Expanding Toolkits for Heritage Perpetuation

From 2010 to 2013, the White Mountain Apache Tribe and the University of Arizona, with funding from the National Science Foundation, hosted the Western Apache Ethnography and Geographic Information Science Research Experience for Undergraduates. Designed to foster practical skills and scholarly capacities for future resource managers and anthropologists, this field school introduced Apache and non-native undergraduate students to ethnographic field research and GIS tools. Building upon the extensive arrays of geographical, cultural, and historical data that are available for Western Apache territory, field school students engaged in community-based participatory research with Western Apache elders and tribal natural and heritage resource personnel to contribute to the Western Apache tribes' efforts to document their cultural histories, traditional ecological knowledge, local understanding of geography, and issues of historic and contemporary resource management. This essay reviews the program and traces how student alumni have incorporated skills and perspectives gained into their subsequent academic and professional work.

The Future of the Natural Resources Sector in Russia

Environmental management, technologies, products and services are commonly expected to provide significant economic opportunities for companies and countries. This is mainly due to increasing awareness among politicians, academics and the wider population on the importance of environmental aspects in daily life. Consequently demand for environmentally friendly solutions is expected to grow continuously in the next decade. The present study is part of a broader research project which examines the long-term science and technology (S&T) agenda in Russia up to 2030. The project's results were approved by the Prime Minister of Russia in early January 2014. Researchers from the National Research University Higher School of Economics carried out the research project at the request of the Russian Ministry of Education and Science between 2011 and 2013. The research comprised six interrelated spheres: ICT; biotechnology, medicine and public health; new materials and nanotechnologies; environmental management; transport and space systems; and energy efficiency and energy conservation. For each sphere, the project explored in-depth the global emergent challenges and opportunities, the risks, and their degree of influence on Russia. The authors analysed the most important potential market niches, products and services that are capable of radically shaping world markets and highlighted their competitive advantages. Within the framework of these priority science areas authors emphasised several spheres of particular potential value and compared the level of research carried out in Russia and the leading countries. The current chapter also covers the analyses the natural resources sector made within a project aimed at integration of national and sectoral S&T Foresight studies funded by the Russian Ministry of Education and Science. Findings show that the potential applications for environmental products and services are manifold. The study is based on a thorough analysis of expert opinions and their assessment of future applications and the development of demand for these applications. However the authors note that the expert opinions included in the assessment of prospective products, services and markets, despite being based on rigorous assessment, still reflect expectations. Their opinions incorporate a degree of uncertainty especially with regard to how and when (or whether) the markets, technologies, products and services will develop in the expected ways.

A New Spatial Transformation Scheme for Preventing Location Data Disclosure in Cloud Computing

Because much interest in spatial database for cloud computing has been attracted, studies on preserving location data privacy have been actively done. However, since the existing spatial transformation schemes are weak to a proximity attack, they cannot preserve the privacy of users who enjoy location-based services in the cloud computing. Therefore, a transformation scheme is required for providing a safe service to users. We, in this chapter, propose a new transformation scheme based on a line symmetric transformation (LST). The proposed scheme performs both LST-based data distribution and error injection transformation for preventing a proximity attack effectively. Finally, we show from our performance analysis that the proposed scheme greatly reduces the success rate of the proximity attack while performing the spatial transformation in an efficient way.

Privacy-Preserving Spatial Trajectory Prediction Based on a Novel Matrix Representation

Since the introduction of iPhone in 2007, smartphones have become very popular (e.g., the number of worldwide smartphone sales has surpassed the number of PC sales in 2011). The feature of high mobility and small size of smartphones has created many applications that are not possible or inconvenient for PCs and servers, even laptops. Location-based services (LBS), one of mobile applications, have attracted a great attention recently. This research proposes a location-based service, which predicts a spatial trajectory based on the current and previous trajectories by using a novel matrix representation. Spatial trajectory prediction can be used in a variety of purposes such as travel recommendations and traffic control and planning, but at the same time, just like most location-based services, the user privacy concern is a major issue. Without rigorous privacy protection, users would be reluctant to use the service. The proposed method is simple but effective and user privacy is rigorously preserved at the same time because the trajectory prediction is performed at the user-side. Additionally, this research is not only useful but also pedagogical because it involves a variety of topics like (i) mobile computing, (ii) mobile security, and (iii) human behavior recognition.

