scholarly journals Cultural Magnitude: Interactive visual mapping - A hybrid network for indigenous data

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Shayna-Lucy Curle

<p>This research has been undertaken in response to the limitations of standard mapping techniques, in particular, those that use ESRI-based technology and delivery. The work argues that our ability to understand the complex nature of indigenous ontologies and spatial models are affected by the available tools and their ontological frameworks. It sets out to visualise, in a tool, traditionally non-physical, but inherently spatial, data and information. The map, in a traditional sense, now becomes a fluid, open, self-referential virtual topography or ‘space’, challenging the rational top-down fixity of western cartographic representation. As an architectural thesis, it seeks to create holistically structured space as a virtual edifice and is concerned with that which is not represented and concludes that the most important aspect of creating a mapping framework for an indigenous ontology is to understand the inseparable relationship between people, knowledge and land.  The research describes a tool designed and built by the author that contributes to cultural and spiritual health (whai ora) and wellbeing of Māori. Through its ontological framework, it aims to provide an alternate map that enables users to navigate and share cultural knowledge. The central concept is to ‘re-connect’, in particular, urban and disenfranchised Māori, through the creation of a virtual space that can be customised and inhabited in various ways by its users. It questions and challenges what is included and what is excluded, what can be represented, asking where might culture have a ‘place’? How might people and their environments effect change in themselves? In others?  Cultural Magnitude is the exploration of the development of a tool that acts as a digital representation and storage place of whakapapa and taonga, and as a cultural resource for Māori to understand their spiritual bounds to physical locations - a tangible foundation for a digital marae.</p>

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Shayna-Lucy Curle

<p>This research has been undertaken in response to the limitations of standard mapping techniques, in particular, those that use ESRI-based technology and delivery. The work argues that our ability to understand the complex nature of indigenous ontologies and spatial models are affected by the available tools and their ontological frameworks. It sets out to visualise, in a tool, traditionally non-physical, but inherently spatial, data and information. The map, in a traditional sense, now becomes a fluid, open, self-referential virtual topography or ‘space’, challenging the rational top-down fixity of western cartographic representation. As an architectural thesis, it seeks to create holistically structured space as a virtual edifice and is concerned with that which is not represented and concludes that the most important aspect of creating a mapping framework for an indigenous ontology is to understand the inseparable relationship between people, knowledge and land.  The research describes a tool designed and built by the author that contributes to cultural and spiritual health (whai ora) and wellbeing of Māori. Through its ontological framework, it aims to provide an alternate map that enables users to navigate and share cultural knowledge. The central concept is to ‘re-connect’, in particular, urban and disenfranchised Māori, through the creation of a virtual space that can be customised and inhabited in various ways by its users. It questions and challenges what is included and what is excluded, what can be represented, asking where might culture have a ‘place’? How might people and their environments effect change in themselves? In others?  Cultural Magnitude is the exploration of the development of a tool that acts as a digital representation and storage place of whakapapa and taonga, and as a cultural resource for Māori to understand their spiritual bounds to physical locations - a tangible foundation for a digital marae.</p>


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 580-597
Author(s):  
Mohamad Hamzeh ◽  
Farid Karimipour

AbstractAn inevitable aspect of modern petroleum exploration is the simultaneous consideration of large, complex, and disparate spatial data sets. In this context, the present article proposes the optimized fuzzy ELECTRE (OFE) approach based on combining the artificial bee colony (ABC) optimization algorithm, fuzzy logic, and an outranking method to assess petroleum potential at the petroleum system level in a spatial framework using experts’ knowledge and the information available in the discovered petroleum accumulations simultaneously. It uses the characteristics of the essential elements of a petroleum system as key criteria. To demonstrate the approach, a case study was conducted on the Red River petroleum system of the Williston Basin. Having completed the assorted preprocessing steps, eight spatial data sets associated with the criteria were integrated using the OFE to produce a map that makes it possible to delineate the areas with the highest petroleum potential and the lowest risk for further exploratory investigations. The success and prediction rate curves were used to measure the performance of the model. Both success and prediction accuracies lie in the range of 80–90%, indicating an excellent model performance. Considering the five-class petroleum potential, the proposed approach outperforms the spatial models used in the previous studies. In addition, comparing the results of the FE and OFE indicated that the optimization of the weights by the ABC algorithm has improved accuracy by approximately 15%, namely, a relatively higher success rate and lower risk in petroleum exploration.


