Auriol Degbelo | TU dresden (original) (raw)

articles by Auriol Degbelo

Traditional methods of public consultation offer only limited interactivity with urban planning m... more Traditional methods of public consultation offer only limited interactivity with urban planning materials, leading to a restricted engagement of citizens. Public displays and immersive virtual environments have the potential to address this issue, enhance citizen engagement and improve the public consultation process, overall. In this paper, we investigate how people would interact with a large display showing urban planning content. We conducted an elicitation study with a large immersive display, where we asked participants (N = 28) to produce gestures to vote and comment on urban planning material. Our results suggest that the phone interaction modality may be more suitable than the hand interaction modality for voting and commenting on large interactive displays. Our findings may inform the design of interactions for large immersive displays, in particular, those showing urban planning content.

'Safe spaces' have been at the core of participatory design (PD) in HCI. However, their character... more 'Safe spaces' have been at the core of participatory design (PD) in HCI. However, their characteristics, their potential impact and what enables them are not yet fully understood. The present article presents a series of insights derived from a six-week long study with 19 young forced migrants (YFMs). We investigated factors which contributed to enable the creation of 'safe spaces' while developing digital services with them. We based our case study on four main components of such spaces: (i) ethics, (ii) reflective processes, (iii) content, (iv) and spatial layout and dynamics. Our findings pointed to a promotion of 'safe spaces' through the combination of these components. Participants showed a high degree of engagement, seemed to be comfortable while interacting socially, and manifested signs of developing a trust relationship with the facilitators. The work presented in this article can benefit designers engaging in participatory activities in HCI with communities with highly complex and sensitive backgrounds or who are underrepresented.

Scientific research results are traditionally published as articles in peer-reviewed conference p... more Scientific research results are traditionally published as articles in peer-reviewed conference proceedings or journals. These articles often use technical jargon, which precludes the general public from consuming the results achieved. New ways to communicate scientific results are thus necessary to transfer scientific insights to non-experts, and this work proposes the concept of interactive guidelines to fill this gap. A web tool, called Interactive Guidelines Tool, was developed as a proof-of-concept for the idea. It was used in the context of the GEO-C project to communicate research outputs in smart cities scenarios to the public. A comparative analysis between the Interactive Guidelines Tool and related tools helps to highlight the progress it enables beyond the current state of the art. Interactive Guidelines Tool is available as an open-source tool and can be customised/extended by any interested researcher, in the process of making scientific knowledge and insights more accessible and understandable to a broader public.

After a review of previous work on resolution in geographic information science (GIScience), this... more After a review of previous work on resolution in geographic information science (GIScience), this article presents a theory of spatial and temporal resolution of sensor observations. Resolution of single observations is computed based on the characteristics of the receptors involved in the observation process, and resolution of observation collections is assessed based on the portion of the study area (or study period) that has been observed by the observations in the collection. The theory is formalized using Haskell. The concepts suggested for the description of the resolution of observation and observation collections are turned into ontology design patterns, which can be used for the annotation of current observations with their spatial and temporal resolution.

Disclosing the current location of a person can seriously affect their privacy, but many apps req... more Disclosing the current location of a person can seriously affect their privacy, but many apps request location information to provide location-based services. Simultaneously, these apps provide only crude controls for location privacy settings (sharing all or nothing). There is an ongoing discussion about rights of users regarding their location privacy (e.g. in the context of the General Data Protection Regulation – GDPR). GDPR requires data collectors to notify users about data collection and to provide them with opt-out options. To address these requirements, we propose a set of user interface (UI) controls for fine-grained management of location privacy settings based on privacy theory (Westin), privacy by design principles and general UI design principles. The UI notifies users about the state of location data sharing and provides controls for adjusting location sharing preferences. It addresses three key issues: whom to share location with, when to share it, and where to share it. Results of a user study (N=23) indicate that (1) the proposed interface led to a greater sense of control, that (2) it was usable and well received, and that (3) participants were keen on using it in real life. Our findings can inform the development of interfaces to manage location privacy.

