Mapping the pandemic: teaching critical map literacy with interactive COVID-19 maps

PurposeThis article helps secondary teachers use online maps about the COVID-19 pandemic to develop students' critical map literacy and digital geographic information literacy while helping students analyze the pandemic and its impact on society. The purpose of this paper is to discuss unique features of online maps, suggest six questions to bring to online maps, and provide an activity and resources to develop students' skill in using these maps.Design/methodology/approachFor social studies teachers, online interactive maps create opportunities as well as challenges. They can be more engaging and interesting than static maps. They also show the relevance of key themes in geography as well as the power of maps to convey information. Maps about COVID-19 are used to explore themes in geography.FindingsInterpreting COVID-19 online maps can help students learn about the pandemic, evaluate the decisions of health officials and elected leaders, and thus develop tools to participate in society as active citizens.Originality/valueYoung people and adults are often more engaged by interactive online sources; however, online maps require teachers to develop new approaches to teaching basic and critical map literacy that include elements of digital geographic information literacy. Students can learn to ask questions of maps while learning about COVID-19.

LandmarkMiner

High-confidence network landmarks are the basis of IP geolocation. However, existing landmarks acquisition methods had weakness such as high time cost and insufficient landmarks number. For this, LandmarkMiner, a street-level network landmarks mining method, is proposed based on service identification and domain name association. First, LandmarkMiner trains classifiers using the scanning results of IPs with known hosting service type, identifies the hosting service type of target IPs using the trained classifiers, and obtains the classified IPs’ domain names using DNS. Then, according to institutional names, a database associating institutional name with possible domain names is built by statistical relationship, which is obtained between the known institutional names and their domain names. Finally, geographical location of IP's domain name after classification is matched in the database and online maps, thereby obtaining landmarks and evaluating reliability of them. LandmarkMiner has mined 9,423 reliable street-level landmarks from 304M IPs in 18 cities. Comparing with existing methods, LandmarkMiner increases the number of reliable street-level landmarks significantly and can be applied in different network connectivity conditions.

The new role of cartography in modern tourism

Cartography and maps have historically been valuable tools for tourism and travellers. In the pre-COVID era, tourism had been rapidly growing worldwide. supported by all the newest developments in information and communications technology (ICT). This fact raises concerns about its potential negative impact on tourist destinations. Sustainable management of tourist destinations is thus becoming necessary and stakeholders and individuals are already developing relevant initiatives and actions where cartography and geospatial information could play a special role.The profile of the modern traveller, however, is concurrently also rapidly changing. Modern travellers now have a wealth of internet resources available to them to aid them in selecting a tourist destination and planning a trip. Online maps are an example of such resources and are usually products of the so-called “new cartography”. The aim of this paper is to present the way in which tourist destinations are presented on the web through maps, what kind of geospatial information these maps contain, whether they follow cartographic standards and lastly, whether they provide an integrated presentation of the destination supporting sustainable management and satisfying the demands of the modern traveller.

A Comparison of Feature Density for Large Scale Online Maps

Large scale maps as provided by Google, Microsoft Bing, and Mapbox among others provide users an important source of information for local environments. Comparing maps from these services helps to evaluate both the quality of the underlying spatial data and the rendering process. A comparison procedure is used that generates large scale map pairs at random locations using the Application Programmer Interface (API) for three different mapping services. The quality of each representation is then evaluated for feature and label density. The comparison is done for three different continents. For North America, it was found that maps from Google had consistently higher feature and label density than those from Microsoft Bing and Mapbox. Google Maps also held an advantage in Europe. Maps from Microsoft Bing were more detailed in Sub-Saharan Africa in comparison to both Google Maps and Mapbox. Maps from Mapbox, that relies exclusively on data from OpenStreetMap, had the lowest feature and label density for all three areas.

Towards a Smart E-Waste System Utilizing Supply Chain Participants and Interactive Online Maps

Efficient electronic waste (e-waste) management is one of the vital strategies to save materials, including critical minerals and precious metals with limited global reserves. The e-waste collection issue has gained increasing attention in recent years, especially in developing countries, due to low collection rates. This study aims to search for progressive solutions in the e-waste collection sphere with close-to-zero transport and infrastructure costs and the minimization of consumers’ efforts towards an enhanced e-waste management efficiency and collection rate. Along these lines, the present paper develops a smart reverse system of e-waste from end-of-life electronics holders to local recycling infrastructures based on intelligent information technology (IT) tools involving local delivery services to collect e-waste and connecting with interactive online maps of users’ requests. This system considers the vehicles of local delivery services as potential mobile collection points that collect and deliver e-waste to a local recycling enterprise with a minimum deviation from the planned routes. Besides e-waste transport and infrastructure costs minimization, the proposed smart e-waste reverse system supports the reduction of CO2 through the optimal deployment of e-waste collection vehicles. The present study also advances a solid rationale for involving local e-waste operators as key stakeholders of the smart e-waste reverse system. Deploying the business model canvas (BMC) toolkit, a business model of the developed system has been built for the case of Sumy city, Ukraine, and discussed in light of recent studies.

Indoor Navigation in Stadium using Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality is a computer generated scenario that simulates a realistic experience. Current popular online maps majorly provide two-dimensional upper views of buildings. It becomes difficult to visualize the interiors of a place. Indoor navigation using VR technology addresses the problem of visualizing the interior infrastructure of huge complex buildings like stadium. This paper ‘Indoor Navigation in Stadium using Virtual Reality’ aims to provide highly realistic and immersive experience by incorporating an app that uses 360 degree images to serve the purpose. The paper explains how WebVR technology can be used effectively in order to provide a three dimensional view of the stadium with navigation functionalities to the users.