Fighting the Ignorance: Public Authorities’ and Land Users’ Responses to Land Subsidence in Indonesia

Land subsidence can have a considerable impact on the socio-economic viability of areas. In urban areas, land subsidence tends to damage buildings and infrastructures gradually, while in rural peat land it slowly destroys vegetation. The damages will worsen since climate change has further implications for the areas affected by land subsidence. In Indonesia, the response to land subsidence varies in different areas in terms of awareness, urgency and action on the part of both public authorities and land users. This paper systematically investigates these varied responses in urban and rural peat land areas. Interviews with experts and surveys of 330 land users in selected sub-districts were conducted and further supplemented by focus group discussions. We found that both the public authorities as well as the land users’ responses were considered as of limited value to contest land subsidence. We suggest that the endorsement of land users’ response into governmental policies would make a significant difference in improving land subsidence management.

Finding and sharing GIS methods based on the questions they answer

Geographic information has become central for data scientists of many disciplines to put their analyzes into a spatio-temporal perspective.However,just as the volume and variety of data sources on the Web grow,it becomes increasingly harder for analysts to be familiar with all the available geospatial tools,including toolboxes in Geographic Information Systems(GIS),R packages,and Python modules.Even though the semantics of the questions answered by these tools can be broadly shared,tools and data sources are still divided by syntax and platform-specific technicalities.It would,therefore,be hugely beneficial for information science if analysts could simply ask questions in generic and familiar terms to obtain the tools and data necessary to answer them.In this article,we systematically investigate the analytic questions that lie behind a range of common GIS tools,and we propose a semantic framework to match analytic questions and tools that are capable of answering them.To support the matching process,we define a tractable subset of SPARQL,the query language of the Semantic Web,and we propose and test an algorithm for computing query containment.We illustrate the identification of tools to answer user questions on a set of common user requests.

The effects of different travel modes and travel destinations on COVID-19 transmission in global cities

The international community has made significant efforts to flatten the COVID-19 curve,including predicting transmission[1,2],executing unprecedented global lockdowns and social distancing[3,4],promoting the wearing of facemasks and social distancing measures[5],and isolating confirmed cases and contacts[6].Because of the adverse consequences of these lockdown measures[7],many cities have reopened so they can rebuild their economies.However,as mobility has gradually returned towards normal,imported cases from unknown sources have disrupted the recovery situation,and cities are continually at high risk of new waves of infection[8,9]since airborne transmission is the dominant transmission route[10].

Evolutionary investment network and the emerging energy power in Central Asia:From the perspective of cross-border mergers and acquisitions

Central Asia is emerging as an important pole of global economic and political power,thanks to its unique location at the heart of Eurasia and its abundance in energy reserves.This study explores the social power change in Central Asia from the perspective of cross-border mergers and acquisitions(M&A)by using the social network method.The main results are as follows:(1)The complexity of the energy M&A network has significantly decreased after the financial crisis in 2008.In the meantime,energy M&A became an important way to enhance energy power for buyer countries.Betweenness centrality is becoming the most significant factor affecting energy power,yet the effect of out-degree is weakening.(2)The community underwent multifaceted restructuring,which reflected the shift of energy power in Central Asia.Kazakhstan is the most powerful country in the energy sector in Central Asia.In addition,East Asian countries/regions,represented by China,are actively enhancing their energy power.(3)Different M&A modes reflect various M&A motivations of countries in the energy sector.In the future,more efforts should be made to promote the establishment of a pragmatic and efficient multilateral energy cooperation mechanism and strength the cooperation of the economy and energy finance when China participates in the energy market in Central Asia.

Semantic typing of linked geoprocessing workflows

In Geographic Information Systems(GIS),geoprocessing workflows allow analysts to organize their methods on spatial data in complex chains.We propose a method for expressing workflows as linked data,and for semi-automatically enriching them with semantics on the level of their operations and datasets.Linked workflows can be easily published on the Web and queried for types of inputs,results,or tools.Thus,GIS analysts can reuse their workflows in a modular way,selecting,adapting,and recommending resources based on compatible semantic types.Our typing approach starts from minimal annotations of workflow operations with classes of GIS tools,and then propagates data types and implicit semantic structures through the workflow using an OWL typing scheme and SPARQL rules by backtracking over GIS operations.The method is implemented in Python and is evaluated on two real-world geoprocessing workflows,generated with Esri's ArcGIS.To illustrate the potential applications of our typing method,we formulate and execute competency questions over these workflows.

Geo-analytical question-answering with GIS

Question Answering(QA),the process of computing valid answers to questions formulated in natural language,has recently gained attention in both industry and academia.Translating this idea to the realm of geographic information systems(GIS)may open new opportunities for data scientists.In theory,analysts may simply ask spatial questions to exploit diverse geographic information resources,without a need to know how GIS tools and geodata sets interoperate.In this outlook article,we investigate the scientific challenges of geo-analytical question answering,introducing the problems of unknown answers and indirect QA.Furthermore,we argue why core concepts of spatial information play an important role in addressing this challenge,enabling us to describe analytic potentials,and to compose spatial questions and workflows for generating answers.