Author(s):  
Jessica Di Salvatore ◽  
Andrea Ruggeri

Abstract How does space matter in our analyses? How can we evaluate diffusion of phenomena or interdependence among units? How biased can our analysis be if we do not consider spatial relationships? All the above questions are critical theoretical and empirical issues for political scientists belonging to several subfields from Electoral Studies to Comparative Politics, and also for International Relations. In this special issue on methods, our paper introduces political scientists to conceptualizing interdependence between units and how to empirically model these interdependencies using spatial regression. First, the paper presents the building blocks of any feature of spatial data (points, polygons, and raster) and the task of georeferencing. Second, the paper discusses what a spatial matrix (W) is, its varieties and the assumptions we make when choosing one. Third, the paper introduces how to investigate spatial clustering through visualizations (e.g. maps) as well as statistical tests (e.g. Moran's index). Fourth and finally, the paper explains how to model spatial relationships that are of substantive interest to some of our research questions. We conclude by inviting researchers to carefully consider space in their analysis and to reflect on the need, or the lack thereof, to use spatial models.


Author(s):  
T. Bibi ◽  
Y. Gul ◽  
A. Abdul Rahman ◽  
M. Riaz

Landslide is among one of the most important natural hazards that lead to modification of the environment. It is a regular feature of a rapidly growing district Mansehra, Pakistan. This caused extensive loss of life and property in the district located at the foothills of Himalaya. Keeping in view the situation it is concluded that besides structural approaches the non-structural approaches such as hazard and risk assessment maps are effective tools to reduce the intensity of damage. A landslide susceptibility map is base for engineering geologists and geomorphologists. However, it is not easy to produce a reliable susceptibility map due to complex nature of landslides. Since 1980s, several mathematical models have been developed to map landslide susceptibility and hazard. Among various models this paper is discussing the effectiveness of fuzzy logic approach for landslide susceptibility mapping in District Mansehra, Pakistan. The factor maps were modified as landslide susceptibility and fuzzy membership functions were assessed for each class. Likelihood ratios are obtained for each class of contributing factors by considering the expert opinion. The fuzzy operators are applied to generate landslide susceptibility maps. According to this map, 17% of the study area is classified as high susceptibility, 32% as moderate susceptibility, 51% as low susceptibility and areas. From the results it is found that the fuzzy model can integrate effectively with various spatial data for landslide hazard mapping, suggestions in this study are hope to be helpful to improve the applications including interpretation, and integration phases in order to obtain an accurate decision supporting layer.


2021 ◽  
Vol 278 ◽  
pp. 01013
Author(s):  
Svetlana Ivanova ◽  
Elena Sant’eva ◽  
Maxim Bakanov ◽  
Leszek Sobik ◽  
Leonid Lopukhinsky

At present, the complex nature of the impact on the ecosystem in regions with intensive mining creates a multidimensional information “plume” consisting of data on mineral reserves, the state of mining operations, accumulated, current and future environmental pollution. The transition to the lean use of the subsoil and the reasonable disposal of mining waste requires fundamentally new forms of environmental information accumulation and processing during designing new enterprises and regulating the activities of existing ones. The most promising form of information support for the greening of mining is a geoportal. It is a complex of software and technological support for working with spatial data. Its key task is to provide the users with tools and services for storing and cataloging, publishing and loading spatial and environmental data, searching and filtering by metadata, interactive web visualization, direct access to geodata based on map web services.


2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (9) ◽  
pp. 114-123
Author(s):  
Mozhdeh Shahbazi

Location is considered as an important element in studying tourism security. Therefore, mapping crime hotspots has recently been an interesting research topic in tourism development. In order to identify crime patterns and hotspots, it is essential to create a database containing the required spatial data. It should also be integrated with additional qualitative/quantitative attributes affecting criminal actions. Designing a geographic information system (GIS) can be considered as the most efficient way to deal with this problem considering the complex nature of tourism security. This paper presents the theoretical scheme of spatial data modeling with the purpose of indentifying potential crime zones within a developed park. From the spatial point of view, the factors and the constraints, which make a location vulnerable, are defined. The entities are identified by their attributes and characterized by their relationships. Finally, the conceptual and the logical models to create the crime suitability maps are generated. The models provided in this paper are designed in an explicit way; therefore, they can be easily modified or generalized for any specific case study. The presented data modeling procedure can be applied to generate essential databases for crime mapping via any GIS software.