Optimizing School Bus Stop Placement in Howard County, Maryland

In the current system, school bus stops in Howard County, Maryland are manually placed along the school bus routes based on safety, cost-efficiency, and many other variables. With such liberal placement, bus stops are sometimes placed unnecessarily. This issue is prevalent in many school districts and often results in needlessly close bus stop proximity. In this study, the authors implemented a GIS-based heuristic to assist school officials in optimizing their districts bus stop placement. They also estimated the proportion of county-wide bus stops that could be eliminated by this approach. Following the constraints determined by State and local guidelines, the ArcGIS Network Analyst Extension was used to identify unnecessary bus stops across the study area. The initial output was re-evaluated by school officials in order to determine if those bus stops would be eliminated. The results indicate that approximately 30% of the existing bus stops were marked as “candidates for elimination” by the GIS process. After a review of these candidates, it was determined that at least 15% of the total school bus stops could be eliminated. Statistical estimates lent credence to the benefit of a re-evaluation of these bus stops. The method developed in this study can easily be replicated. Hence, it may inspire other school systems to exercise the same approach. Additionally, the results provide a gateway for future studies in examining more efficient school bus routes with less travel time, as well as investigating how much the carbon footprint of school bus fleets can be reduced.

Review and Implications of the AutoCarto Six Retrospective Project

A previous IJAGR paper, using the Retrospective Approach to Commemorate AutoCarto Six (Wellar, 2014), presented the reasons for using a retrospective approach to re-visit papers that were published 30 years ago (1983) in the proceedings of the Sixth International Symposium on Automated Cartography. This paper addresses four important topics that arise from producing AutoCarto Six Retrospective. First, in response to requests for more information about the “retro experience”, the research design of the retrospective project is reviewed in terms of lessons learned. Second, the contribution that the retrospective approach makes to “the literature” on the evolution of automated cartography, geographic information systems, computational geography, and related fields is explored. Third, several implications of the retrospective approach for the literature search and review component of theses, dissertations, academic productions, and research proposals, as well as plan, program, and policy evaluation processes in both the private and public sectors are outlined. And fourth, comments are made about applying the AutoCarto Six Retrospective experience to other commemorative events.

Interactive Visualizations as “Decision Support Tools” in Developing Nations

The impact of vector-borne diseases on developing nations is significant. Currently, the uncertainty of disease dynamics, volatility of human-environment interactions, and competing objectives coupled with the nature of applicable data present obstacles to stakeholders charged with developing preventive, control, and treatment measures. As a result, notwithstanding numerous measures, vector-borne diseases persist and impede the growth of developing nations. Therefore, computational tools that can address these obstacles and serve as decision support tools to stakeholders are much needed. This chapter is meant to draw attention to interactive visualization tools that allow stakeholders to control the flow of information, manipulate visual representations, and perform analytical tasks. Through a discussion of the vector-borne disease situation and interactive visualization tools, the case for integrating these tools into public health practice in developing nations is made.

Extending Metadata Standards for Historical GIS Research

This chapter proposes a structure for handling commonly observed uncertainties in geo-historical data, using as case studies two historical geographical information systems (HGIS) projects that interweave historical research with the geography of genocide. The first case involves the ghettoization of Budapest's Jews during the Holocaust in the second half of 1944. The more recent work, and the second case, covers the Armenian genocide spanning most of WWI and several years afterwards. The authors suggest using existing metadata standards as one way of handling the inherent uncertainties of geo-historical sources. While not a definitive solution, they argue that such an approach provides a starting point and a platform to conceptually frame the use of geo-historical data in HGIS.

Consumer Behavior in the Mobile Environment

Consumer behavior in the omnipresent mobile environment constitutes a challenge for m-commerce vendors, as they seek to understand factors that affect it, positively and negatively, and to integrate social media in their mobile strategy. This paper presents an exploratory qualitative study about the use of smartphones and social media, in the context of m-commerce. The authors' objective is to facilitate the understanding of consumers' perceptions and behavior in m-commerce and social media and explore the potential of social media for m-commerce purposes. The results of their qualitative analysis show that reputation, design aspects, such as ease of use, as well as privacy and security are important factors for m-commerce and social media adoption and use. Their qualitative results also reveal factors having a negative effect to m-commerce. Business opportunities enabled by social media for m-commerce and how these can be leveraged in this promising mobile context are also discussed.

Utilizing Amerindian Hunters' Descriptions to Guide the Production of a Vegetation Map

Describing vegetation types is critical for managing natural resources and assessing ecosystem risk. Vegetation maps are historically produced by “Western experts,” often ignoring local-level groups critical to resource management. Indigenous hunters, as resource managers, have strong connections to their landscapes and their descriptions of vegetation within their homelands can be useful in the map-making process. This project examined the usefulness of vegetation descriptions from Rupununi, Southern Guyana Indigenous hunters in the map-making process and how their descriptions were influenced by biophysical environmental attributes. A Landsat TM and ASTER DEM merged imagery of the Rupununi was classified using Indigenous hunters' vegetation descriptions to train the classification and assess accuracy. Based on the hunters' vegetation descriptions an eleven-class map was produced that covered the main vegetation types they described. Whereas “expert” maps rely on organized forest inventory data, Indigenous hunters' vegetation classifications were influenced by their interactions with the biophysical environment. The final map shows that Indigenous hunters may be important partners in the map-making process and play key roles in tropical forest management decision-making processes.