The final report has been archived in the University of Tartu DSpace repository and can be referenced/cited/linked via: http://hdl.handle.net/10062/66924
Friday, 30 November 2018
NASA International Space Apps Challenge 2018 Hackathon organized in Tartu
Monday, 24 September 2018
Some really nice geospatial podcasts to enlighten your day
Geodorable: https://geodorable.com/
- If you like maps and location then you might find listening to a couple of middle-aged guys from the land of the long white cloud (New Zealand) chat irreverently about geospatial stuff just the ticket!
Isn't That Spatial: http://isntthatspatial.net/
GeoGedöns (in German): http://geogedoens.de/
Radio OSM (in German): http://podcast.openstreetmap.de/
- "Isn't That Spatial" is the podcast bringing everyday geography and urbanism into your earspace.
The Mappyist Hour: http://themappyisthour.com/
- Geographer and Geo types talking about how incredible their profession is "after hours"
The Scene From Above Podcast: https://www.geoger.co.uk/podcast
- The #scenefromabove podcast aims to present an informal podcast looking at the world of modern remote sensing and Earth observation, fuelled by their passion for all things raster and geospatial: a mix of news, opinion, discussion and interviews.
- Ein Podcast von zwei enthusiastischen Satellitennavigationsbegeisterten, die gerne Technik testen und Spiele spielen, die sich am Handy bzw Smartphone abspielen und für die meist eine Lokalisation via Satelliten nötig ist.
Radio OSM (in German): http://podcast.openstreetmap.de/
- Berichte und Neuigkeiten rund um OpenStreetMap, die freie Wiki-Weltkarte
Everyday Geo: http://soundcloud.com/everydaygeo
- JBGeoPro - Joe Bob Penor (United States), Soundcloud Podcast
- Discussions on Geography and geospatial technologies. The VerySpatial blog is intended to be a location for the hosts and participants of A VerySpatial Podcast to link to interesting sites and articles on Geography and related information.
Tuesday, 11 September 2018
2018 Visit Tartu Observatory
In the beginning of September 2018, Evelyn and myself went to visit the Tartu Observatory, located in Töravere, about 20 minutes car drive South-east of Tartu. We had the pleasure to meet with the director of the observatory, Dr Anu Reinart. We used to the meeting to introduce our intention to host a NASA Space Apps Challenge hackathon, jointly with Tartu Observatory, which is in fact the Estonian Space Agency. The idea was greatly welcomed and organising the event proceeded.
Dr Anu Reinart gave us the honour of a short guided introduction to the buildings, departments and exhibition areas of the observatory. It was very interesting to learn about the 3 main pillars of work and research at the facility:
First and foremost, space exploration, astronomy, analysing space imagery from telescopes on Earth and in orbit. Secondly, Earth Observation and Remote Sensing. This is a field of joint interest and increasing collaboration between Tartu Observatory and the Department of Geography. And finally, a smaller fraction also works on innovation and satellite technology.
Tartu Observatory website: https://www.to.ee/
 |
| Tartu Observatory main building. It was renovated and houses the staff and research offices. |
 |
| Various impressions from inside the main building. Baltic Sat Apps is a innovation / incubator program, supported by ESA, on uptake of Sentinal / Copernicus data. |
 |
| Various impressions from inside the main building. History of satellite missions the observatory has participated in. |
 |
| Various impressions from inside the main building. The main satellite payload that was launched where Estonia's first own little satellite - the EstCUBE cubesat - was also lifted into space. |
 |
| Various impressions from inside the main building. Educational and research information on space. |
 |
| Various impressions from inside the main building. A nice open area, after the renovation of the building, the hallways have been redesigned in order to create more open spaces. |
Tuesday, 14 August 2018
Friday, 20 July 2018
Considerations for Data Management Plans in Research
It's grant writing time again. Actually, it's somehow always grant writing time. But even if you are currently a team member in a publicly funded research programme, you might want to consider your data management.