The linked data Web provides a simple and flexible way of accessing information resources in a se... more The linked data Web provides a simple and flexible way of accessing information resources in a self-descriptive format. This offers a realistic chance of perforating existing data silos. However, in order to do so, space, time and other semantic concepts need to function as dimensions for effectively exploring, querying and filtering contents. While triple stores, SPARQL endpoints, and RDF were designed for machine access, large burdens are still placed on a user to simultaneously explore and query the contents of a given endpoint according to these dimensions. First, one has to know the semantic concepts and the type of knowledge contained in an endpoint a-priori in order to query content effectively. Second, one has to be able to write and understand SPARQL and RDF. And third, one has to understand complex data type literals for space and time. In this article, we propose a way to deal with these challenges by interactive visual query construction, i.e., by letting query results feedback into both (space-time) exploration and filtering, and thus enabling exploratory querying. We propose design principles for SPEX (Spatio-temporal content explorer), a tool which helps people unfamiliar with the content of SPARQL endpoints or their syntax to explore the latter in space and time. In a preliminary user study on a repository of historical maps, we found that our feedback principles were effective, however, that successful question answering still requires improvements regarding space-time filtering, vocabulary explanation and the linking of space-time windows with other displays.

ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf. 2016, 2016

The holy grail of smart cities is an integrated, sustainable approach to improve the efficiency o... more The holy grail of smart cities is an integrated, sustainable approach to improve the efficiency of the city’s operations and the quality of life of citizens. At the heart of this vision is the citizen, who is the primary beneficiary of smart city initiatives, either directly or indirectly. Despite the recent surge of research and smart cities initiatives in practice, there are still a number of challenges to overcome in realizing this vision. This position paper points out six citizen-related challenges: the engagement of citizens, the improvement of citizens’ data literacy, the pairing of quantitative and qualitative data, the need for open standards, the development of personal services, and the development of persuasive interfaces. The article furthermore advocates the use of methods and techniques from GIScience to tackle these challenges, and presents the concept of an Open City Toolkit as a way of transferring insights and solutions from GIScience to smart cities.

Many countries currently maintain a national data catalog, which provides access to the available... more Many countries currently maintain a national data catalog, which provides access to the available datasets – sometimes via an Application Programming Interface (API). These APIs play a crucial role in realizing the benefits of open data as they are the means by which data is discovered and accessed by applications that make use of it. This article proposes semantic APIs as a way of improving access to open data. A semantic API helps to retrieve datasets according to their type (e.g., sensor, climate, finance), and facilitates reasoning about and learning from data. The article examines categories of open datasets from 40 European open data catalogs to gather some insights into types of datasets which should be considered while building semantic APIs for open government data. The results show that the probability of inter-country agreement between open data catalogs is less than 30 percent, and that few categories stand out as candidates for a transnational semantic API. They stress the need for coordination-at the local, regional, and national level-between data providers of Germany, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

The digital era has opened up new possibilities for data-driven research. This paper discusses bi... more The digital era has opened up new possibilities for data-driven research. This paper discusses big data challenges in environmental monitoring and reflects on the use of statistical methods in tackling these challenges for improving the quality of life in cities.

Participatory design (PD) in HCI has been successfully applied to vulnerable groups, but further ... more Participatory design (PD) in HCI has been successfully applied to vulnerable groups, but further research is still needed on forced migrants. We report on a month-long case study with a group of about 25 young forced migrants (YFMs), where we applied and adapted strategies from PD and participatory research (PR). We gained insights into the benefits and drawbacks of combining PD and PR concepts in this particular scenario. The PD+PR approach supported intercultural collaborations between YFMs and young members of the host community. It also enabled communication across language barriers by using visual and “didactic reduction” resources. On a theoretical level, the experiences we gained allowed us to reflect on the role of “safe spaces” for participation and the need for further discussing it in PD. Our results can benefit researchers who take part in technology-related participatory processes with YFMs.

