Selected Topics in Geoinformatics – PLUS ONLINE Course
Title Picture Prompts using Bing: Create a Map with selected Topics in Geoinformatics as title, use historical maps, heatmaps and other views
I am currently doing a class on selected topics in Geoinformatics at the University of Salzburg. Part of the course is also to reflect on the contents, especially in regards to one’s own work. Therefore this blog post will be updated every week and combines all reflections throughout the semester. It will be written in English language to comply with the course language.
„everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things.“ – Toblers First Law of Geography
„All models are wrong but some are useful„. – George E.P. Box
Lecture 1
Toplist of Geospatial Sites/Tools
In his first lecture Professor Strobl shared a list of his top 7 Geospatial Websites. Reflecting various aspects in the field of Geography, his toplist represents many aspects from thematic maps, to remote sensing sources, historical insights, comparisons and so on. This marks also the broadness of Geoinformatics and its wide field of applications. What struck out for me as a social scientist and paramedic was that he mentioned www.basemap.at , which I also use in my own projects very frequently.
Even this very short comparison shows the wide area of application and reveals how educational and occupational background lead to a completely different focus in ones toplist. Lets see what week #2 has to offer.
Lecture 2
ARC GIS Living Atlas
Following last weeks introduction lecture in this week it was all about the ARC GIS Living Atlas . It is what could best be described as a repository of geospatial web resources, ranging from maps to map data and even complete applications. One can clearly see the trend towards SaaS when comparing the ARC Gis Webclient and the ArcGIs Pro Suite.
I am primarly interested in the linkage between health and space and tried to find out more about this subject. As Milwaukee was the city where I spent one semester abroad in 2012 and the Pathfinders Youth Shelter was part of my long-term internship I want to know, under which circumstances people are able to receive health services. There is an interesting map called Health Professional Shortage Areas in Primary Care Component. This map shows underserved areas in primary care, meaning that the frequency of primary care physicians, mental health professionals or dental professionals is low. Interestingly, despite the personal impression of an underserved population and the evidence in the map (32,4% of the population is below the poverty level) especially in the so called inner cities, it seems that there are enough health services (mental, dental, primary care).
Source: https://zgis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?webmap=6304d50dba9e42dab835a264b3206616
Lecture 3
Asnake Mekuriaw – Soil and Water Conservation Practices in Ethiopean Highlands
Lecture number three was all about the work of Prof. Asnake Mekuriaw from the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies of the University of Addis Ababa (Ethiopia). In his recent paper he adresses the issue of physical soil and water conservation practices. This issues becomes especially important in his country, where there is a large number of land owners (on average approx. 0.5 hectar land owned per farmer) and erosion or devastation may have severe implications on harvest and securing ones living. In order to adress this issue governmental departments of agriculture and environment make use of Geoinformatics to identify and classify land structures, especially soil and water conservation structures. The aim of these structures is to keep soil and water in place and avoid loss otherwise fertile ground. He presented a methodologically sound approach of automatic identification and classification of these structures through analysis of satellite images. Showing the multi step approach it became clear, that there is a huge need in automated approaches that identify these structures. I asked Prof. Mekuriaw about the development of these structures over time and was impressed to hear, that through his work it was possible to emphasize the necessity in creating and maintaining such structures. This led to a positive development over the last years. Whether if machine learning approaches could enhance the current methodology with about 80% success rate was a matter that would be of interest. 
Source: Presentation of the final Model that can distinguish cultivated land and terraces
Lecture 4
Jed Long – Understanding patterns of individual mobility using spatial graphs
In his work Associate Professor Jed Long addresses his approach called „activity or movement graphs“ in regard to mobility analysis to derive patterns from (GPS) location points. This very much correlates with Anita Grasers python library Moving Pandas. The basic idea behind it is, given a set of GPS points, how can one make sense and meaning out of them, what trajectories, what activites, what intentions could lie behind the data. This addresses the issue of human mobility, recreational habitat for wildlife or all sorts of topics on logistics etc.