2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rex R. Johnson ◽  
Diane A. Granfors ◽  
Neal D. Niemuth ◽  
Michael E. Estey ◽  
Ronald E. Reynolds

Abstract Conservation of birds is increasingly focused on the importance of landscape characteristics to sustain populations. Implementing conservation on a landscape scale requires reliable spatial models that provide biological context for conservation actions. Before species-specific models relating grassland birds to their habitat at landscape scales existed, we created a conceptual model and applied it to spatial data to identify priority grassland habitats for the protection and restoration of populations of area sensitive grassland birds in the Prairie Pothole Region. Since that time, these Grassland Bird Conservation Areas have been widely used to guide conservation, and variations of these models have been adopted in other regions; however, the process used to delineate them (i.e., the conceptual models) is poorly understood by many users. We describe that process here and offer perspectives on the utility and limitations of conceptual models, especially on the value of making assumptions that commonly underlie management decisions explicitly, thereby making the assumptions testable, and hopefully increasing management transparency, credibility, and efficiency.


2003 ◽  
Vol 285 (4) ◽  
pp. H1705-H1719 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Kadish ◽  
David Johnson ◽  
Willie Choe ◽  
Jeffrey Goldberger ◽  
George Horvath

Recent studies have demonstrated that fibrillatory rhythms are not random phenomena but have definable patterns. However, standard mapping techniques may have limitations in their ability to identify the organization of fibrillation. The purpose of this study was to develop and apply a method, “ensemble vector mapping,” for characterizing the spatiotemporal organization of fibrillation. Ventricular fibrillation was induced by burst pacing in normal mongrel dogs. In a separate protocol, atrial fibrillation was induced by epicardial aconitine application. Epicardial electrograms were recorded from a 112-electrode plaque array using a computerized mapping system. Vectors were created by summing orthogonal bipolar electrograms. The magnitude of the vectors was transformed using a logarithmic function, integrated over time, and normalized for local electrogram amplitude to produce an “ensemble vector” index whose magnitude is high when beat-to-beat activation direction is consistent and low when activation direction is variable. The mean index was 137 ± 36 mV/s during ventricular pacing at a cycle length of 300 ms but only 39 ± 23 mV/s during ventricular fibrillation ( P < 0.001). The ensemble vector index was also lower during atrial fibrillation (60 ± 54 mV/s) than during atrial pacing (115 ± 27 mV/s, P < 0.01 vs. atrial fibrillation) but not as low as during ventricular fibrillation ( P < 0.05, atrial vs. ventricular fibrillation). The index was also capable of distinguishing atrial tachycardia from atrial fibrillation. Ensemble vector mapping produces an objective assessment of the consistency of myocardial activation during fibrillation. The consistency of activation direction differs in different models of fibrillation and is higher during atrial than ventricular fibrillation. This technique has the potential to rapidly characterize repetitive activation patterns in fibrillatory rhythms and may help distinguish among different characteristics of fibrillatory rhythms.


Author(s):  
Mary Masterson

This research study focuses on long-term digital technologies assisted cross-cultural communication as an instructional model. Secondary school foreign language learners of German and English collaborated online with the same age-cohort peers to acquire new cultural knowledge, as well as develop digi-tal technologies skills. Findings revealed that digital technologies facilitated personalised student-led learning through an inquiry-based approach. Results further indicated that the learners had rich opportunities to share their stories and to think critically about themselves and others. Indeed, pupils enriched their understanding of their partner’s culture as well as developing an en-hanced understanding of the influence of culture on behaviour and thinking. The students learned to use digital technologies by creating digital profiles, posting their comments, asking questions, exchanging cultural information, and gaining linguistic and cultural experience of a native speaker in a virtual space. This paper shows that with the purposeful integration of digital tech-nologies in foreign language classrooms opportunities for richer student learning experiences can be promoted.


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