The Automated Map. Public innovation for the generation of the National Topographic Map of Spain

Several reasons have prompted the National Geographic Institute of Spain (IGN-Spain) to implement an automatic process to generate the National Topographic Map 1:25,000 (MTN) instead trough the traditional manual way, pointing out the growing lack of human resources, in addition to the search for a quick response to the increasing demand of updated geoinformation by the society.This new automated process provides an annual production of all the map sheets composing the MTN25 (4.019 files), what is an unprecedented time record, so that the users can quickly both download them from the Download Centre Website and visualize the maps through the visualization web services WMS and WMTS. This methodology is also applied to the creation of sheets for printed publication, whose final output requires a simplified manual editing process.

Monograph – <i>The COVID-19 pandemic in Spain</i>

The Department of Thematic Mapping and National Atlas at the National Geographic Institute of Spain (IGN) has published a monograph on the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The time studied is limited to the first half of 2020 which is the period for which official data are now available. However, for the first time, provisional –non definitive– data have been used. This publication begins with an overview of the impact of this crisis on the world in general and on the European Union in particular. It then focuses on the effects that the pandemic has had on demography and on the National Health Service in Spain. It ends with the consequences that the pandemic has had on the Spanish economy, society and environment. This work has been carried out together with an ad-hoc scientific network. It is the first publication of the Department that has been written both in Spanish and in English with the aim of providing the rest of the world with a geographic-cartographic vision on what has happened in Spain within the frame of the European Union during the first semester of 2020.

Digital transformation in topographic databases

The increasingly widespread implementation of databases with geographical component, as well as the impregnation of geolocation culture, is driving a transformation in the storage, management and exploitation of geospatial information. Real-world elements go from being modeled as mere geometric representations, with just cartographic purposes, to be features with their own entity. Unique identifiers and lifecycle management are assigned to these features, allowing interactions between feature instances from different databases, that is, facilitating digital transformation and, therefore, increasing exponentially the exploitation possibilities.In this regard, the National Geographic Institute of Spain (IGN, by its Spanish acronym) have implemented several processes in its National Topographic Database, such as the connection with the cadastral information, in order to take advantage of its updates and give feedback to improve cadastral data; or the link with the information, in addresses form, provided from different public administration, that is processed to geolocate features in the topographic database. Likewise, work is being done in order to implement new processes that allow linking with other data sets.These processes, in addition to reusing information produced by different public administrations, constitute an advance towards the objective of geospatial information databases continuous updating.

Routing on Geospatial Reference Information for Transport Networks of Spain

The Spanish National Geographic Institute (IGN) published the first release of the Geographic Reference Information on Transport Networks (GRI-TN) in March 2017. Its main goal was to fulfil INSPIRE Directive requirements, as well as to become the main data source for other products developed by the IGN regarding this theme. During the years following that first release, the focus has been on updating and improving the data. This fact has encouraged new data use cases, which differ from the initially planned ones, have arisen, allowing to detect problems in the data, and highlighting the need to evolve the data model, as well as the way in which they are provided to users (not only formats, but also update frequency). One of those use cases is finding the shortest paths between different points in the area covered by the Road Transport Network. In this article, the methodology used to do it is exposed; likewise, the setbacks that have come up during the process and the current limitations of the GRI-TN datasets in order to get most accurate results.

The Real Jesus

Edisi desember dari majalah internasional National Geographic (2017) mengangkat suatu topic yang telah menantang ribuan bahkan jutaan pemikir, teolog, dan ahli sejarah, yakni kontroversi seputar siapakah Yesus dari Nazaret. Sebagai sebuah majalah semi-ilmiah dengan tiras yang cukup besar, tentu kita mesti mengangkat jempol atas keberanian majalah tersebut untuk mengangkat topik yang bagi sebagian orang disebut ‘politically incorrect.”

