Abstract
Analysis of environmental information is considered of utmost importance for humans, since environmental conditions are strongly related to health issues and to a variety of everyday activities. Despite the fact that there are already many free on-line services providing environmental information, there are several cases, in which the presentation format complicates the extraction and processing of such data. A very characteristic example is the air quality forecasts, which are usually encoded in image maps of heterogeneous formats, while the initial (numerical) pollutant concentrations, calculated and predicted by a relevant model, remain unavailable. This work addresses the task of semi-automatic extraction of such information based on a template configuration tool, on methodologies for data reconstruction from images, as well as on Optical Character Recognition (OCR) techniques. The framework is tested with a number of air quality forecast heatmaps demonstrating satisfactory results.
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Balk, T., Kukkonen, J., Karatzas, K., Bassoukos, A., Epitropou, V.: A European open access chemical weather forecasting portal. Atmospheric Environment 45, 6917–6922 (2011), doi:10.1016/j.atmosenv.2010.09.058
Karatzas, K.: Internet-based management of Environmental simulation tasks. In Farago, I., Georgiev, K., Havasi, A. (eds) Advances in Air Pollution Modelling for Environmental Security, Hardcover, NATO Reference EST.ARW980503, 406 p., pp. 253–262. Springer (2005) ISBN: 1-4020-3349-4
San José, R., Baklanov, A., Sokhi, R.S., Karatzas, K., Pérez, J.L.: Computational Air Quality Modelling. In: Jakeman, A.J., Voinov, A.A., Rizzoli, A.E., Chen, S.H. (eds.) Developments in Integrated Environmental Assessment. Environmental Modelling, Software and Decision Support, vol. 3 (2008) ISBN: 9780080568867
Epitropou, V., Karatzas, K., Bassoukos, A.: A method for the inverse reconstruction of environmental data applicable at the Chemical Weather portal. In: Geospatial Crossroads @GI_Forum 2010, Proceedings of the GeoInformatics Forum Salzburg, pp. 58–68. Wichmann Verlag, Berlin (2010) ISBN 978-3-87907-496-9
Karatzas, K., Kukkonen, J., Bassoukos, A., Epitropou, V., Balk, T.: A European Chemical Weather forecasting Portal. In: 31st ITM - NATO/SPS International Technical Meeting on Air Pollution Modelling and its Application, Torino, September 28 (2010); Published in Steyn, D.G., Trini Castelli, S. (eds.) Air Pollution Modeling and its Applications XXI, 1st edn., Hardcover. NATO Science for Peace and Security Series C: Environmental Security, pp. 239–243. Springer (2011) ISBN 978-94-007-1358-1
Epitropou, V., Karatzas, K.D., Bassoukos, A., Kukkonen, J., Balk, T.: A new environmental image processing method for chemical weather forecasts in Europe. In: Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Information Technologies in Environmental Engineering, Poznan, July 6-8 (2011)
Kukkonen, J., Klein, T., Karatzas, K., Torseth, K., Fahre Vik, A., San José, R., Balk, T., Sofiev, M.: COST ES0602: Towards a European network on chemical weather forecasting and information systems. Advances in Science and Research Journal 1, 1–7 (2009)
Epitropou, V., Karatzas, K., Kukkonen, J., Vira, J.: Evaluation of the accuracy of an inverse image-based reconstruction method for chemical weather data. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence 9/A12, 152–171 (2012)
Epitropou, V., Johansson, L., Karatzas, K., Bassoukos, A., Karppinen, A., Kukkonen, J., Haakana, M.: Fusion of Environmental Information for the Delivery of Orchestrated Services for the Atmospheric Environment in the PESCaDO Project. In: Seppelt, R., Voinov, A.A., Lange, S., Bankamp, D. (eds.) 2012 International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software, Managing Resources of a Limited Planet, Leipzig, Germany. International Environmental Modelling and Software Society (iEMSs) (in press, 2012)
Musavi, M.T., Shirvaikar, M.V., Ramanathan, E., Nekovei, A.R.: Map processing methods: an automated alternative. In: Proceedings of the Twentieth Southeastern Symposium on System Theory, pp. 300–303. IEEE Computer Society (1988)
Henderson, T.C., Linton, T.: Raster Map Image Analysis. In: Proceedings of the 2009 10th International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR 2009), pp. 376–380. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC (2009)
Cao, R., Tan, C.-L.: Text/Graphics Separation in Maps. In: Blostein, D., Kwon, Y.-B. (eds.) GREC 2001. LNCS, vol. 2390, pp. 167–177. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)
Wanner, L., Vrochidis, S., Tonelli, S., Moßgraber, J., Bosch, H., Karppinen, A., Myllynen, M., Rospocher, M., Bouayad-Agha, N., Bügel, U., Casamayor, G., Ertl, T., Kompatsiaris, I., Koskentalo, T., Mille, S., Moumtzidou, A., Pianta, E., Saggion, H., Serafini, L., Tarvainen, V.: Building an Environmental Information System for Personalized Content Delivery. In: Hřebíček, J., Schimak, G., Denzer, R. (eds.) ISESS 2011. IFIP AICT, vol. 359, pp. 169–176. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing
About this paper
Cite this paper
Vrochidis, S. et al. (2012). Extraction of Environmental Data from On-Line Environmental Information Sources. In: Iliadis, L., Maglogiannis, I., Papadopoulos, H., Karatzas, K., Sioutas, S. (eds) Artificial Intelligence Applications and Innovations. AIAI 2012. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol 382. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33412-2_37
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33412-2_37
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-33411-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-33412-2
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)