Open data initiatives are playing an important role in current city governments. Despite more dat... more Open data initiatives are playing an important role in current city governments. Despite more data being made open, few studies have looked into barriers to open geographic data reuse from a data consumer’s perspective. This article suggests a taxonomy of these barriers for Colombia and Spain, based on a literature review, an online questionnaire, and workshops conducted in four cities of these two countries. The taxonomy highlights that issues such as outdated data, low integration of data producers, published data being difficult to access, misinterpretation and misuse of released data and their terms of use are the most relevant from the data consumer’s point of view. The article ends with some recommendations to open data providers and research as regards steps to make open geographic data more usable in the countries analyzed

Space, time and thematic content are essential dimensions that allow libraries and their users to... more Space, time and thematic content are essential dimensions that allow libraries and their users to efficiently describe, search and access information media. The latter include not only documents and traditional media, such as paper maps, but to an increasing extent also scientific data sets, as well as all kinds of metadata describing these documents and data sets, both content-wise and in terms of their provenance. How can libraries be supported in their role as information broker for these diverse media? In this paper, we discuss a number of library services which have been challenging or impossible to realize in the past, especially with respect to linking media with spatio-temporal content descriptions and descriptions of their spatio-temporal accessibility. We argue that linked spatio-temporal data (LSTD) provide a way of realizing these services, in a manner which may substantially broaden the current scope of library information services. We illustrate these services based on examples from the Linked Open Data initiative of the University of Münster (LODUM) and related research. We discuss (based on a variety of illustrative tools) how LSTD is suitable to tackle these challenges.

The term Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) was defined in the nineties as a set of policies, tech... more The term Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) was defined in the nineties as a set of policies, technologies and institutional arrangements for improving the availability and accessibility of spatial data and information. SDIs are typically driven by governmental organizations, and thus follow top-down structures based on regulations and agreements. The drawback is that it renders SDIs less easily capable of evolving

inproceedings by Auriol Degbelo

LocWeb Workshop at the WebConference 2020, 2020

Open Government datasets have been flooding the Web recently, and Application Programming Interfa... more Open Government datasets have been flooding the Web recently, and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are key to the development of services on top of these datasets. An issue of current APIs worldwide is that their learnability is limited. This work has explored the potential of querying APIs using natural language terms to mitigate that issue. A user study with 20 participants has demonstrated that a natural-language-based, along with an order-agnostic approach to API design can produce easily learnable APIs for both novice and experienced API users. These insights can pave the way for a paradigm change on Web-API design for open geodata retrieval and beyond.

WebAndTheCity Workshop at the WebConference 2020, 2020

Open city data is critical for smart cities and is becoming increasingly available, thanks to ope... more Open city data is critical for smart cities and is becoming increasingly available, thanks to open government initiatives. Yet, we still know little about the needs of users concerning open data reuse. Taking fragmented and scattered issues reported by users in several works as a starting point, this article formulates user needs statements for research at the intersection of the topics of web, city, and data reuse. The 27 user needs statements proposed can inform the design and evaluation of tools that facilitate open data reuse. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing; • Information systems → Web searching and information discovery; Web applications; KEYWORDS Smart city, open government data, dataset search, user needs statements , human-computer interaction theory, web intelligence

With the arrival of digital maps, the ubiquity of maps has increased sharply and new map func-tio... more With the arrival of digital maps, the ubiquity of maps has increased sharply and new map func-tionalities have become available such as changing the scale on the fly or displaying/hiding layers. Users can now interact with maps on multiple devices (e.g. smartphones, desktop computers, large-scale displays, head-mounted displays) using different means of interaction such as touch, voice or gestures. However, ensuring map functionalities and good user experience across these devices and modalities frequently entails dedicated development efforts for each combination. In this paper, we argue that introducing an abstract representation of what a map contains and affords can unlock new opportunities. For this purpose, we propose the concept of map plasticity, the capability of a map-based system to support different contexts of use while preserving usabil-ity and functionality. Based on this definition, we discuss core components and an example. We also propose a research agenda for realising map plasticity and its benefits.

