Geo Web

Digital social data are now practically ubiquitous, with increasingly large and interconnected databases leading researchers, politicians, and the private sector to focus on how such ‘big data’ can allow potentially unprecedented insights into our world. This paper investigates Twitter activity in the wake of Hurricane Sandy in order to demonstrate the complex relationship between the material world and its digital representations. Through documenting the various spatial patterns of Sandy-related tweeting both within the New York metropolitan region and across the United States, we make a series of broader conceptual and methodological interventions into the nascent geographic literature on big data. Rather than focus on how these massive databases are causing necessary and irreversible shifts in the ways that knowledge is produced, we instead find it more productive to ask how small subsets of big data, especially georeferenced social media information scraped from the internet, can reveal the geographies of a range of social processes and practices. Utilizing both qualitative and quantitative methods, we can uncover broad spatial patterns within this data, as well as understand how this data reflects the lived experiences of the people creating it. We also seek to fill a conceptual lacuna in studies of user-generated geographic information, which have often avoided any explicit theorizing of sociospatial relations, by employing Jessop et al’s TPSN framework. Through these interventions, we demonstrate that any analysis of user-generated geographic information must take into account the existence of more complex spatialities than the relatively simple spatial ontology implied by latitude and longitude coordinates.

"Cette thèse se veut une première approche du rôle des technologies de cartographie en ligne à l’ère du Web social (géoweb) dans le domaine de la planification urbaine participative. Son ambition est de proposer, par la prise en compte des dimensions humaines et sociales des technologies, un angle de lecture et un cadre d’analyse innovant pour appréhender une thématique souvent victime de lectures trop rapides.

Plus spécifiquement, l’objectif est d’appliquer une approche sociogéographique du géoweb à la problématique de l’aménagement urbain participatif avec la volonté de renouveler l’analyse de la participation publique en analysant le rôle de l’information géographique et des technologies en ligne (sites Web, réseaux sociaux, blogues, etc.). La question fondamentale posée est celle de l’utilisation du géoweb et d’Internet par les acteurs de la participation et de ses impacts sur les dynamiques participatives.

Basée sur une étude de cas monographique fine et détaillée mobilisant une panoplie variée de méthodes (analyse documentaire, entrevues, observations directes et participantes), la démarche méthodologique basée sur l’observation de pratiques concrètes, le dialogue et les interactions avec les acteurs de la participation vise à la fois à rassembler des éléments empiriques et à en proposer une interprétation.

Ce travail confronte ainsi des questionnements théoriques sur les nouveaux usages de l’iconographie territoriale numérique et du géoweb avec un corpus d’éléments empiriques issus du cas des procédures et des pratiques de participation publique de la ville de Québec. L’organisation de la thèse s’articule autour de 3 parties et 8 chapitres.

Les 3 premiers chapitres, qui correspondent à la partie d’exploration de la thèse, proposent une vue d'ensemble de l’univers d’étude tant dans sa dimension sociopolitique (débat public, iconographie territoriale, etc.) que technologique (cartographie en ligne, SIG participatifs, géoweb). Les trois chapitres suivants sont consacrés à l’exposé des observations réalisées dans l’étude de cas consacrée à la Ville de Québec (présentation du terrain d’étude, iconographie territoriale mise en œuvre, usage des technologies par les acteurs). Enfin, la dernière partie, consacrée à l’interprétation, propose en premier lieu une synthèse sur le géoweb comme levier de participation puis propose de nouvelles perspectives de recherche."

Asphalt pavements deteriorate with traffic (especially heavy trucks) and time. Maintenance and overlaying may solve minor to medium pavement distress problems. When the condition of a pavement becomes badly deteriorated, reconstruction of the pavement may become an economic and feasible solution. Reconstruction of a pavement requires removal of pavement surfaces. On-site use of recycled asphalt pavement materials has obvious benefits from economic, to environmental, to sustainability points of view. One attractive option is to use recycled asphalt pavement (RAP) materials as base courses with a thin new overlay. However, RAP has its limitations;  for example, it creeps under a sustained load due to the presence of asphalt binder. A
preliminary study conducted by the principal investigators has shown that the use of geocell to confine RAP minimizes creep of RAP under a sustained load. However, the performance of geocell-reinforced RAP as a base course overlaid by an asphalt surface is unknown. This research will utilize the geotechnical test box available at the University of Kansas to simulate the reconstruction of damaged asphalt pavements by geocell-reinforced RAP bases overlaid by a thin asphalt layer and evaluate their performance under cyclic loading. The main objectives of this research are to confirm the concept of using RAPs with geocells to reconstruct damaged pavements by heavy trucks and examine the benefit of geocells to the pavement life as compared with unreinforced base courses. In this research, at least four test sections will be constructed in the geotechnical test box including control sections and geocell-reinforced sections. The properties of RAP including asphalt binder content and viscosity, aggregate properties, compaction curve, and California Bearing Ratio (CBR) will be evaluated in the laboratory. The subgrade will be prepared using an artificial soil by mixing Kansas River sand with Kaolin and compacted at an intermediate strength (i.e., 5% CBR). The pavement sections will be tested under cyclic loading up to 25-mm rut depth.