A recent editorial of the Nature journal had it as prime topic: "Everyone needs a data-management plan". They sound dull, but data-management plans are essential. Funders must explain why, and the ones who want to get funded, need to explain how:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03065-z
Keeping your research data freely available is crucial for open science — and your funding could depend on it. A related companion article describes simple steps, "Data management made simple":
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03071-1
Robert-Jan Smits, the EU's outgoing director-general for research, science and innovation, recently been appointed the EU's special envoy on open access, tasked with helping make all publicly funded research in Europe freely available by 2020, says that this should consequently also include the data.
https://horizon-magazine.eu/article/open-access-scientific-publications-must-become-reality-2020-robert-jan-smits_en.html
Imagine if all the billions we are now putting into these expensive subscription journals could be put into research. There are already a good variety of open access repositories like Zenodo, OpenAire etc.
How to make research data publicly available and how to plan for and address it in your Data Management Plan:
EU FAIR DATA PRINCIPLES
https://eudat.eu/events/webinar/joint-eudat-openaire-webinar-%E2%80%9Chow-to-write-a-data-management-plan%E2%80%9D
1. Making data findable
Several datasets may be included. This should consider the dataset reference and name; origin and expected size of the data generated/collected; data types and formats, metadata, persistent and unique identifiers e.g., DOI
- catalogues, data citing etc
2. Making data openly accessible
This should consider which data will be made openly available and if some datasets remain closed, the reasons for not giving access; where the data and associated metadata, documentation and code are deposited (repository?); how the data can be accessed (are relevant software tools/methods provided?)
- https://www.re3data.org/
- https://www.openaire.eu/opendatapilot-repository
The Registry of Research Data Repositories provides a useful listing of repositories that you can search to find a place of deposit.
3. Making data interoperable
The Research Data Alliance provides a Metadata Standards Directory that can be searched for disciplinespecific
standards and associated tools.
- http://rd-alliance.github.io/metadata-directory/standards/
Which standard or field-specific data and metadata vocabularies and methods will be used
4. Increase data reuse
Consider what data will remain re-usable and for how long, is embargo foreseen; how the data is licensed; data quality assurance procedures
- http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/how-guides/five-steps-decide-what-data-keep
More aspects:
- Allocation of resources and data security
- Note that costs related to open access to research data are eligible as part of the Horizon 2020 grant (if compliant with the Grant Agreement conditions).
Consider the estimated costs for making the project data open access and potential value of long-term data preservation; procedures for data backup and recovery; transfer of sensitive data and secure storage in repositories for long term preservation and curation
DMPOnline is an online tool that can help you building your Data Management Plan. DMPonline is based on the open source DMPRoadmap codebase, which is jointly developed by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) and the University of California Curation Center (UC3). The DCC & UC3 work closely with research funders and universities to produce a tool that generates active DMPs and caters for the whole lifecycle of a project, from bid-preparation stage through to completion.
https://dmponline.dcc.ac.uk
A recent editorial of the Nature journal had it as prime topic: "Everyone needs a data-management plan". They sound dull, but data-management plans are essential. Funders must explain why, and the ones who want to get funded, need to explain how:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03065-z
Keeping your research data freely available is crucial for open science — and your funding could depend on it. A related companion article describes simple steps, "Data management made simple":
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03071-1
Robert-Jan Smits, the EU's outgoing director-general for research, science and innovation, recently been appointed the EU's special envoy on open access, tasked with helping make all publicly funded research in Europe freely available by 2020, says that this should consequently also include the data.
https://horizon-magazine.eu/article/open-access-scientific-publications-must-become-reality-2020-robert-jan-smits_en.html
Imagine if all the billions we are now putting into these expensive subscription journals could be put into research. There are already a good variety of open access repositories like Zenodo, OpenAire etc.
How to make research data publicly available and how to plan for and address it in your Data Management Plan:
EU FAIR DATA PRINCIPLES
https://eudat.eu/events/webinar/joint-eudat-openaire-webinar-%E2%80%9Chow-to-write-a-data-management-plan%E2%80%9D
1. Making data findable
Several datasets may be included. This should consider the dataset reference and name; origin and expected size of the data generated/collected; data types and formats, metadata, persistent and unique identifiers e.g., DOI
- catalogues, data citing etc
2. Making data openly accessible
This should consider which data will be made openly available and if some datasets remain closed, the reasons for not giving access; where the data and associated metadata, documentation and code are deposited (repository?); how the data can be accessed (are relevant software tools/methods provided?)