Open government datasets (OGD) have been flooding the Web in recent years. Geovisualisations are ... more Open government datasets (OGD) have been flooding the Web in recent years. Geovisualisations are the natural way of making sense of them, and have been gradually coming out. However, one key problem is the lack of flexibility of these visualizations, which severely limits their re-use in new scenarios. This article therefore proposes to increase the intelligence of existing geovisualisations by incorporating five features, to make better use of OGD: (i) automatic geographic data type recognition, (ii) generation of geovisualisation designs, (iii) monitoring of users' understanding of geographic facts, (iv) self-optimization, and (v) user activity recognition. In addition to benefiting users of OGD, realizing these features presents rich scientific challenges and opportunities for Geovisualization research, the OGD landscape (and beyond).

Transparency is an important element of smart cities, and ongoing work is exploring the use of av... more Transparency is an important element of smart cities, and ongoing work is exploring the use of available open data to maximize it. is position paper argues that Linked Data and visualization play similar roles, for diierent agents, in this context. Linked Data increases transparency for machines, while visualization increases transparency for humans. e work also proposes a quantitative approach to the evaluation of visualization insights which rests on two premises: (i) visualizations could be modelled as a set of statements made by authors at some point in time, and (ii) statements made by experts could be used as ground truth while evaluating how much insights are eeectively conveyed by visualizations on the Web. Drawing on the linked data rating scheme of Tim Berners-Lee, the paper proposes a ve-stars rating scheme for visualizations on the Web. e ideas suggested are relevant to the development of techniques to automatically assess the transparency level of existing visualizations on the Web.

Public displays can be used to support public participation in urban settings. This article provi... more Public displays can be used to support public participation in urban settings. This article provides a survey of the use of public displays for public participation in an urban context, covering articles on this topic published between 2012 and 2016. 36 papers were selected and analysed along eight dimensions: type of political context, type of scientific contribution, standalone displays vs displays with a device, single vs multi-purpose displays, shape of displays, lab vs field study, deployment in public vs semi-public space, and the level of public participation addressed. Our analysis revealed a number of trends regarding public displays and public participation in urban settings. Inspecting these articles also led to the observation that current research on public displays is mainly targeting lower levels of public participation and that the evaluation of public displays for public participation in urban settings remains a challenge.

Ontologies are key to information retrieval, semantic integration of datasets, and semantic simil... more Ontologies are key to information retrieval, semantic integration of datasets, and semantic similarity analyses. Evaluating ontologies (especially defining what constitutes a “good” or “better” ontology) is therefore of central importance for the Semantic Web community. Various criteria have been introduced in the literature to evaluate
ontologies, and this article classifies them according to their relevance to the design or the implementation phase of ontology development. In addition, the article compiles strategies for ontology evaluation based on ontologies published until 2017 in two outlets: the Semantic Web Journal, and the Journal of Web Semantics. Gaps
and opportunities for future research on ontology evaluation are
exposed towards the end of the paper.

ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf. 2016, 2016

LocWeb Workshop at the WebConference 2020, 2020

WebAndTheCity Workshop at the WebConference 2020, 2020

While it is commonplace to retrieve photos showing a particular feature (e.g. through tools such ... more While it is commonplace to retrieve photos showing a particular feature (e.g. through tools such as Google Pictures or Bing Images), spatial approaches for retrieving videos showing a particular feature (e.g. a building) have yet to be established. This article proposes five ranking algorithms to query georeferenced videos for a specific feature based on the videos' spatio-temporal metadata. 12 relevance criteria for feature-centric video ranking were compiled from a focus group discussion. From these, four criteria have been selected for implementation: "Feature Depiction", "Feature Illumination", "Feature Visibility Duration", and "Distance to Feature". These criteria were implemented in five algorithms and evaluated regarding efficiency and user perceived plausibility. The evaluation suggests that the "Feature Visibility Duration" of the video's viewshed with the queried feature geometry offers a good trade-off between computationally performant and cognitive plausible ranking. The obtained results are relevant to user-centered approaches for interacting with georeferenced videos.

Recent years have witnessed progress of public institutions in making their datasets available on... more Recent years have witnessed progress of public institutions in making their datasets available online, free of charge, for re-use. This notwithstanding, there is still a long way to go to put the power of data in the hands of citizens. This article suggests that transparency in the context of open government can be increased through web maps featuring: i) Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) which support app and data usage tracking; and (ii) 'transparency badges' which inform the users about the presence/absence of extra, useful contextual information. Eight examples of web maps are introduced as proof of concept for the idea. Designing and implementing these web maps has reminded of the need of interactive guidelines to help non-experts select vocabularies, and datasets to link to. The ideas presented are relevant to making existing open data more user friendly (and ultimately more usable).

