Geoinformatics and digital earth initiatives:a German perspective

This paper discusses the role of Geoinformatics as a new scientific discipline designed for handling of geospatial information.Depending on the scientific background of the people involved in shaping the emerging discipline,emphasis may be placed on different aspects of Geoinformatics.Applications and developments may address geoscientific,spatial planning,or computer science related matters.The scientific field of Geoinformatics encompasses the acquisition and storing of geospatial data,the modelling and presentation of spatial information,geoscientific analyses and spatial planning,and the development of algorithms and geospatial database systems.It is the position of the author that these tools from Geoinformatics are necessary to bridge the gap between Digital Earth models and the real world with its real-world problems(‘connecting through location’).It is,however,crucial that Geoinformatics represents a coherent integrated approach to the acquisition,storage,analysis,modeling,presentation,and dissemination of geo-processes and not a patchwork solution of unconnected fields of activity.Geoinformatics is as such not a part of Geography,Surveying,or Computer Science,but a new self-contained scientific discipline.The current paper highlights international and national trends of the discipline and presents a number of Geoinformatics initiatives.The research and teaching activities of the newly formed Institute for Geoinformatics and Remote Sensing(IGF)at the University of Osnabrueck serve as an example for these initiatives.All these developments have lead to the long overdue formation of a scientific‘Society for Geoinformatics’(German:Gesellschaft fu¨r Geoinformatik-GfGI)in Germany.

Geoinformatics education in China

The paper gives an overview of the current status of education in geoinformatics in China.First,the paper provides a brief introduction to the history of geoinformatics education in China and a general review of the scientific and technological development.It then presents how the development affects the education and training in China.In the paper,universities and institutes in China that can award academic degrees related to geoinformatics are summarized,and undergraduate majors are briefly introduced.Next,the paper reports the work having been done by the national expert group on Surveying and Mapping,including the revision of discipline catalog and guide for graduate education and requirements.A list of typical curricula in geoinformatics education is suggested.Activities on promoting the graduate student exchange platform are presented.Finally,a case study of geoinformatics education in Wuhan University is discussed.

Geoinformatics education and outreach:looking forward

Geoinformatics education is a key factor for sustainable development of geo-spatial sciences and industries.There have been a variety of educational activities focusing on education and training,technology transfer,and capability building in photogrammetry,remote sensing,and spatial information science,together known as Geoinformatics.Geoinformatics education is an essential mission and even determinant in the ISPRS society.The paper discusses key issues in Geoinformatics education.It reviews educational activities from the ISPRS perspective and summarizes lessons learned from these actions.A vision towards future trends of Geoinformatics education in the ISPRS is provided.

A Framework of Environmental Modelling and Information Sharing for Urban Air Pollution Control and Management

More effective environmental pollution control and management are needed due to the increasing environ-mental impacts from a range of human activities and the growing public demands for a better living environment. Urban air pollution is a serious environmental issue that poses adverse impacts on the health of people and the environment in most metropolitan areas. In this paper,we propose a geoinformatics augmented framework of environmental modelling and information sharing for supporting effective urban air pollution control and management. This framework is out-lined in terms of its key components and processes including: 1) an integrated,adaptive network of sensors for envi-ronmental monitoring; 2) a set of distributed,interoperable databases for data management; 3) a set of intelligent,robust algorithms and models for environmental modelling; 4) a set of flexible,efficient user interfaces for data access and in-formation sharing; and 5) a reliable,high capacity,high performance computing and communication infrastructure for integrating and supporting other framework components and processes.

GIS-Based Situational Analysis of Cutaneous Leishmaniasis Disease (CLD) in Sri Lanka

Cutaneous Leishmaniasis (CL) is a severe health problem and a parasitic disease on human dermal and widely pervades tropical and subtropical developing counties. The study is mainly focused on Geographic Information System (GIS) based Situational Analysis (SA). The clinically recorded 394 CL patients’ information was obtained from the District General Hospital of Polonnaruwa (DGHP) for 2017 and 2018. The spatial distribution of these patients was collected using Global Positing System (GPS). Moran’s I Index spatial autocorrelation technique and Getis-Ord Gi were used to identify the study site’s hot spot and cold spot areas. More than 75% of the CL patients’ population were highly involved with agricultural activities, and they are the highly exposed group of the CL in the study area. Also, 75% of the CL population were men, and the highly vulnerable age group was 35 - 39 men and 40 - 44 women. The generated Moran’s I Index indicates 0.0321, representing a randomly distributed pattern of CL patients over the District, and the Getis-Ord Gi Z Score value was >1.96 (p < 0.05). It is revealed that, during and in the post-harvesting periods of paddy cultivation, farmers are highly exposed to sandflies becoming CL patients. Due to this situation, the researchers observed that the highest number of patients have reported in May of both years and the infection period is two to four weeks earlier than the reported month. Hence to prevent the disease spread, it is essential to implement an awareness program regarding sandflies’ behaviour and CLD.

