻探测试技术的进步非常重要,同时,发展人工智能技术也已迫在眉睫。     

Progress in the Application of Ground Gravity Observation Data in Earthquake Prediction

The mechanism of earthquake inoculation and the process of earthquake occurrence are very complicated. Additionally, earthquakes do not happen very often, and we lack enough cognition to the earth’s interior structure, activity regularity and other key elements. As a result, research progress about the theory of earthquake precursors has been greatly restricted. Ground gravity observation has become one of the main ways to study earthquake precursor information in many countries and regions. This paper briefly summarized the surface gravity observation technology and observation network in China: the surface gravity measurement instrument developed from Huygens physical pendulum in seventeenth Century to today’s high-precision absolute gravimeter, and its accuracy reached to ±1×10^-8 m/s². China has successively established the National Gravity Network, Digital Earthquake Observation Network of China,the Crustal Movement Observation Network of China Ⅰ and the Crustal Movement Observation Network of China, to provide a public platform for monitoring non tidal gravity change, seismic gravity and tectonic movement. The use of specific examples illustrated the role of gravity observation data in earthquake prediction. The gravity observation data of ground gravity can be used to capture the information of gravity change in the process of strong earthquake inoculation, and to provide an important basis for the long-term prediction of strong earthquakes. The temporal and spatial variation characteristics of the regional gravity field and its relation to strong earthquakes were analyzed: Before the earthquake whose magnitude is higher than M_S 5, generally there will be a large amplitude and range of gravity anomaly zones. Strong earthquakes occur mainly in areas where the gravity field changes violently. The dynamic change images of gravity field can clearly reflect the precursory information of large earthquakes during the inoculation and occurrence. Finally, the existing problems of surface gravity technology in earthquake precursor observation were put forward and the use of gravity measurement data in earthquake prediction research was prospected.     

VGI and crowdsourced data credibility analysis using spam email detection techniques

Volunteered geographic information (VGI) can be considered a subset of crowdsourced data (CSD) and its popularity has recently increased in a number of application areas. Disaster management is one of its key application areas in which the benefits of VGI and CSD are potentially very high. However, quality issues such as credibility, reliability and relevance are limiting many of the advantages of utilising CSD. Credibility issues arise as CSD come from a variety of heterogeneous sources including both professionals and untrained citizens. VGI and CSD are also highly unstructured and the quality and metadata are often undocumented. In the 2011 Australian floods, the general public and disaster management administrators used the Ushahidi Crowd-mapping platform to extensively communicate flood-related information including hazards, evacuations, emergency services, road closures and property damage. This study assessed the credibility of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Ushahidi CrowdMap dataset using a Naïve Bayesian network approach based on models commonly used in spam email detection systems. The results of the study reveal that the spam email detection approach is potentially useful for CSD credibility detection with an accuracy of over 90% using a forced classification methodology.     

Semantic and syntactic interoperability in online processing of big Earth observation data

ABSTRACT

The challenge of enabling syntactic and semantic interoperability for comprehensive and reproducible online processing of big Earth observation (EO) data is still unsolved. Supporting both types of interoperability is one of the requirements to efficiently extract valuable information from the large amount of available multi-temporal gridded data sets. The proposed system wraps world models, (semantic interoperability) into OGC Web Processing Services (syntactic interoperability) for semantic online analyses. World models describe spatio-temporal entities and their relationships in a formal way. The proposed system serves as enabler for (1) technical interoperability using a standardised interface to be used by all types of clients and (2) allowing experts from different domains to develop complex analyses together as collaborative effort. Users are connecting the world models online to the data, which are maintained in a centralised storage as 3D spatio-temporal data cubes. It allows also non-experts to extract valuable information from EO data because data management, low-level interactions or specific software issues can be ignored. We discuss the concept of the proposed system, provide a technical implementation example and describe three use cases for extracting changes from EO images and demonstrate the usability also for non-EO, gridded, multi-temporal data sets (CORINE land cover).     

The Digital Belt and Road program in support of regional sustainability

The Belt and Road initiative has a significant focus on infrastructure, trade, and economic development across a vast region, and it also provides significant opportunities for sustainable development. The combined pressure of climate variability, intensified use of resources, and the fragility of ecosystems make it very challenging, however, to achieve future sustainability. To develop the path in a sustainable way, it is important to have a comprehensive understanding of these issues across nations and evaluate them in a scientific and well-informed approach. In this context, the Digital Belt and Road (DBAR) program was initiated as an international venture to share expertise, knowledge, technologies, and data to demonstrate the role of Earth observation science and technology and big Earth data applications to support large-scale development. In this paper, we identify pressing challenges, present the research priorities and foci of the DBAR program, and propose solutions where big Earth data can make significant contributions. This paper calls for further joint actions and collaboration to build a digital silk road in support of sustainable development at national, regional and global levels.     

SensePlace3: a geovisual framework to analyze place–time–attribute information in social media

SensePlace3 (SP3) is a geovisual analytics framework and web application that supports overview + detail analysis of social media, focusing on extracting meaningful information from the Twitterverse. SP3 leverages social media related to crisis events. It differs from most existing systems by enabling an analyst to obtain place-relevant information from tweets that have implicit as well as explicit geography. Specifically, SP3 includes not just the ability to utilize the explicit geography of geolocated tweets but also analyze implicit geography by recognizing and geolocating references in both tweet text, which indicates locations tweeted about, and in Twitter profiles, which indicates locations affiliated with users. Key features of SP3 reported here include flexible search and filtering capabilities to support information foraging; an ingest, processing, and indexing pipeline that produces near real-time access for big streaming data; and a novel strategy for implementing a web-based multi-view visual interface with dynamic linking of entities across views. The SP3 system architecture was designed to support crisis management applications, but its design flexibility makes it easily adaptable to other domains. We also report on a user study that provided input to SP3 interface design and suggests next steps for effective spatiotemporal analytics using social media sources.     