- https://www.re3data.org/
- https://www.openaire.eu/opendatapilot-repository
The Registry of Research Data Repositories provides a useful listing of repositories that you can search to find a place of deposit.
3. Making data interoperable
The Research Data Alliance provides a Metadata Standards Directory that can be searched for disciplinespecific
standards and associated tools.
- http://rd-alliance.github.io/metadata-directory/standards/
Which standard or field-specific data and metadata vocabularies and methods will be used
4. Increase data reuse
Consider what data will remain re-usable and for how long, is embargo foreseen; how the data is licensed; data quality assurance procedures
- http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/how-guides/five-steps-decide-what-data-keep
More aspects:
- Allocation of resources and data security
- Note that costs related to open access to research data are eligible as part of the Horizon 2020 grant (if compliant with the Grant Agreement conditions).
Ethical aspects
Consider whether there are any ethical or legal issues than can have an impact on data sharing. For
example, is informed consent for data sharing and long term preservation included in questionnaires
dealing with personal data?
Last but not least, don't forget to refer to other national/funder/sectorial/departmental procedures for data management that you are using / supposed to be using (if any)
DMPOnline is an online tool that can help you building your Data Management Plan. DMPonline is based on the open source DMPRoadmap codebase, which is jointly developed by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) and the University of California Curation Center (UC3). The DCC & UC3 work closely with research funders and universities to produce a tool that generates active DMPs and caters for the whole lifecycle of a project, from bid-preparation stage through to completion.
https://dmponline.dcc.ac.uk
Wednesday, 16 May 2018
Friday, 20 April 2018
Wednesday, 18 April 2018
Making environmental research articles discoverable with OGC catalogue service
I am very happy to announce that our new article "Enhancing Location-related Hydrogeological Knowledge" has been published in the ISPRS International Jounral of Geo-information.
Kmoch, A.; Uuemaa, E.; Klug, H.; Cameron, S.G. (2018) Enhancing Location-Related Hydrogeological Knowledge. ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf. , 7, 132, http://www.mdpi.com/2220-9964/7/4/132
In a joint study by the University of Tartu (Estonia), the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences (New Zealand) and the University of Salzburg (Austria) more than 5,800 scientific articles from three environmental research journals were digitised and analysed. In addition, a geographical search method was developed to identify the location of a studied area.
We use Georeferencing of scientific journal articles and text-mining in order to provide spatial search capabilities for environmental research. Journal articles are made discoverable through spatial queries. We propose that journal publishers should provide these capabilities on their platforms. This would allow everyone to search for journal articles for their desired regions of interest and it would really well complement existing search functionalities with keywords etc.
The press release from Tartu University explains really nicely how our results enable geographic search for scientific papers through text mining and geocoding; and how to better find environmental research articles via location.
http://researchinestonia.eu/2018/04/17/enabling-geographic-search-for-scientific-papers-through-text-mining-and-geocoding-how-to-better-find-environmental-research-articles-via-location/
Estonian version of the press release: https://novaator.err.ee/821096/kuidas-otsida-teadustoid-geograafilise-piirkonna-jargi
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Place-Based Research in GIScience and Geoinformatics)
MDPI OpenAccess: http://www.mdpi.com/2220-9964/7/4/132
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323990934_Enhancing_Location-Related_Hydrogeological_Knowledge
Kmoch, A.; Uuemaa, E.; Klug, H.; Cameron, S.G. (2018) Enhancing Location-Related Hydrogeological Knowledge. ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf. , 7, 132, http://www.mdpi.com/2220-9964/7/4/132
In a joint study by the University of Tartu (Estonia), the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences (New Zealand) and the University of Salzburg (Austria) more than 5,800 scientific articles from three environmental research journals were digitised and analysed. In addition, a geographical search method was developed to identify the location of a studied area.