The literature in geographic information science and related fields contains a variety of definit... more The literature in geographic information science and related fields contains a variety of definitions and understandings for the term resolution. The goal of this paper is to discuss them and to provide a framework that makes at least some of these different senses compatible. The ultimate goal of our work is an ontological account of resolution. In a first stage, resolution and related notions are examined along the phenomenon, sampling and analysis dimensions. In a second stage, it is suggested that a basic distinction should be drawn between definitions of resolution, proxy measures for resolution, and notions related to resolution but different from it. It is illustrated how this distinction helps to reconcile several notions of resolution in the literature.

The literature has offered a number of surveys regarding the concept of smart city, but few asses... more The literature has offered a number of surveys regarding the concept of smart city, but few assessments of toolkits. This paper presents a short analysis of existing smart city toolkits. The analysis yields some general observations about existing toolkits. The article closes with a brief introduction of the Open City Toolkit, a toolkit currently under development which aims at addressing some of the gaps of existing toolkits.

Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, 2010

Enterprise knowledge modelling in general offers methods, tools and approaches for capturing know... more Enterprise knowledge modelling in general offers methods, tools and approaches for capturing knowledge about processes and products in formalized models in order to support organizational challenges. From the perspective of information systems development, the use of enterprise models traditionally is very strong in the earlier development phases, whereas approaches for applying enterprise models in later development phases exist, but are

Proceedings of the Conference on Mensch und Computer

Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS) has been gaining increasing attention in Human-Computer Inter... more Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS) has been gaining increasing attention in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), owing to its potential to generate more expressive haptic feedback. Despite many hardware and software prototypes developed to study specific interaction aspects, designing EMS-based actuated gestures remains a complex endeavor. In this work, we present a design process for actuated gestures and a mobile app to support researchers and gesture designers during EMS-based gesture creation. The app covers the individual calibration of muscles, the composition of single movements into more complex gestures, and the playback of the pre-calibrated gestures. A user study with 12 participants, mostly non-familiar with EMS, has shown that the app was successful in supporting participants test actuated gestures. Our main contributions include a design process for actuated gestures, as well as an open-source app to support the approach and its first evaluation.

Open Cities | Open Data, 2019

The Open Data movement has been gaining momentum in recent years, with increasingly many public i... more The Open Data movement has been gaining momentum in recent years, with increasingly many public institutions making their data freely accessible. Despite much data being already open (and more to come), finding information about the actual usage of these open datasets is still a challenge. This chapter introduces two tools of the Open City Toolkit (OCT) that tackle this issue: a tool to increase transparency and interactive guidelines. Interviews with city council employees confirmed the utility of the transparency tool. Both tools can be used by city councils (for planning purposes) and by users interested to know more about the value of current open datasets (for information purposes).

CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts

Figure 1: We created a data physicalization that uses vibration and temperature as modalities to ... more Figure 1: We created a data physicalization that uses vibration and temperature as modalities to convey facts related to SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy). By using vibration and temperature to represent energy data, we aimed to convey abstract data in a more graspable way by minimizing the metaphorical distance between data and the representation (i.e. qualities and properties of the physicalization-were drawn from the qualities and properties of the data). (A) The physicalization that uses temperature (T) and vibration (V) to represent Affordable and Clean Energy data of five countries: Sweden, Estonia, The Netherlands, Ukraine and Spain; (B) Laser cut wooden buttons (representing the geometric shape of the country) wrapped in metal to enable heat conductance; (C) Internal organization (using Sweden as example) of electronics and sensors to enable vibration and temperature output.