Big data is increasingly seen as a way of providing a more 'scientific' approach to the understanding and management of cities. But most geographic analyses of geotagged social media data have failed to mobilize a sufficiently complex understanding of socio-spatial relations. By combining the conceptual approach of relational socio-spatial theory with the methods of critical GIScience, this paper explores the spatial imaginaries and processes of segregation and mobility at play in the notion of the '9th Street Divide' in Louisville, Kentucky. Through a more context-sensitive analysis of this data, this paper argues against this popular spatial imaginary and the notion that the Louisville's West End is somehow separate and apart from the rest of the city. By analyzing the everyday activity spaces of different groups of Louisvillians through geotagged Twitter data, we instead argue for an understanding of these neighborhoods as fluid, porous and actively produced, rather than as rigid, static or fixed. Ultimately, this paper is meant to provide a conceptual and methodological framework for the analysis of social media data that is more attentive to the multiplicity of socio-spatial relations embodied in such data.

As digital social data have become increasingly ubiquitous, many have turned their attention to harnessing these massive data sets in order to produce purportedly more accurate and complete understandings of social processes. This intervention addresses the relationships between geography and big data and their intertwined futures. We focus on the impacts of an age of big data on the discipline of geography and geographic thought and methodology, as well as how geography might provide a useful lens through which to understand big data as a social phenomenon in its own right. Ultimately, we see significant potential in big data, but remain skeptical of the prevalent discourses around it, as they tend to obscure, more than reveal,the complexity of social and spatial processes.

Geomedien haben im Zuge der aktuellen Konstitution des Internets und der Nutzung mobiler Endgeräte nahezu Omnipräsenz im Alltag erlangt. Sie binden das soziale Web enger in lebensweltliche Kontexte ein, indem sie Information und Bedeutung an sinnlichleiblich erfahrbare Orte knüpfen. Zusammen mit einer Pluralisierung von Deutungen durch die aktuelle Prosumentenkultur im Internet führt dies zu einer Transformation der Auffassungen von Räumlichkeit. Dies hat Konsequenzen sowohl für alltägliches räumliches Handeln als auch für raumbezogene Verstehensprozesse und damit für geographische Bildung. Die Autoren zeigen die Vielfalt der sozialen Implikationen des Zusammentreffens von geo@web auf und bieten erste Wege zur Orientierung in diesem neuen, komplexen Feld der Forschung und Praxis an.

La convergence des SIG avec les TIC (Internet, téléphonie mobile) et les systèmes de géolocalisation (GPS) se traduit aujourd'hui par l’émergence d’une nouvelle forme de cartographie reposant sur les techniques et les principes du web 2.0. Poussée par les technologies de l’information, la cartographie traditionnellement réservée aux professionnels prend aujourd’hui place au sein de nos pratiques quotidiennes. Au-delà d’un artefact marketing, cette « cartographie 2.0 » qui permet au grand public de lire et d’écrire les cartes pose de nombreuses questions sur la (potentielle) place des amateurs dans des cadres professionnels (mise à jour des bases de données, collecte sur le terrain, production collaborative de référentiels, etc.). Cet article porte sur l’acquisition de connaissance géographique grâce à des populations non-spécialistes. Plus spécifiquement, il explore les potentialités de la cartographie du Web 2.0 pour les sciences citoyennes, terme utilisé pour décrire l'engagement des citoyens dans le processus de collecte de données scientifiques.