It is quite interesting to learn about Fillekes et. al (2019) dimensions of individual mobility, which are:
| Dimension of mobility | Mobility Measure |
| 1. Extent | Area of convex hull (log transformed) |
| 2. Quantity | Number of anchors (activities) |
| 3. Duration | Duration of time in travel (moves) |
| 4. Stability | Revisited activity space |
| 5. Elongation | Gravelius compactness |
| 6. Timing | Time of day at max. distance to home |
Out of interest I used the first dimension to create a convex hull and the concav hull for one of my own projects using QGIS and SQL Queries:
WITH hulls AS (
SELECT ST_ConcaveHull(ST_Union(geometry), 0.3) as geom
FROM Einsätze
WHERE vehicle_name = 'vehicle_name'
)
SELECT ST_Union(geom) as geom
FROM hulls;
Image left convex hull using QGIS Processing Toolbox, Image right using concav hull. As argued there are four dimensions in the factor analysis (Connectedness, Quantity, Extent, Clustering) that allow further investigation. I really like the idea of building the MoveGraph R Package although I have not yet seen a release.
Lecture 5
Merve Keskin – Eye Movement Tracking for GIS
Another very different topic followed with lecture number five. Merve Keskin, currently working as a Researcher at the ZGIS Salzburg showed her work on eye movement tracking in relation to spatial processes. At first one does not really relate the technology of eye tracking to spatial technology or methods of spatial analysis. But when you think about how maps are built and are just a representation of an image of space it makes sense to also analyze what people see when they perceive such images. This issue becomes especially interesting when looking at areas of interest, trajectories, heatmaps and many other ways of visualizing geospatial data. This property could also reshape the way we look at maps and prioritize or neglect certain features that could be of importance. Especially the aspect of dynamic display of eye tracking data seems very appearant to me, which is shown in her recent paper „Automation of the visualisation of eye-tracking data with animated heatmaps“
Lecture 6
Citizen Science in Hydrology – The Crowd Water Project of the University of Zurich
Focussing on the context of integrating citizens into science this weeks presenter Rieke Goebel presented the Crowd Water Project of the University of Zurich. It combines a clear research perspective, namely which hydrological entities can be observed by a greater public and what their impact is on hydrological modeling. Further and equally important it addresses the issue of integrating and inspiring people to engage in hydrological topics. By using crowd knowledge eg. on the experienced rise or fall of water levels the amount responses plays a vital role in building a wider knowledge at first. I particularily like Prof. Strobls statement that engaging people in science may lead to a greater crebility and may also lessen scepticism amongst people who otherwise would not have gotten access to this domain before. For testing purposes I installed the App and contributed some datapoints of my favorite spots around the City of Zurich as shown below. A very interesting publication on the aspect auf automated water level detection was recently published by Wang et. al (2023).
Wang, Z., Seibert, J., van Meerveld, I., Lyu, H., & Zhang, C. (2023). Automatic water-level class estimation from repeated crowd-based photos of streams. Hydrological Sciences Journal, 68(13), 1826–1840. https://doi.org/10.1080/02626667.2023.2240312 
I find this especially interesting when considering the vast amount of geotagged open pictures that are being shared today, especially when extraordinariy events happen (eg. local/regional intense rainfalls, flooding, etc.). I also thought that a more feasible to offer a kind of messenger type flow, that would allow sending pictures to a contact address and that then interacts as a chatbot. I guess people are more open to using such services in times of „crisis“ or when they feel there is a need to report extraordinary events.
Out of curiosity I have downloaded and installed the app and started mapping spots. It turns out that the app is fairly comprehensive in its settings but still easy to use. I really like the gamificiation experience which motivates people to continue their participation.
Lecture 7
Wearable Sensor Technology in Urban Planning
This weeks presenter Martin Moser presented a potpourri of sensor technologies and applications to measure stress in urban mobility. The basic idea is to derive a better understanding of stressors in urban mobility by using sensors such as smart watches, glasses and other wearables. Any indication of stress should be measured in an increase in certain parameters caused by a reaction of the vegetative nervous system (activation of the sympathetic nervous system). Ultimately the goal is to identify hotspots from a multitude of biosignals and provide valuable insights for urban planners when and where to adapt streets, intersections etc.
Indeed it is very impressive to sheer amout of technology, processing power and sophisticated algorithms that is being used in such projects. As a social scientist I find it necessary to reflect on the underlying issue, which is how microinterventions should solve macrotrends. For example in the State of Salzburg a significant reduction of individual motorized mobility is still widely underrepresented. In the city of Salzburg public transport strongly relies on 123 trolley busses and 77 motor coaches to transport around 31 million people in the year 2021 (https://www.stadt-salzburg.at/statistik-verkehr/).
