Martin Loidl awarded PhD degree

Yesterday, Martin Loidl, member of the Z_GIS team, successfully defended his PhD Thesis  „Spatial Information and Bicycling Safety". In his thesis Martin investigated the potential contribution of spatial information towards a better understanding of bicycling safety and to the mitigation of bicycling safety risk. 

On the one hand spatial models are developed and conceptually described to assess the network’s quality in terms of bicycling safety level and to estimate traffic flows. On the other hand spatial and temporal analyses aim to gain insights in patterns and dynamics of bicycle crash occurrences. Finally, both approaches are used in conjunction in order to estimate the bicycle crash risk on the local scale level, while spatial implications, such as spatial heterogeneity and the modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP), are made explicit. 

Around 30 attendees listened to Martin’s impressive and challenging presentation which was followed by a fruitful discussion between Martin and the evaluators, Dr. Thomas Blaschke from Z_GIS and Dr. Andreas Koch from the Department of Geography at the University of Salzburg. Dr. Josef Strobl as the main supervisor acted as the chair. 

In addition to his work in the UNIGIS distance learning programme, Martin is currently involved into two projects. The interdisciplinary project GISMO, led by Z_GIS,  aims to support healthy mobility in the application context of corporate mobility management initiatives: https://gismoproject.com/ .
 The target of the project FamoS is to establish a sound data basis for user-group specific traffic models and planning tools, with a focus on active mobility: http://www.zgis.at/index.php/de/research/research-projects/14-ffg-asap/215-famos-2016-2018

More information about Martin’s work can be found here: https://gicycle.wordpress.com

We wish Martin all the best for his future career! 

Urban Emotions II: Identifying Emotion Hot-Spots in the City

Based on the scientific findings of the highly successful first phase of the Urban Emotions project, its second phase, funded by DFG and FWF, is just being kicked off.

The promising transdisciplinary approach bridging the fields of Urban Planning and Geoinformatics will be developed further to address new scientific goals.

In close cooperation with emotion psychologists, the project aims to leverage wearable sensors to support the extraction of emotion information in the urban context. Urban Emotions will analyse diverse spatial and temporal data from calibrated technical sensors, as well as subjective human observations and social media to identify and classify emotion hot-spots in the city.

Therefore, a comprehensive "Privacy by Design" guideline will be established to account for ethnic, legal and social implications.
Several field studies (Boston, Sao Paolo, Salzburg) aim to reveal hidden insights into urban processes by coupling tests in real-world cities with virtual reality environments.

The project is led by Ass.-Prof. Dr. Bernd Resch (University of Salzburg, Department of Geoinformatics - Z_GIS) and Dr. Peter Zeile (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Planning), and carried out in cooperation with the Centre for Geographic Analysis – CGA (Harvard University).

Contact: Bernd Resch 

Interpreting digital information is one key to information society

Digital skills are one of the keys to cope with chances and risks of our digital world. Prof. Thomas Blaschke, Z_GIS, discussed the impacts of digitisation on society with participants of the “Montagsrunde” at the "Robert-Jungk-Bibliothek für Zukunftsfragen" in Salzburg.

The ability of understanding and interpreting digital information is essential. This also applies to digital geographic information, which is increasing: more than 250 Google location-based service apps were identified which are penetrating our daily life based on geographic information – public transport, routing and car-sharing to name just a few. Above all, new technologies allow the user to participate. Civic involvement increasingly makes the user a ‘prosumer’ of information.

Nevertheless questions of data security and privacy make us feel uncomfortable, which was also obvious in the discussion. Another issue: Whilst companies like Google offering Internet services, are prospering, the benefit for the user is sometimes doubtful. Whereas consumers benefit from the sharing economy, the situation of employees sometimes deteriorates: Badly-paid drivers of companies offering delivery services feel increasing pressure by being monitored whenever they are on their way. Last but not least the risk of a digital divide within our society requires counteraction.

The participants agreed that overall society benefits in many ways from this technological development. And there are ways to influence what is about to come: the next few years will provide chances to actively steer this process. What is needed is education in ‘citizenship’ beyond commercial usage of technology but on how digital connectivity for everyone to everything, anywhere and at anytime can be used constructively within and for society.