IEEE Open Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems, 2022

Traffic monitoring is key to modern city planning. However, the costs associated with monitoring ... more Traffic monitoring is key to modern city planning. However, the costs associated with monitoring devices limit the large-scale deployment of existing traffic monitoring systems. In this article, we propose and evaluate an algorithm to automatically count the number of vehicles that have passed through a low-cost system for traffic monitoring. The system uses deviations in the Wi-Fi signals strength to predict the presence of a vehicle on the road and its type (car, bus). The study further systematically compares six analytical techniques for the classification of detected vehicles. The methods were tested with data from three road scenarios in the city of Münster, Germany. Vehicle classification accuracy ranged from 83% up to 100% in our study. We also observed that a higher Wi-Fi frequency (5 GHz) was superior to the 2.4 GHz for improving the overall vehicle detection and the results of the classification algorithms. The results suggest that the Wi-Fi-based techniques proposed in this study are promising for cost-efficient traffic monitoring in cities in a privacy-preserving manner.

Warum sehen Karten in China anders aus als in Europa? Warum scheinen interaktive Karten auf dem S... more Warum sehen Karten in China anders aus als in Europa? Warum scheinen interaktive Karten auf dem Smartphone oft noch nicht intuitiv nutzbar zu sein? Warum gelten Dashboards für Fachthemen, z.B. der aktuellen Corona-Lage, meist als kompliziert zu verstehen und benutzen? Der 3. Workshop Spatial is Special auf der Mensch und Computer greift diese Fragen im Rahmen von drei Trendthemen auf: Geo UX in verschiedenen Kulturkreisen, UX von mobilen Karten und UX von Geo-Dashboards. Interdisziplinäre Teilnehmer*innen diskutieren und erarbeiten diese Themen in mehreren Sessions. Der Workshop wird von Mitgliedern des German UPA Arbeitskreises Geo UX (https://germanupa.de/arbeitskreis-geo-ux) organisiert.

OBSERVATION is a central notion to the field of Geographic Information Science. Monitoring phenom... more OBSERVATION is a central notion to the field of Geographic Information Science. Monitoring phenomena (e.g. climate change, landslides, demographic movements) happening on the earth's surface, and developing models and simulations for those phenomena rely on observations. Observations can be produced by technical sensors (e.g. a satellite) or humans. RESOLUTION is an important aspect of observations underlying geographic information. The consequence of using observations at various resolutions is (potentially) different decisions, because the resolutions of the observations influence the patterns that can be detected during an analysis process. Despite the importance Many thanks go to my Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ, of Whom the Bible's Book of Daniel says: "He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the scholars" (Daniel 2:21, New Living Translation), for providing insight and efficiency throughout this journey.

Proceedings of the 25th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems, 2017

Robert möchte für seine Orientierungslaufgruppe eine gedruckte Karte von Hamburg erstellen. Lina ... more Robert möchte für seine Orientierungslaufgruppe eine gedruckte Karte von Hamburg erstellen. Lina sucht einen Datensatz mit Unigebäuden, um einen Campusnavigator zu programmieren. Für beide Projekte gibt es offene und damit kostenfrei bereitgestellte Geodaten. Die zwei Beispiele deuten bereits das große Nutzungspotenzial solcher offenen Daten an. Allerdings gestaltet sich der Zugang zu offenen Geodaten über sogenannte OpenGeodata-Portale oft noch wenig benutzerfreundlich.

Quality is an important aspect of data discovery in the Semantic Sensor Web. This work extends cu... more Quality is an important aspect of data discovery in the Semantic Sensor Web. This work extends current endeavors to make the Sensor Web more semantic by introducing an ontology design pattern which facilitates the modeling of aspects of spatial data quality. The implementation of a software program over two scenarios demonstrates the usefulness of the ontology design pattern for the Semantic Sensor Web.

Open Cities | Open Data, 2019

Companion Proceedings of the Web Conference 2020, 2020

Studies on the Semantic Web, 2021

Geotagging user-generated photos is in many cases not sufficient to properly describe their conte... more Geotagging user-generated photos is in many cases not sufficient to properly describe their context. Besides not telling in which direction the photo is facing or what is seen in the photo, estimating the actual location during post-hoc georeferencing is cumbersome and imprecise. This paper presents an approach for georeferencing urban photos by marking at least three distinctive features in the photo and connecting them to their real-world locations using a map. Based on these connections, an algorithm calculates the camera viewshed, its orientation, and location. Algorithmic tests under ideal conditions showed high accuracy rates on a centimeter level with average run-times of ten minutes, as well as accuracy rates of 1.5 meters with average run-times of about one second. We developed a web application which helps users to create the connections using two different input types: points and lines. The user study showed accuracy rates of 9 meters in average. The approach is a user-fr...