We use Georeferencing of scientific journal articles and text-mining in order to provide spatial search capabilities for environmental research. Journal articles are made discoverable through spatial queries. We propose that journal publishers should provide these capabilities on their platforms. This would allow everyone to search for journal articles for their desired regions of interest and it would really well complement existing search functionalities with keywords etc.
The press release from Tartu University explains really nicely how our results enable geographic search for scientific papers through text mining and geocoding; and how to better find environmental research articles via location.
http://researchinestonia.eu/2018/04/17/enabling-geographic-search-for-scientific-papers-through-text-mining-and-geocoding-how-to-better-find-environmental-research-articles-via-location/
Estonian version of the press release: https://novaator.err.ee/821096/kuidas-otsida-teadustoid-geograafilise-piirkonna-jargi
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Place-Based Research in GIScience and Geoinformatics)
MDPI OpenAccess: http://www.mdpi.com/2220-9964/7/4/132
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323990934_Enhancing_Location-Related_Hydrogeological_Knowledge
Monday, 26 March 2018
Interoperable exchange of groundwater data with OGC GroundWaterML2
WaterML2 has become a well-known synonym for internationally standardised hydrological data exchange, in particular for government agencies and research institutes across North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Technically, WaterML2 is becoming a suite of standards actively promoted and endorsed by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), more details: http://www.whycos.org/wordpress/?page_id=929)
- WaterML 2.0: Part 1 - Time series of Observations
- WaterML 2.0: Part 2 - Ratings, Gaugings and Sections
- WaterML 2.0: Part 3 - Surface Hydrology Features (aka HY_Features)
- WaterML 2.0: Part 4 - aka GroundWaterML 2 (GWML2) Data Exchange for Groundwater Features (including wells, springs, borelogs and well constructions)
Now there is a scientific publication that explains the GWML2 standard, its development and application in hydrogeology in detail:
"GWML2 is an international standard for the online exchange of groundwater data that addresses the problem of data heterogeneity. This problem makes groundwater data hard to find and use because the data are diversely structured and fragmented into numerous data silos. Overcoming data heterogeneity requires a common data format; however, until the development of GWML2, an appropriate international standard has been lacking. GWML2 represents key hydrogeological entities such as aquifers and water wells, as well as related measurements and groundwater flows. It is developed and tested by an international consortium of groundwater data providers from North America, Europe, and Australasia, and facilitates many forms of data exchange, information representation, and the development of online web portals and tools."
Brodaric, B., Boisvert, E., Chery, L. et al. (2018) Enabling global exchange of groundwater data: GroundWaterML2 (GWML2). Hydrogeology Journal. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10040-018-1747-9
Related links and information:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10040-018-1747-9
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323914313_Enabling_global_exchange_of_groundwater_data_GroundWaterML2_GWML2
WaterML2 Part 4: GroundWaterML2 (GWML2) http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/gwml2
Groundwater SWG http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/groundwaterswg
OGC GroundWaterML 2 – GW2IE FINAL REPORT https://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=64688
- WaterML 2.0: Part 1 - Time series of Observations
- WaterML 2.0: Part 2 - Ratings, Gaugings and Sections
- WaterML 2.0: Part 3 - Surface Hydrology Features (aka HY_Features)
- WaterML 2.0: Part 4 - aka GroundWaterML 2 (GWML2) Data Exchange for Groundwater Features (including wells, springs, borelogs and well constructions)
Now there is a scientific publication that explains the GWML2 standard, its development and application in hydrogeology in detail:
"GWML2 is an international standard for the online exchange of groundwater data that addresses the problem of data heterogeneity. This problem makes groundwater data hard to find and use because the data are diversely structured and fragmented into numerous data silos. Overcoming data heterogeneity requires a common data format; however, until the development of GWML2, an appropriate international standard has been lacking. GWML2 represents key hydrogeological entities such as aquifers and water wells, as well as related measurements and groundwater flows. It is developed and tested by an international consortium of groundwater data providers from North America, Europe, and Australasia, and facilitates many forms of data exchange, information representation, and the development of online web portals and tools."