Prof Thomas 'Tom' Poiker awarded 2017 Waldo-Tobler GIScience Prize

The Austrian Academy of Sciences through its Commission for GIScience is awarding the GIScience Prize named after Prof Waldo Tobler to a scientist having demonstrated outstanding and sustained contributions to the discipline worthy of inspiring young scientists in Geoinformatics or Geographic Information Science, and having accomplished significant advances in research and education.

The received nominations were reviewed and assessed by an external panel of peers, who unanimously (!) recommended to award the 2017 prize to Prof Thomas Poiker (SFU professor emeritus).

Thomas Poiker received his Ph.D. in Theoretical Economic Geography in 1966 from Heidelberg, and then joined Simon Fraser University’s Geography department in 1967. He quickly became interested in the emerging fields of computer cartography and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and became one of the pioneers in GIS research. He has published widely on GIS methods, and held a joint appointment with Computer Science. In addition to GIS, 'Tom' also taught economic and quantitative geography and cartography.

Quoting from the evaluators letters of appreciation: "Thomas Poiker has contributed very significant foundational concepts to the field of GIScience since its very early days ... one of the most widely adopted algorithms for generalizing lines. The TIN structure similarly has become a foundational digital representation for digital surfaces at different granularities ... He has made significant contributions to core GIScience research and to GIScience education...". And, "Pioneering, and serving as a beacon in the early days of what was to become Geographic Information Science ... significantly influencing many generations of researchers, and highly regarded as an academic teacher".

Thomas Poiker also had played an important role in educational innovation: already in the 1990ies he joined the UNIGIS distance learning network of universities as its first North American partner, where he is remembered for introducing 'collaborative assignments' fostering teamwork long before the days of the MOOC, and for his dedication to individually advising students.

In the words of Jeff Thurston: "Tom Poiker was instrumental in the success of the UNIGIS program in Canada. As one of the MSc graduates originating from that program, I consider Tom to be the 'spatial spark' that caused my interest and intrigue about spatial science and GIS to begin and grow. Tom Poiker is not just passionate about GIS and computer science, but he is also one of the best professors I have interacted with - knowing "when to cause students to scratch their heads, to ponder their thoughts and to question outcomes." He nudged us toward finding answers on our own, and did so sometimes rather directly in disagreement, at others in humour and yet at other times with a return query. I can say that I turned toward GIS because of Tom. I was lucky to have him as a professor and we shared in a book we later wrote."

Congratulations to this recognition of a lifetime of leadership and excellence!

Z_GIS participation at JURSE 2017

The 2017 Joint Urban Remote Sensing Event (JURSE 2017) was organized along with the GIS and Remote Sensing Annual Scientific Forum (GRASF 2017) in Dubai from March 6-8. JURSE elucidates innovative methodologies and technological resources employed to investigate the manifold aspects of the urban environment through satellite and airborne remote sensing.

Professor Thomas Blaschke, vice-president of the Society of Geoinformatics, GeoIT and Navigation, held a key note presentation at GRASF on “Big Earth data”. He gave an engaging and fast-paced keynote address, arguing that while the amount of readily accessible remote sensing information is mounting, it is flat-lining when it comes to thirty years old concepts of downloading and processing image by image. He recommended more efforts be devoted to more intelligent, context-based image analysis and he introduced a concept developed at the University of Salzburg in a joint effort between the Departments of Geoinformatics and Computer Science based on data-cubes.


Professor Blaschke also conducted a special session on “Integrated analysis and monitoring approaches for livable cities at JURSE which investigated how spatial technologies can help urban planning to measure, monitor and ultimately improve liveability of cities and within cities. Among other speakers, PhD Candidate Pablo Cabrera-Barona presented an epistemological GIScience framework based on new economic approaches. In his talk “From the ´Good Living´ to the ´Common Good´: What is the role of the GIScience?” he discussed spatial indicators that can be linked to indicators used within these new economic approaches, with a focus on urban quality of life. His presentation was so well received by the expert audience that Pablo received invitations for further talks.