Millions of customary land rights are still undocumented worldwide. Recording and digitizing the ... more Millions of customary land rights are still undocumented worldwide. Recording and digitizing the plurality of these land rights has been identified as a key challenge in previous work. Documentation is an essential step to make effective progress towards a more sustainable future of our planet and for achieving the SDGs, with Goal 1 “No Poverty” (Indicator 1.4.2: proportion of the total adult population with secure tenure rights to land) in particular.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) presents opportunities to develop tools and techniques for addressin... more Artificial Intelligence (AI) presents opportunities to develop tools and techniques for addressing some of the major global challenges and deliver solutions with significant social and economic impacts. The application of AI has far-reaching implications for the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in general, and sustainable urban development in particular. However, existing attempts to understand and use the opportunities offered by AI for SDG 11 have been explored sparsely, and the shortage of empirical evidence about the practical application of AI remains. In this chapter, we analyze the contribution of AI to support the progress of SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities). We address the knowledge gap by empirically analyzing the AI systems (N = 29) from the AIxSDG database and the Community Research and Development Information Service (CORDIS) database. Our analysis revealed that AI systems have indeed contributed to advancing sustainable cities in several ways (e.g., w...

With the arrival of digital maps, the ubiquity of maps has increased sharply and new map function... more With the arrival of digital maps, the ubiquity of maps has increased sharply and new map functionalities have become available such as changing the scale on the fly or displaying/hiding layers. Users can now interact with maps on multiple devices (e.g. smartphones, desktop computers, large-scale displays, head-mounted displays) using different means of interaction such as touch, voice or gestures. However, ensuring map functionalities and good user experience across these devices and modalities frequently entails dedicated development efforts for each combination. In this paper, we argue that introducing an abstract representation of what a map contains and affords can unlock new opportunities. For this purpose, we propose the concept of map plasticity, the capability of a map-based system to support different contexts of use while preserving usability and functionality. Based on this definition, we discuss core components and an example. We also propose a research agenda for realis...

The Open City Toolkit is a collection of tools, applications, services, datasets, specifications ... more The Open City Toolkit is a collection of tools, applications, services, datasets, specifications and guidelines to empower citizens to participate in and shape the future of their cities, and to deliver services based on open data that are useful for citizens, businesses and governing bodies. It is accessible at http://geo-c.eu/opencitytoolkit. Open source codes of the components are available on GitHub (https://github.com/geo-c).

Abstract. Metadata is key to effective knowledge organization, and designing user interfaces that... more Abstract. Metadata is key to effective knowledge organization, and designing user interfaces that maximize user performance and user experience during metadata creation would benefit several areas of GIScience. Yet, empirically-derived guidelines for user interfaces supporting GI-metadata creation are still scarce. As a step towards mitigating that gap, this work has implemented and evaluated a prototype that produces semantically-rich metadata for web maps via one of two input modalities: typing or speech. A controlled experiment (N=12) to investigate the merits of both modalities has revealed that (i) typing and speech were comparable as far as input duration time is concerned; and (ii) they received opposed ratings concerning their pragmatic and hedonic qualities. Combining both might thus be beneficial for GI-metadata creation user interfaces. The findings are useful to ongoing work on semantic enablement for spatial data infrastructure and note-taking during visual analytics.

The authors gratefully acknowledge funding from the European Union through the GEO-C project (H20... more The authors gratefully acknowledge funding from the European Union through the GEO-C project (H2020-MSCA-ITN-2014, Grant Agreement Number 642332, http://www.geoc. eu/). Carlos Granell has been funded by the Ramon y Cajal Programme (grant number RYC- 2014-16913). Sergio Trilles has been funded by the postdoctoral programme Vali+d (GVA) (grant number APOSTD/2016/058).