Big Data and cloud computing:innovation opportunities and challenges

Big Data has emerged in the past few years as a new paradigm providing abundant data and opportunities to improve and/or enable research and decision-support applications with unprecedented value for digital earth applications including business,sciences and engineering.At the same time,Big Data presents challenges for digital earth to store,transport,process,mine and serve the data.Cloud computing provides fundamental support to address the challenges with shared computing resources including computing,storage,networking and analytical software;the application of these resources has fostered impressive Big Data advancements.This paper surveys the two frontiers–Big Data and cloud computing–and reviews the advantages and consequences of utilizing cloud computing to tackling Big Data in the digital earth and relevant science domains.From the aspects of a general introduction,sources,challenges,technology status and research opportunities,the following observations are offered:(i)cloud computing and Big Data enable science discoveries and application developments;(ii)cloud computing provides major solutions for Big Data;(iii)Big Data,spatiotemporal thinking and various application domains drive the advancement of cloud computing and relevant technologies with new requirements;(iv)intrinsic spatiotemporal principles of Big Data and geospatial sciences provide the source for finding technical and theoretical solutions to optimize cloud computing and processing Big Data;(v)open availability of Big Data and processing capability pose social challenges of geospatial significance and(vi)a weave of innovations is transforming Big Data into geospatial research,engineering and business values.This review introduces future innovations and a research agenda for cloud computing supporting the transformation of the volume,velocity,variety and veracity into values of Big Data for local to global digital earth science and applications.

Geological applications using geospatial standards-an example from OneGeology-Europe and GeoSciML

The Geoscience Markup Language(GeoSciML)has been developed to enable the interchange of geoscience information,principally that portrayed on geological maps as well as boreholes.A GeoSciML testbed was developed both to test the implementation of the data model and its application in web services.The OneGeology-Europe project aims to use the GeoSciML data model,and build on the experience of the GeoSciML testbed,in implementing a geoportal for a harmonised geological map of Europe at 1:1 million scale.This involves the integration of web services from 20 participating organisations.An important objective of OneGeology-Europe is to contribute to Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community(INSPIRE),both through the development of a geological data specification and the use of the INSPIRE technical architecture.GeoSciML and the OneGeology-Europe project are also steps towards incorporating geoscience data into a Digital Earth.Both the development of GeoSciML and the implementation of web services for GeoSciML and OneGeology-Europe,have followed a standards-based metho-dology.The technical architecture comprises a geoportal providing access to a Catalogue Service for the Web for metadata describing both the data and services available.OneGeology-Europe will provide bothWeb Map Services view andWeb Feature Services download services,which aim to be compliant with the INSPIRE implementing rules.

The contribution of maps to the challenges of risk communication to the public

Risk communication is a significant challenge in risk management.It serves different purposes;an important one is to improve the public risk awareness and mitigation.Because of the strong spatio-temporal component of natural hazards,maps can play a decisive role in communicating risk information.The application and design of maps for risk communication especially to the public has not been investigated comprehensively.Specific constraints and challenges of risk communication have not been considered systematically in the map design process so far.This study aims at developing a frame for the application and design of interactive risk and hazard maps for the public which is based on the specific constraints and challenges of risk communication.In a literature review it introduces concepts and methods from social sciences and psychology,which have been assessed as important for communicating risk information.The concepts and methods are adapted to map-mediated risk communication according to the approaches of Activity Theory.Communication objectives and tasks which are essential to improve risk mitigation are identified and geovisualization methods for information presentation are related according to the degree which they are able to serve them.Based on this,some principles for map-based risk communication are established.

Upstream-downstream linkages of hydrological processes in the Himalayan region

Understanding the upstream-downstream linkages in hydrological processes is essential for water resources planning in river basins.Although there are many studies of individual aspects of these processes in the Himalayan region,studies along the length of the basins are limited.This study summarizes the present state of knowledge about linkages in hydrological processes between upstream and downstream areas of river basins in the Himalayan region based on a literature review.The paper studies the linkages between the changes in the physical environment of upstream areas(land use,snow storage,and soil erosion)and of climate change on the downstream water availability,flood and dry season flow,and erosion and sedimentation.It is argued that these linkages are complex due to the extreme altitudinal range associated with the young and fragile geology,extreme seasonal and spatial variation in rainfall,and diversity of anthropogenic processes.Based on the findings,the paper concludes that integrated systems analysis is required to understand the holistic complexity of upstream-downstream linkages of hydrological processes in the river basin context.The integrated land and water resources management(ILWRM)approach can be instrumental in developing adaptive solutions to problems and can also enable stakeholders of upstream and downstream areas with various interests and needs to work together for the better utilization and management of land and water resources.As a part of this,the specific circumstances of the upstream communities,who live in fragile and inaccessible mountain areas with limited resource opportunities,should be taken into account so that incentive mechanisms can be established to encourage and acknowledge their contribution.