The Value Semantics in “Intelligent Travel” Discourse

Introduction. The present paper aims at describing the results of researching the axiological aspect of the category “intelligent travel” functioning in the English language travel discourse. The relevance of the research is defined, firstly, by continuously developing tourist industry and the emergence of new tourist concepts which are embodied in numerous travel editions and, secondly, by insufficient knowledge of axiological aspect of certain travel-genres. The research is completed within the anthropooriented paradigm of linguistic studies and thus contributes to the development of this approach. The novelty of the study lies in revealing specific values represented in intelligent travel-texts and forming a special value line.Methodology and sources. The research is based on the English language texts about travelling. National Geographic was used as the main source of material. For the selection of travel texts, the continuously sampling method was used. The general methodology of studying the “intelligent/slow travel” concept also includes the method of semantic analysis, the method of semantic-stylistic analysis, elements of communicative-pragmatic analysis.Results and discussion. The results of the study include the description of the content of the intelligent travel category, the review of existing types of values, and the description of basic meanings forming the value picture of the world in travel-texts of this genre – sensory values, aesthetic values, morally-ethical and rationalistic value meanings. Within this research it is important to consider “anti-value” which is represented predominantly in texts about wildlife conservation and which enhances the pragmatic impact of the text on the reader. The result of the study is the conclusion about certain language specific of the category of intelligent travelling which is actualized through special value prism.Conclusion. The study reveals the specificity of the value paradigm of slow/intelligent travel texts. The semantic space of texts about intelligent travelling is filled with certain value markers in total constructing the value picture of the world through the prism o f which the travelling and experiencing author expresses not only his own vision of things, but the moral side of life aspects. The chosen methodology can be applied for further research and similar studies of other genres of travel-discourse.

The Geography of Chronic Pain in the United States and Canada.

Our understanding of population pain epidemiology is largely based on national-level analyses. This focus, however, neglects potential cross-national, and especially sub-national, geographic variations in pain, even though geographic comparisons could shed new light on factors that drive or protect against pain. This article presents the first comparative analysis of pain in the U.S. and Canada, comparing the countries in aggregate and analyzing variation across states and provinces. Analyses are based on cross-sectional data collected in 2020 from 2,124 U.S. and 2,110 Canadian adults 18 years and older. Our pain measure is a product of pain frequency and pain-related interference with daily activities. We use regression and decomposition methods to link socioeconomic characteristics and pain, and inverse-distance weighting spatial interpolation to map pain scores. We find significantly and substantially higher pain in the U.S. than in Canada. The difference is accounted for by Americans' lower economic wellbeing. Additionally, we find variation in pain within countries; the variation is statistically significant across U.S. states. Further, we identify nine hotspot states in the Deep South, Appalachia, and the West where respondents have significantly higher pain than those in the rest of the U.S. or Canada. This excess pain is partly attributable to economic distress, but a large part remains unexplained; we speculate that it may reflect the sociopolitical context of the hotspot states. Overall, our findings identify areas with high need for pain prevention and management; they also other scholars to consider geographic factors as important contributors to population pain.

Secure human attachment can promote support for climate change mitigation

Attachment theory is an ethological approach to the development of durable, affective ties between humans. We propose that secure attachment is crucial for understanding climate change mitigation, because the latter is inherently a communal phenomenon resulting from joint action and requiring collective behavioral change. Here, we show that priming attachment security increases acceptance (Study 1: n = 173) and perceived responsibility toward anthropogenic climate change (Study 2: n = 209) via increased empathy for others. Next, we demonstrate that priming attachment security, compared to a standard National Geographic video about climate change, increases monetary donations to a proenvironmental group in politically moderate and conservative individuals (Study 3: n = 196). Finally, through a preregistered field study conducted in the United Arab Emirates (Study 4: n = 143,558 food transactions), we show that, compared to a message related to carbon emissions, an attachment security–based message is associated with a reduction in food waste. Taken together, our work suggests that an avenue to promote climate change mitigation could be grounded in core ethological mechanisms associated with secure attachment.