Brodaric, B., Boisvert, E., Chery, L. et al. (2018) Enabling global exchange of groundwater data: GroundWaterML2 (GWML2). Hydrogeology Journal. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10040-018-1747-9
Related links and information:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10040-018-1747-9
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323914313_Enabling_global_exchange_of_groundwater_data_GroundWaterML2_GWML2
WaterML2 Part 4: GroundWaterML2 (GWML2) http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/gwml2
Groundwater SWG http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/groundwaterswg
OGC GroundWaterML 2 – GW2IE FINAL REPORT https://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=64688
Wednesday, 28 February 2018
Publishing Datasets on Zenodo and Citing them with Mendeley
Open access dataset citing is becoming more important. Funders do not only increasingly demand open access publishing of funded research articles, but also the underlying datasets. This is good practice as it also supports reproducability of studies and thus supports credibility of research results reported in articles.
Zenodo is a very popular repository for this type of making datasets available. As a matter of fact, you can publish all sorts of "data" and "supplemental materials" on Zenodo and back them with a forever persistent unique digital object identifier: a DOI, that thing that you also have for all your articles that a published in respectable journals. The very thing that is the reference when Reuters is counting your citations :-) So, you basically just create an account, upload your datasets, reserve a DOI and fill out the metadata, like title etc.
Furthermore, Zenodo allows you for example to link your GitHub repositories, your ORCID
But you also want that the citation looks good in your manuscript, or at least in the references sections. I had a few tries and read a few articles on the web about citing datasets with Mendeley in particular, but I didn't really get to the point where I could reproduce something like following reference:
Kmoch, A. & Uuemaa, E. Geo-referencing of journal articles and platform design for spatial query capabilities. Dataset on Zenodo (2018). doi:10.5281/zenodo.1153887
Several articles suggested to create a Bibtex entry with the "misc" type (instead of "journal" as seen below), because you want to indicate that it is actually a dataset and not an article (or book section). Similar issues happen when you want to cite a software program that is not described by a scientific article which in turn is what you would cite in your work.
Thus, in Mendeley, the free online citation manager, for Linux, Windows and Mac, with Bibtex, Endnote and RIS Import/Export support, I ended up creating a journal article entry, where the journal name is "Dataset on Zenodo". And most citation styles, such as MDPI IJGI, or Nature if you like, will nicely list your data this way (see above) in your references section :-)
For example, in our recent article "Enhancing Location-Related Hydrogeological Knowledge" on MDPI IJGI (http://www.mdpi.com/2220-9964/7/4/132) we added the Zenodo repository as supplementary material (https://zenodo.org/record/1153887), and it is nicely visible directly on the journal article's landing page.
"""
@article{Kmoch2018,
abstract = {We analyzed the corpus of three geoscientific journals to investigate if there are enough locational references in research articles to apply a geographical search method, on the example of New Zealand. We counted place name occurrences that match records from the official Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) gazetteer in the titles, abstracts and full texts of freely available papers of the New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics, the New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research, and the Journal of Hydrology, New Zealand, for the years 1958 to 2015. We generated ISO standard compliant metadata records for each article including the spatial references and make them available in a public catalogue service.},
address = {Tartu},
author = {Kmoch, Alexander and Uuemaa, Evelyn},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.1153887},
journal = {Dataset on Zenodo},
mendeley-groups = {my datasets},
publisher = {Dataset on Zenodo},
title = {{Geo-referencing of journal articles and platform design for spatial query capabilities}},
url = {https://zenodo.org/record/1153887},
year = {2018}
}
"""
Zenodo is a very popular repository for this type of making datasets available. As a matter of fact, you can publish all sorts of "data" and "supplemental materials" on Zenodo and back them with a forever persistent unique digital object identifier: a DOI, that thing that you also have for all your articles that a published in respectable journals. The very thing that is the reference when Reuters is counting your citations :-) So, you basically just create an account, upload your datasets, reserve a DOI and fill out the metadata, like title etc.