This study was designed primarily to determine the effect Periwinkle Plant on spatial learning among rats.
In the experiment, this study intend to know the effect of tea made Periwinkle Plant on the spatial learning on escape latency of 3-4 month-old rats measured on the water maze.
Total of six (6) albino rats (Rattus norvegicus), purchased from a local pet shop were the subjects of this study. In addition, they were randomly assigned into two (2) treatment levels- a1 as the experimental group and a2 as the control group, having three (3) subjects per group.
The result showed that across the three (3) period of test, Test 1 revealed that experimental group (rats that administered with periwinkle plant) seemed to have the highest latencies (mean=16.94), and the control group (rats without treatments) seemed to have lowest latencies (mean=39.14). Test 2, the experimental group spent highest again (mean=15.65), while the control group spent the lowest (mean=45.45). Furthermore, results from test 3 showed that subjects under experimental group were the fastest swimmer (mean=12.08), while subjects under the control group was the slowest swimmers (mean=29.35).
    Overall, the experimental group has the highest latencies across the three tests (mean=44.67) and the control group (mean=113.94) has the lowest latencies across the three tests.
    Using SPF-2.3 design, the ANOVA showed that there is highly significant between escape latencies of two treatment levels (A) [(SPF-2.3)= 264.83>21.20 at 0.01 level] in three tests. It implies that the Periwinkle plant tea can affect the spatial learning of rats in escape latencies. The rats with treatment of periwinkle plant tea are faster in running time across the three running sessions in the water maze task than rats without treatment.

Over the past decade, rapid advances in web technologies, coupled with innovative models of spatial data collection and consumption, have generated a robust growth in geo-referenced information, resulting in spatial information overload. Increasing ‘geographic intelligence’ in traditional text-based information retrieval has become a prominent approach to respond to this issue and to fulfill users’ spatial information needs. Numerous efforts in the Semantic Geospatial Web, Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI), and the Linking Open Data initiative have converged in a constellation of open knowledge bases, freely available online. In this article, we survey these open knowledge bases, focusing on their geospatial dimension. Particular attention is devoted to the crucial issue of the quality of geoknowledge bases, as well as of crowdsourced data. A new knowledge base, the OpenStreetMap Semantic Network, is outlined as our contribution to this area. Research directions in information integration and Geographic Information Retrieval (GIR) are then reviewed, with a critical discussion of their current limitations and future prospects.

This article combines geographical studies of both the Internet and religion in an analysis of where and how a variety of religious practices are represented in geotagged web content. Thismethod provides needed insight on the geography of virtual expressions of religion andhighlights the mutually constitutive, and at times contradictory, relationship between the virtualand material dimensions of religious expression. By using the spatialities of religious practiceand contestation as an example, this paper argues that mappings of virtual representations of material practices are important tools for understanding how online activities simultaneouslyrepresent and reproduce the material world.

It is currently possible to have free access to abundant online geographical information using very good solutions. From global projects with widespread impact as Google Maps or Bing to other more technical and specialized as ArcGis.com and OpenStreetMap, users feel at ease when it comes to know and update remote places in the world.This commendable effort of the technological global Commonwealth raises however some disturbing questions: who owns the rights to these maps generated by so many people in key locations? . And other questions as well.

Reviews of tourism amenities posted online by tourists represent an emerging source of data to support tourism research. To obtain this user-generated content (UGC), either a time-consuming manual transcription or the use of automated web harvesting – a controversial practice – is required. This paper describes the use of automated web harvesting to extract review data on the Canadian province of Nova Scotia from a major travel review website. We present a summary of the reviews by type, spatial distribution, and star rating. We then discuss the benefits of and challenges to the collection and use of UGC. We conclude with four potential approaches for tourism researchers interested in obtaining access to UGC.

In-vehicle contextual augmented reality (I-CAR) has the poten- tial to provide novel visual feedback to drivers for an enhanced driving experience. To enable I-CAR, we present a parametrized road trench model (RTM) for dynamically extracting display sur- faces from a driver’s point of view that is adaptable to constantly changing road curvature and intersections. We use computer vi- sion algorithms to analyze and extract road features that are used to estimate the parameters of the RTM. GPS coordinates are used to quickly compute lighting parameters for shading and shadows. Novel driver-based applications that use the RTM are presented.

In this paper, we examine the state of the art in augmented reality (AR) for mobile learning. Previous work in the field of mobile learning has included AR as a component of a wider toolkit for mobile learning but, to date, little has been done that discusses the phenomenon in detail or that examines its potential for learning, in a balanced fashion that identifies both positive and negative aspects of AR. We seek to provide a working definition of AR and examine how it is embedded within situated learning in outdoor settings. We also attempt to classify AR according to several key aspects (device/technology; mode of interaction; type of media involved; personal or shared experiences; if the experience is portable or static; and the learning activities/outcomes). We discuss the technical and pedagogical challenges presented by AR before looking at ways in which AR can be used for learning. Lastly, the paper looks ahead to what AR technologies may be on the horizon in the near future.