A look a the map of road traffic accidents involving persons in Austria shows that there is still a significant number of accients in the entire state. 2023 1.111 registered accidents caused 1.341 injured and 3 dead just for the city of Salzburg. This results in an annual accident rate per 1000 citizens of around ~7. I now compare these data to the city of Linz which has 989 registered accidents that caused 1201 injured and 3 dead. This results in an annual accident rate per 1000 citizens of 4.6. Lastly the city of Innsbruck has 819 registered accidents which cause 953 injured and 7 dead. This results in an annual accident rate per 1000 citizens of 6.2. Therefore people in the City of Salzburg appear to be at a higher risk to get involved into road traffic accidents that cause harm to humans.
My synthesis would be to invest more into public transport, especially railway and tram and significantly reduce the number of motor vehicles within the city. This aim should be an overall policy goal that may be informed/supported by projects like the one presented by this weeks speaker.
Lecture 8
Infographics in cartography - approaches for identification and quantification
This weeks presenter Jakub Koníček came from the Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci which is one of the PLUS Partner Universities of the Copernicus Master in Digital Earth Programme. In his talk Jakub presented a novel approach towards quantification of whether a geospatial representation is more of an infographical type or more of a classical maptype. He used several methods, including machine learning algorithms but ended with a simple but well throught approach by using the area, graphic load, visual appeal and colorfulness that each visual appearance (text, illustration, map, data visualization) would use on an illustration. His tool https://www.cartography.upol.cz/infomap/ allows a multidimensional analysis and kind of a raking of whehter ones own illustration is more of a maptype or more of an infographics type.
I have used one of my recent examples, that I learned from this post of Anita Graser and designed a map after the example of the instructor. I have then used Jakubs tool for an analysis. For the results I asked Jakub to help me interpret and luckily he replied with the following answer
Lecture 9
Snow Cover Variations in Krygyzstan and Tajikistan 2000 - 2023
Dr. Shahnawaz, a well known member of the Faculty of the Department of Geoinformatics presented his ongoing research arount the topic of snow cover variations. Instead of ground observations, he used Terra and Aqua data, especially MODIS (moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer) with 36 discrete spectral bands.
As shown on the image below, he then uses a radar / spider chart to illustrate the changes over a year. The numbers on the outer circle represent his observation period (2000 - 2023) while as the the distance to the core represents the percentage of land area under snow cover. The colors mark the amount of days, that an area is covered by snow within a year. This creates a way to determine changes over a longer time.
As demonstrated by Dr. Shahnawaz, climate change is a matter of longer periods of time and his observation data are simply from a too short period of time. Thus one of the main findings is weather variance, meaning that there are no clear causal or linear processes that can be clearly identified by the analysis. For my own work, I identified radard or spider charts as a nice tool for displaying data. As in my field using remote sensing data is not the major objective I have not dealt with many use cases yet.
Lecture 10
Graffiti as spatial information
I had to skip this lecutre due to multiple dayshifts in a row. Below you see my EMS providers stations in the Canton of Sankt Gallen and their respective 15 min response areas.
Lecture 11
Live data streams in geospatial knowledge infrastructures
Prof. Strobl concluded the year with his presentation on Live data streams and a very insightful presentation on the history and present applications of GI Sciences. Interestingly the discipline came from the digitization of maps with its core application of transforming a physical map into a computer map.
Nowadays the term
The Science of Where - awhereness
is widely used to describe the dynamics between space and time. This enabled GI Science for example to model poossible futures in scenarios or to create storymaps where past and present are compared. A very nice insight into the variety of applications is provided here . At the core was the shift from mere data acquisition to the question of knowledge about humans and earth in general or in other words from:
What is there to Why is it there and Why do we care
Lecture 12
Mixed Reality, Spatial Cognition and Eye-Tracking
Todays speaker Nianhua Lui presented on his work on his concept of New Maps and New Interaction, everything enabled or enhanced through Mixed Reality. This originates from the idea that modern VR (virtual reality) /AR (augemented reality) /MR (mixed reality) technology will eventually become as used as modern smartphones, laptops etc. Therefore the way we perceive maps in the future will be much more augmented, because it will be through smart glasses. A possible scenario is shown in the picture below which instantly reminded me of movies such as Ready Player One - Steven Spielberg.