Furthermore, Zenodo allows you for example to link your GitHub repositories, your ORCID
But you also want that the citation looks good in your manuscript, or at least in the references sections. I had a few tries and read a few articles on the web about citing datasets with Mendeley in particular, but I didn't really get to the point where I could reproduce something like following reference:
Kmoch, A. & Uuemaa, E. Geo-referencing of journal articles and platform design for spatial query capabilities. Dataset on Zenodo (2018). doi:10.5281/zenodo.1153887
Several articles suggested to create a Bibtex entry with the "misc" type (instead of "journal" as seen below), because you want to indicate that it is actually a dataset and not an article (or book section). Similar issues happen when you want to cite a software program that is not described by a scientific article which in turn is what you would cite in your work.
Thus, in Mendeley, the free online citation manager, for Linux, Windows and Mac, with Bibtex, Endnote and RIS Import/Export support, I ended up creating a journal article entry, where the journal name is "Dataset on Zenodo". And most citation styles, such as MDPI IJGI, or Nature if you like, will nicely list your data this way (see above) in your references section :-)
For example, in our recent article "Enhancing Location-Related Hydrogeological Knowledge" on MDPI IJGI (http://www.mdpi.com/2220-9964/7/4/132) we added the Zenodo repository as supplementary material (https://zenodo.org/record/1153887), and it is nicely visible directly on the journal article's landing page.
"""
@article{Kmoch2018,
abstract = {We analyzed the corpus of three geoscientific journals to investigate if there are enough locational references in research articles to apply a geographical search method, on the example of New Zealand. We counted place name occurrences that match records from the official Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) gazetteer in the titles, abstracts and full texts of freely available papers of the New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics, the New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research, and the Journal of Hydrology, New Zealand, for the years 1958 to 2015. We generated ISO standard compliant metadata records for each article including the spatial references and make them available in a public catalogue service.},
address = {Tartu},
author = {Kmoch, Alexander and Uuemaa, Evelyn},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.1153887},
journal = {Dataset on Zenodo},
mendeley-groups = {my datasets},
publisher = {Dataset on Zenodo},
title = {{Geo-referencing of journal articles and platform design for spatial query capabilities}},
url = {https://zenodo.org/record/1153887},
year = {2018}
}
"""
Wednesday, 7 February 2018
Info Session for MSc programme in Geoinformatics for Urbanised Society
Today we broadcast a webinar info session about the new MSc programme in Geoinformatics for Urbanised Society at the University of Tartu.
One of the recurring core topics in this new MSc curriculum is Data and GIS use in Urban Planning.
Until just a decade ago spatial planning and analytics projects had problems with getting enough data. But nowadays there is so much data available, that it is increasingly hard to make sense of it – because of the 3 V’s of big data - volume, variety, velocity. The open data movement, government agencies, research institutes and citizen scientists alike make more and more data available publicly, mobile phones, sensor networks and satellites generate a multitude of datasets every day
In order solve the Interdisciplinary challenges of urban planning we want to empower you with skills and knowledge to analyse, visualise and understand processes and data. For that we teach the Full cycle of spatial data management, from the various methods of data acquisition, followed by efficient and practical processing techniques, to subsequent meaningful analysis and visualisation; in order to consequently make successful planning decisions for a sustainable future.
So what does it mean to study Geoinformatics for Urbanised Society with us in Tartu?
You will learn how to combine geography and IT in the age of BIG data. This is essentially what we believe modern Geoinformatics is representing. Mastering Geoinformatics will provide you with tools to analyse social and natural processes in space for interdisciplinary decision- and policy-making.
Watch the whole recorded session for more info:
Links:
One of the recurring core topics in this new MSc curriculum is Data and GIS use in Urban Planning.