The application of open standards to enhance the interoperability of geoscience information

We can adequately study broad global issues and policies only by taking geosciences into account.Our research and decision-making must share and make effective use of interdisciplinary data sources,models,and processes.Noninteroperability impedes sharing of data and computing resources.Standards from the Open Geospatial Consortium(OGC)and other organizations are the basis for successfully deploying a seamless,distributed information infrastructure for the geosciences.Several specifications now adopted by the OGC consensus process are the result of OGC interoperability initiatives.The OGC standards,deployment architectures,and interoperability initiatives are described showing how the OGC standards baseline has been developed and applies to the geosciences.

The GEON service-oriented architecture for Earth Science applications

The Geosciences Network(GEON)project has been developing cyberinfrastructure for data sharing in the Earth Science community based on a serviceoriented architecture.The layered architecture consists of Core,Middleware,and Applications services.Core services provide system-level functions(e.g.user authentication),Middleware services provide generic capabilities(e.g.catalog search),and Application services provide functions that users directly interact with,including applications that are specific to Earth Sciences.The GEON‘service stack’includes a standardized set of these services and the corresponding software modules.The GEON Portal provides Web-based access to these services via a set of portlets.This service-oriented approach has enabled GEON to expand to new partner sites and leverage GEON services for other projects.To facilitate interoperation in a distributed geoinformatics environment,GEON is focusing on standards for distributed search across federated catalogs.

Pervasive geo-security - a lightweight triple-A approach to securing distributed geo-service infrastructures

Security has recently become a major concern in distributed geo-infrastructures for spatial data provision.Thus,a lightweight approach for securing distributed low-power environments such as geo-sensor networks is needed.The first part of this article presents a survey of current security mechanisms for authentication and authorisation.Based on this survey,a lightweight and scalable token-based security infrastructure was developed,which is tailored for use in distributed geo-web service infrastructures.The developed security framework comprises dedicated components for authentication,rule-based authorisation and optimised storage and administration of access rules.For validation purposes,a prototypical implementation of the approach has been created.

Conceptual design and implementation of spatial data warehouses integrating regular grids of points

Spatial online analytical processing(OLAP)and spatial data warehouse(SDW)systems are geo-business intelligence technologies that enable the analysis of huge volumes of geographic data.In the last decade,the conceptual design and implementation of SDWs that integrate spatial data,which are represented using the vector model,have been extensively investigated.However,the integration of field data(a continuous representation of spatial data)in SDWs is a recent unresolved research issue.Enhancing SDWs with field data improves the spatio-multidimensional analysis capabilities with continuity and multiresolutions.Motivated by the need for a conceptual design tool and relational online analytical processing(ROLAP)implementation,we propose a UML profile for SDWs that integrates a regular grid of points and supports continuity and multiresolutions.We also propose an efficient implementation of a ROLAP architecture.

Optimal orientations of discrete global grids and the Poles of Inaccessibility

Spatial analyses involving binning often require that every bin have the same area,but this is impossible using a rectangular grid laid over the Earth or over any projection of the Earth.Discrete global grids use hexagons,triangles,and diamonds to overcome this issue,overlaying the Earth with equally-sized bins.Such discrete global grids are formed by tiling the faces of a polyhedron.Previously,the orientations of these polyhedra have been chosen to satisfy only simple criteria such as equatorial symmetry or minimizing the number of vertices intersecting landmasses.However,projection distortion and singularities in discrete global grids mean that such simple orientations may not be sufficient for all use cases.Here,I present an algorithm for finding suitable orientations;this involves solving a nonconvex optimization problem.As a side-effect of this study I show that Fuller’s Dymaxion map corresponds closely to one of the optimal orientations I find.I also give new high-accuracy calculations of the Poles of Inaccessibility,which show that Point Nemo,the Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility,is 15 km farther from land than previously recognized.