A new term was introduced to me during the presentation, namely Spatial Cognition. It describes the mental procoess for acquiring and using spatial information, it involves perception, memory, attention and problem solving and it is essential for navigating, reading and interacting with the environment.
The spatial reference frame demonstrates that a location of an object can be represented in an egocentric (meaning from position in space) or an allocentric (meaning as a point in space). A very interesting paper can be found here.
As the presenter statet, there is a high chance that technology like smart glasses will sooner or later be integrated into everyday lifes and the matter will be how this technology enhances our lifes, when navigating through the world.
Lecture 13
GIS and Transportation
This weeks presenters Maximilian Kranabetter and Philipp Krisch came from the Salzburg based researchstudio. For his topic Maximilian focussed on assigning regional types for transport on demand services. The issue revolves around rural transportation services, that are often unfrequently used, need to serve a disbursed context. In some ways lead to a negative feedback loop between low frequency that leads to low usage which again questions the need for public transport and rises the demand for individual mobility. As an interesting approach transport on demand is presented which is also supported by the government of the state of Salzburg - the Project PRIMA.
Using GIS as a support tool for informed decision making is one of the key aspects of this domain. It involves using data layers such as population density, walking / driving distances, demand points and serving points. The matter is often times around the issue of how to optimize (minimize, maximize or both) a system that is currently implemented give one or more constraints (costs etc.).
The second presentation of Philipp seemed to be a very useful planning tool for the replacement of fuel driven busses with green(er) technology. It was quite interesting to see how the Test data differed between a real and the simulated drive of an electic bus.
Finally the most important learning of this lecture was Professor Strobls hint for the World Pop Hub, an issue I have been dealing with for a long time. Imagine you have a poygon shape on a surface (eg. a municipality, or a 10 min drive time radius) and you want to estimate, how many people currently life there. The https://hub.worldpop.org/ gives you a possibility to solve this matter, serving a Geotiff (.tif) Raster format (100m Grid Cells).
Bondarenko M., Kerr D., Sorichetta A., and Tatem, A.J. 2020. Census/projection-disaggregated gridded population datasets for 189 countries in 2020 using Built-Settlement Growth Model (BSGM) outputs. WorldPop, University of Southampton, UK. doi:10.5258/SOTON/WP00684
A helpful introdcution can be found here:
Lecture 14
Research on ecology, soil and climate in the Tian Shan
Ermek Baibagyshov, Professor at the Naryn State University (Kyrgyzstan) presented a wide variety of research projects and topics of his Department of Agriculture. Interestingly, as mentioned by Prof. Strobl, application contexts are sometimes scarce in countries like Austria, where methodology and development of such plays a bigger role. In contrast there is a rich variety of application contexts with a direct impact, when research is done elsewhere.
I personally found the idea of a soil atlas very useful, as I myself am also mapping structures etc. in a different setting. With the project https://transparenzlandkarte.bvrd.at/ we not only map and display Emergency Medical Service infrastructre in Austria, but also analyse and investigate different phenomena. Yet again, the term Spatial Cognition becomes relevant.
As this was the closing session of the semester, I took the chance for some reflective thoughts on this course. This reflection should cover three domains, namely:
- Presenters
- Topics
- Students
For the first domain it became apparent that GI Science is much more an international field of study that is especially relevant for countries affected by climate change or are in the process of development. Further established cooperations such as the Joint Master Degree allow cooperation and enable real mobility and integration into more then one University. This helps to broaden views and enrich ones own thinking.
Second topics covered a broad range from those with a very narrow focus on application to those that are more interested in developing or enhancing technology. As mentioned before, it made the impression that presenters from Europe focussed more on methodological enhancement while as presenters from abroad showed solutions for practical issues.
Lastly students, I noticed a heterogenity of students but was quite surprised that despite the effort made by Prof. Strobl, almost no interaction was made. This could be attributed to different cultural backgrounds or a lack of language proficiency. Unfortunately the only discussions made were mostly between presenters and the professor, where I hoped there would be comments or disucssions also in reflection to ones own background.
With this remarks, the semester ends and I am looking forward to further interesting lectures.