Until just a decade ago spatial planning and analytics projects had problems with getting enough data. But nowadays there is so much data available, that it is increasingly hard to make sense of it – because of the 3 V’s of big data - volume, variety, velocity. The open data movement, government agencies, research institutes and citizen scientists alike make more and more data available publicly, mobile phones, sensor networks and satellites generate a multitude of datasets every day
In order solve the Interdisciplinary challenges of urban planning we want to empower you with skills and knowledge to analyse, visualise and understand processes and data. For that we teach the Full cycle of spatial data management, from the various methods of data acquisition, followed by efficient and practical processing techniques, to subsequent meaningful analysis and visualisation; in order to consequently make successful planning decisions for a sustainable future.
You will learn how to combine geography and IT in the age of BIG data. This is essentially what we believe modern Geoinformatics is representing. Mastering Geoinformatics will provide you with tools to analyse social and natural processes in space for interdisciplinary decision- and policy-making.
Links:
Wednesday, 31 January 2018
A call to science and technology to work on standards for environmental data sharing
Which recent Geoscience related journal article has most influenced your work?
For me it was Laniak et al. (2013) "Integrated Environmental Modeling: A Vision and Roadmap for the Future". With a BSc in Computer Science I had worked in the IT industry before I started in academia. When I read Laniak et al. (2013) my Geography Master’s I knew that that was exactly how I would want to apply my computational background. Laniak et al. presented a vison for the future of integrated environmental modelling. They called to science and technology to work on standards for data sharing, and envisioned web-based platforms for transdisciplinary community interactions. I knew that science is not only about observations and theory. But it was then when I deeply understood how the capabilities of modern computers support research, make it reproducible and, thus, can accelerate research. The potential of linking people and knowledge from different disciplines in order to jointly understand natural processes and to make decisions together overwhelmed me. This landmark paper has since influenced me throughout my PhD and beyond.
Reference:
Laniak, Gerard F, Gabriel Olchin, Jonathan Goodall, Alexey Voinov, Mary Hill, Pierre Glynn, Gene Whelan, et al. 2013. “Integrated Environmental Modeling: A Vision and Roadmap for the Future.” Environmental Modelling & Software 39 (0):3–23. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2012.09.006
For me it was Laniak et al. (2013) "Integrated Environmental Modeling: A Vision and Roadmap for the Future". With a BSc in Computer Science I had worked in the IT industry before I started in academia. When I read Laniak et al. (2013) my Geography Master’s I knew that that was exactly how I would want to apply my computational background. Laniak et al. presented a vison for the future of integrated environmental modelling. They called to science and technology to work on standards for data sharing, and envisioned web-based platforms for transdisciplinary community interactions. I knew that science is not only about observations and theory. But it was then when I deeply understood how the capabilities of modern computers support research, make it reproducible and, thus, can accelerate research. The potential of linking people and knowledge from different disciplines in order to jointly understand natural processes and to make decisions together overwhelmed me. This landmark paper has since influenced me throughout my PhD and beyond.
Reference:
Laniak, Gerard F, Gabriel Olchin, Jonathan Goodall, Alexey Voinov, Mary Hill, Pierre Glynn, Gene Whelan, et al. 2013. “Integrated Environmental Modeling: A Vision and Roadmap for the Future.” Environmental Modelling & Software 39 (0):3–23. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2012.09.006
Monday, 15 January 2018
Staying informed with Literature Review on the smartphone
As a scientist / researcher you have to stay informed about the latest research findings in your field. Typically, this means that you should follow the publications of the most important journals in your research domain. I found that many researchers (including myself so far) only conduct proper literature reviews when they work on a specific problem, when writing articles and grant applications. Often they wouldn't find the time to go to all the journal websites and scroll through the article lists etc.
I recently discovered the Feedly RSS reader. RSS is long-known internet feed syndication protocol that is used to subscribe to updates on websites and blogs. I found that many, if not all journals, more or less provide RSS feeds for their latest articles, often with an abstract provided. Feedly is a website application that helps you to organise RSS feeds and read them online. There is also an Android and an iPhone app. With these you can then read and manage your feeds on the phone. Now I quickly scroll through the latest articles every day via my mobile phone. This way it is just like scrolling through Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, but for journals. And the very few articles that you find relevant or that are of interest for you, you can save them in your Feedly backlog in order to read them later when you are in your office and take reading time :-)
Update: Inoreader is another very similar application to read your RRS feeds, and there are also the respective smartphone apps available.
