Proliferation of Cartographic Education in the Age of Big Data

Maps have long been a part of everyday life for the general public,and even more so in today’s knowledge society.No doubt,cartography as a profession of map design is assuming a more important role in the formation of intellectual skills in terms of spatial reasoning.Since its emergence as an academic discipline about 100 years ago,cartography has undergone many paradigm shifts.Its interaction with other disciplines has also constantly unfolded.These changes have left traces in cartographic education programs.In the age of big data,however,we are facing four fundamental challenges:(1) cartographic courses are being marginalized or even disappearing from degree programs in geospatial sciences;(2) the role of cartographers is increasingly eclipsed as a side effect of participatory cartography;(3) cartographers are blamed whenever something goes wrong with map use;and(4) professional map publishers can hardly compete with online mapping platforms dominated by Internet giants.Based on a contextual analysis of this seemingly gloomy situation,the paper reveals a number of proliferation points for the design of future cartographic curricula.First,cartography,once dedicated to supporting geospatial sciences,is thriving in the soil of data science,mapping not only the earth or other celestial bodies,but literally any kind of virtual space.Second,cartography has benefited from theoretical and technological advances in cognitive sciences,especially non-intrusive user studies,so that spatial cognition is becoming an integral component of cartographic education.Third,the role of scapegoat for wrongdoing of maps has accentuated cartographer’s overarching responsibility for quality and ethical issues in the geodata value chain.Finally,the diversification of the labor market requires new approaches to prepare future talents for a coopetition-oriented ecosystem in the marketplace.

An IEEE value loop of human-technology collaboration in geospatial information science

Geosensing and social sensing as two digitalization mainstreams in big data era are increasingly converging toward an integrated system for the creation of semantically enriched digital Earth.Along with the rapid developments of AI technologies,this convergence has inevitably brought about a number of transformations.On the one hand,value-adding chains from raw data to products and services are becoming value-adding loops composed of four successive stages–Informing,Enabling,Engaging and Empowering(IEEE).Each stage is a dynamic loop for itself.On the other hand,the“human versus technology”relationship is upgraded toward a game-changing“human and technology”collaboration.The information loop is essentially shaped by the omnipresent reciprocity between humans and technologies as equal partners,co-learners and co-creators of new values.The paper gives an analytical review on the mutually changing roles and responsibilities of humans and technologies in the individual stages of the IEEE loop,with the aim to promote a holistic understanding of the state of the art of geospatial information science.Meanwhile,the author elicits a number of challenges facing the interwoven human-technology collaboration.The transformation to a growth mind-set may take time to realize and consolidate.Research works on large-scale semantic data integration are just in the beginning.User experiences of geovisual analytic approaches are far from being systematically studied.Finally,the ethical concerns for the handling of semantically enriched digital Earth cover not only the sensitive issues related to privacy violation,copyright infringement,abuse,etc.but also the questions of how to make technologies as controllable and understandable as possible for humans and how to keep the technological ethos within its constructive sphere of societal influence.

Enrichment of topographic road database for the purpose of routing and navigation

With growing demand on multi-purpose or multi-modal navigation,the route calculation needs to traverse semantically enriched road networks for different transportation modes.Currently,operational route planning algorithms reveal rather limited performances or their potential for comprehensive applications are constrained by the unavailable or insufficient interoperation among the under-lying geo-data that are separately maintained in different spatial databases.To overcome this limitation,a novel approach has been proposed to integrate the routing-relevant information from different data sources,which involves three processes:(1)automatic matching to identify the corresponding road objects between different datasets;(2)interaction to refine the automatic matching result;and(3)transferring the routing-relevant information from one data-set to another.In process(1),the Delimited Stroke Oriented algorithm is employed to achieve the automatic data matching between different datasets,which has revealed a high matching rate and certainty.However uncertain matching problems occur in areas where topological conditions are too complicated or inconsistent.The remaining unmatched or wrongly matched objects are treated in process(2),with the help of a series of interaction tools.On the basis of refined matching results after the interaction,process(3)is dedicated to automatic integration of the routing-relevant information from different data sources.

How does map use differ in virtual reality and desktop-based environments?

Maps based on virtual reality(VR)are evolving and are being increasingly used in the field of geography.However,the advantages of VR based on the map use processes of users over desktop-based environments(DEs)are not fully understood.In this study,an experiment was conducted in which 120 participants performed map use tasks using maps and globes in VR and DE.The participants’eye movements and questionnaires were collected to compare the map use performance differences.We analyzed the general metrics,information searching and processing metrics of participants(e.g.response time,RT;average fixation duration,AFD;average saccade duration,ASD;saccade frequency,SF,etc.)using maps and globes in different environments.We found that the participants using VR processed information more efficiently(AFDDE=233.34 ms,AFDVR=173.09 ms),and the participants using DE had both a significantly shorter response time(RT_(DE)=88.68 s,RT_(VR)=124.05 s)and a shorter visual search time(ASD_(DE)=60.78 ms,ASD_(VR)=112.13 ms;SF_(DE)=6.30,SF_(VR)=2.07).We also found similarities in accuracy,satisfaction and readability.These results are helpful for designing VR maps that can adapt to human cognition and reflect the advantages of VR.