Supervised classification of electric power transmission line nominal voltage from high-resolution aerial imagery

For many researchers, government agencies, and emergency responders, access to the geospatial data of US electric power infrastructure is invaluable for analysis, planning, and disaster recovery. Historically, however, access to high quality geospatial energy data has been limited to few agencies because of commercial licenses restrictions, and those resources which are widely accessible have been of poor quality, particularly with respect to reliability. Recent efforts to develop a highly reliable and publicly accessible alternative to the existing datasets were met with numerous challenges – not the least of which was filling the gaps in power transmission line voltage ratings. To address the line voltage rating problem, we developed and tested a basic methodology that fuses knowledge and techniques from power systems, geography, and machine learning domains. Specifically, we identified predictors of nominal voltage that could be extracted from aerial imagery and developed a tree-based classifier to classify nominal line voltage ratings. Overall, we found that line support height, support span, and conductor spacing are the best predictors of voltage ratings, and that the classifier built with these predictors had a reliable predictive accuracy (that is, within one voltage class for four out of the five classes sampled). We applied our approach to a study area in Minnesota.     

Mapping cropland fallow areas in myanmar to scale up sustainable intensification of pulse crops in the farming system

Cropland fallows are the next best-bet for intensification and extensification, leading to increased food production and adding to the nutritional basket. The agronomical suitability of these lands can decide the extent of usage of these lands. Myanmar’s agricultural land (over 13.8 Mha) has the potential to expand by another 50% into additional fallow areas. These areas may be used to grow short-duration pulses, which are economically important and nutritionally rich, and constitute the diets of millions of people as well as provide an important source of livestock feed throughout Asia. Intensifying rice fallows will not only improve the productivity of the land but also increase the income of the smallholder farmers. The enhanced cultivation of pulses will help improve nutritional security in Myanmar and also help conserve natural resources and reduce environmental degradation. The objectives of this study was to use remote sensing methods to identify croplands in Myanmar and cropland fallow areas in two important agro-ecological regions, delta and coastal region and the dry zone. The study used moderate-resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) 250-m, 16-day normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) maximum value composite (MVC), and land surface water index (LSWI) for one 1 year (1 June 2012–31 May 2013) along with seasonal field-plot level information and spectral matching techniques to derive croplands versus cropland fallows for each of the three seasons: the monsoon period between June and October; winter period between November and February; and summer period between March and May. The study showed that Myanmar had total net cropland area (TNCA) of 13.8 Mha. Cropland fallows during the monsoon season account for a meagre 2.4% of TNCA. However, in the winter season, 56.5% of TNCA (or 7.8 Mha) were classified as cropland fallows and during the summer season, 82.7% of TNCA (11.4 Mha) were cropland fallows. The producer’s accuracy of the cropland fallow class varied between 92 and 98% (errors of omission of 2 to 8%) and user’s accuracy varied between 82 and 92% (errors of commission of 8 to 18%) for winter and summer, respectively. Overall, the study estimated 19.2 Mha cropland fallows from the two major seasons (winter and summer). Out of this, 10.08 Mha has sufficient moisture (either from rainfall or stored soil water content) to grow short-season pulse crops. This potential with an estimated income of US$ 300 per hectare, if exploited sustainably, is estimated to bring an additional net income of about US$ 1.5 billion to Myanmar per year if at least half (5.04 Mha) of the total cropland fallows (10.08 Mha) is covered with short season pulses.     

The past in dust: current trends and future directions in Pleistocene geoarcheology of European loess

Loess is a main archive of Pleistocene landscapes and environments and therefore has an important connection to the preservation and interpretation of Paleolithic sites. In Europe, anthropogenic sites have been found in loess because of past local occupation. At one extreme, sites are well preserved with minimal disturbance often accompanied by embedded proxies to estimate ecological parameters. On the other hand, loess deposits have undergone post-depositional alterations such as weathering, pedogenesis or bioturbation due to changing environmental conditions or other disturbances that obscure anthropogenic sites. We outline the current state of research and connections between Paleolithic archeology and loess research while introducing a series of subsequent regional case studies as part of a special issue. We also make recommendations for future work to incorporate a wider variety of methods to create more robust inferences on hominin and environmental evolution and their connections.     

基于ASTER与Sentinel-2A融合数据的云南普朗铜矿化蚀变信息提取

云南普朗铜矿区是我国提高战略性金属矿产铜矿资源的主要潜力地段,该矿区位于多云多雨山地高原区,采用传统地面调查方法开展找矿勘查工作受限较大,而遥感技术可在其中发挥重要作用。鉴于此,本研究选取ASTER和Sentinel-2A多光谱遥感数据,在光谱协同统一两种数据源的地表反射率基础上,采用高通滤波(High-Pass Filtering,HPF)的融合方法兼顾两种数据在短波红外波段和可见光近红外波段的优势,获取了具有高空间分辨率和高光谱保真度的ASTER-Sentinel-2A融合数据集;进而利用"比值+主成分分析法"与"主成分分析+能谱-面积法",开展了普朗铜矿区矿化遥感蚀变信息识别,并通过深入分析及野外验证,提出了对普朗铜矿蚀变信息分布特征及找矿潜力地带的新认识:(1)在原蚀变填图工作中判定为青磐岩化带的东部区域,重新进行了蚀变带的划分;(2)东部区域中新划分的钾化硅化带和绢英岩化带,具有较大找矿潜力。本研究可为普朗铜矿找矿勘查提供参考。