One advantage of Feedly is that you can export and import lists of your RSS feed sources with so called OPML files. OPML is available in many RSS reader web sites and applications, so you can both import and export OPML files of RSS subscriptions.
I prepared an OPML Export file for you, a standard list format for your feed URLs, so you don't have to aggregate all the RSS URLs again. Happy reading and feel confident that you are not missing out on latest papers in your field.
Link to my export.opml file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/li0yjvwyt8cezsc/export.opml?dl=0
It includes links and feeds to the following resources:
I recently discovered the Feedly RSS reader. RSS is long-known internet feed syndication protocol that is used to subscribe to updates on websites and blogs. I found that many, if not all journals, more or less provide RSS feeds for their latest articles, often with an abstract provided. Feedly is a website application that helps you to organise RSS feeds and read them online. There is also an Android and an iPhone app. With these you can then read and manage your feeds on the phone. Now I quickly scroll through the latest articles every day via my mobile phone. This way it is just like scrolling through Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, but for journals. And the very few articles that you find relevant or that are of interest for you, you can save them in your Feedly backlog in order to read them later when you are in your office and take reading time :-)
Update: Inoreader is another very similar application to read your RRS feeds, and there are also the respective smartphone apps available.
One advantage of Feedly is that you can export and import lists of your RSS feed sources with so called OPML files. OPML is available in many RSS reader web sites and applications, so you can both import and export OPML files of RSS subscriptions.
I prepared an OPML Export file for you, a standard list format for your feed URLs, so you don't have to aggregate all the RSS URLs again. Happy reading and feel confident that you are not missing out on latest papers in your field.
Link to my export.opml file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/li0yjvwyt8cezsc/export.opml?dl=0
It includes links and feeds to the following resources:
- Information systems and information technology : nature.com subject feeds - rss url and webpage url
- Google Cloud Big Data and Machine Learning Blog - Google Cloud Big Data and Machine Learning Blog - rss url
- Research Participant Portal - Funding Opportunities - Recently published Calls - rss url - webpage url
- Geography : nature.com subject feeds
- rss url = https://www.nature.com/subjects/geography.rss
- webpage url = http://www.nature.com/subjects/geography
- MDPI Water
- rss url = http://www.mdpi.com/rss/journal/water
- webpage url = http://www.mdpi.com/journal/water
- Hydrological Processes
- rss url = http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/rss/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1099-1085
- webpage url = http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1002%2F%28ISSN%291099-1085
- Hydrology : nature.com subject feeds
- rss url = https://www.nature.com/subjects/hydrology.rss
- webpage url = http://www.nature.com/subjects/hydrology
- Journal of Hydrology: ScienceDirect
- rss url = http://rss.sciencedirect.com/publication/science/00221694
- webpage url = http://www.sciencedirect.com
- IJGI - ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information
- rss url = http://www.mdpi.com/rss/journal/ijgi
- webpage url = http://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijgi
- Computers & Geosciences
- rss url = http://rss.sciencedirect.com/publication/science/00983004_OA/open-access
- webpage url = http://www.sciencedirect.com
- Springer Earth Science Informatics
- rss url = http://link.springer.com/search.rss?facet-content-type=Article&facet-journal-id=12145&channel-name=Earth+Science+Informatics
- webpage url = http://link.springer.com
- Transactions in GIS
- rss url = http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/rss/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1467-9671
- webpage url = http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1111%2F%28ISSN%291467-9671
- IJGIS - International Journal of Geographical Information Science
- rss url = http://www.tandfonline.com/action/showFeed?type=etoc&feed=rss&jc=tgis20
- webpage url = http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tgis20?af=R
- CaGIS - Cartography and Geographic Information Science
- rss url = http://www.tandfonline.com/action/showFeed?type=etoc&feed=rss&jc=tcag20
- webpage url = http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tcag20?af=R
- IJDE - International Journal of Digital Earth
Happy reading :-)
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