Putting meaning into NETMAR-the open service network for marine environmental data

The open service network for marine environmental data(NETMAR)project uses semantic web technologies in its pilot system which aims to allow users to search,download and integrate satellite,in situ and model data from open ocean and coastal areas.The semantic web is an extension of the fundamental ideas of the World Wide Web,building aweb of datathrough annotation of metadata and data with hyperlinked resources.Within the framework of the NETMAR project,an interconnected semantic web resourcewasdeveloped to aid in dataandweb service discovery and to validate Open Geospatial Consortium Web Processing Service orchestration.A second semantic resource was developed to support interoper-ability of coastal web atlases across jurisdictional boundaries.This paper outlines the approach taken to producing the resource registry used within the NETMAR project and demonstrates the use of these semantic resources to support user interactions with systems.Such interconnected semantic resources allow the increased ability to share and disseminate data through the facilitation of interoperability between data providers.The formal representation of geospatial knowledge to advance geospatial interoperability is a growing research area.Tools and methods such as those outlined in this paper have the potential to support these efforts.

Web-system for processing and visualization of meteorological data for Siberian environment research

At present,mainly GIS software is used for exploration and visualization of spatially distributed data.At the same time an approach based on the combination of advanced web technologies along with the standard rules of information-computational system development is more suitable for performing tasks requiring more sophisticated data analysis.In this report,functional capabilities of the information-computational system created for meteorological and climatic data processing and online visualization are introduced.The system represents a dedicated web-interface,which allows performing of mathematical and statistical operations on the diverse observational and model data and to determine characteristics of global and regional climate changes.Currently such datasets as NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis,ECMWF ERA-40 Reanalysis,etc.are available for processing.In particular,the system allows calculating of temporal average and extremum values,time trends,etc.at arbitrary spatial and temporal ranges for different meteorological parameters.The possibility of online intercomparison of meteorological characteristics calculated for different datasets is also realized in the system.The final version of the system being developed is supposed to find application in meteorological and climatological investigations and should help researchers to save time during performing routine analytical tasks by simplifying handling of huge arrays of spatially distributed meteorological data.

The challenges of developing an open source, standards-based technology stack to deliver the latest UK climate projections

To improve the understanding of local and regional effects of climate change,the UK government supported the development of new climate projections.The Met Office Hadley Centre produced a sophisticated set of probabilistic projections for future climate.This paper discusses the design and implementation of an interactive website to deliver those projections to a broad user community.The interface presents complex data sets,generates on-the-fly products and schedules jobs to an offline weather generator capable of outputting gigabytes of data in response to a single request.A robust and scalable physical architecture was delivered through significant use of open source technologies and open standards.

Service-oriented infrastructure for flood mapping using optical and SAR satellite data

In this paper,we present the service-oriented infrastructure within the Wide Area Grid project that was carried out within the Working Group on Information Systems and Services of the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites.The developed infrastructure integrates services and computational resources of several regional and national Grid systems:Ukrainian Academician Grid(with satellite data processing Grid segment,UASpaceGrid)and Grid system at the Center on Earth Observation and Digital Earth of Chinese Academy of Sciences.The study focuses on integrating geo-information services on flood mapping provided by Ukrainian and Chinese entities to benefit from information acquired from multiple sources.We also describe services for workflow automation and management in Grid environment and provide an example of workflow automation for generating flood maps from optical and synthetic-aperture radar satellite imagery.We also discuss issues of enabling trust for the infrastructure using certificates and reputation-based model.Applications of utilizing the developed infrastructure for operational flood mapping in Ukraine and China are given as well.

Challenges and strategies for the visual exploration of complex environmental data

In this opinion paper,we,a group of scientists from environmental-,geo-,ocean-and information science,argue visual data exploration should become a common analytics approach in Earth system science due to its potential for analysis and interpretation of large and complex spatio-temporal data.We discuss the challenges that appear such as synthesis of heterogeneous data from various sources,reducing the amount of information and facilitating multidisciplinary,collaborative research.We argue that to fully exploit the potential of visual data exploration,several bottlenecks and challenges have to be addressed:providing an efficient data management and an integrated modular workflow,developing and applying suitable visual exploration concepts and methods with the help of effective and tailored tools as well as generating and raising the awareness of visual data exploration and education.We are convinced visual data exploration is worth the effort since it significantly facilitates insight into environmental data and derivation of knowledge from it.

Prof.Ackermann,vision-based navigation and the PG master’s degree programme at HfT Stuttgart

The two topics of the article seem to have absolutely nothing to do with each other and,as can be expected in a contribution in honor and memory of Prof.Fritz Ackermann,they are linked in his person.Vision-based Navigation was the focus of the doctoral thesis written by the author,the 29th and last PhD thesis supervised by Prof.Ackermann.The International Master’s Program Photogrammetry and Geoinformatics,which the author established with colleagues at Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences(HfT Stuttgart)in 1999,was a consequence of Prof.Ackermann’s benevolent promotion of international knowledge transfer in teaching.Both topics are reflected in this article;they provide further splashes of color in Prof.Ackermann’s oeuvre.