Young Investigators Award at University of Salzburg

Geoinformatics student awarded

The 2019 University-wide Young Investigators Award (YIA) for late-stage PhD students and young PostDocs ended again with a price for a Geoinformatics PhD student. Clemens Havas was awarded the second price in the panel Natural & Life Sciences for his abstract and pitch on "Identifying Disaster-impacted Areas with Machine Learning and Geospatial Analysis using Twitter Data". 

Clemens developed a methodology to analyse live Twitter streams to fill the information gap after the outbreak of a disaster. He demonstrated the methodology for the hurricane Florence in the US and distinctly highlighted the impacted areas by the hurricane starting just one day after landfall and could produce hot spot maps almost automatically.

We congratulate Clemens and wish him well on the road to finalizing his PhD studies!

Neues Bachelorstudium "Digitalisierung-Innovation-Gesellschaft" an der Uni Salzburg

Unter Federführung des Interfakultären Fachbereichs Geoinformatik - Z_GIS beginnt mit dem Wintersemester 2019/20 ein neues, interdisziplinäres Angebot für 'digital' orientierte und interessierte StudentInnen. Mobile Apps und web-basierte Anwendungen, Datenanalyse, Kommunikation und Design von Interaktion sind zentrale Themen.

Digitale Methoden und Werkzeuge sind die Grundlage für Innovation in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Unternehmen suchen dringend qualifizierte MitarbeiterInnen für ein breites Spektrum an Aufgaben im Bereich der digitalen Transformation. AbsolventInnen dieses Studiums sind qualifizierte Daten-Praktiker und Informations-Experten, sie konzipieren und generieren digitale Informationsprodukte und Entscheidungsgrundlagen. Sie tragen zu multidisziplinären (Entwicklungs-) Teams bei und bedienen Schnittstellen zu Spezialisten aus Informatik, Design, Wirtschaft und Kommunikation.

Digitalisierung verbindet heute alle Sektoren der Gesellschaft, daher tragen auch unterschiedliche Disziplinen zu diesem Curriculum bei: Grundlagen der Informatik werden mit Geoinformatik als 'Schnittstelle zwischen realer und digitaler Welt' verbunden, Mensch-Maschine Interaktion ebenso wie Kommunikations- bzw. Gesellschaftswissenschaften entwickeln kommunikative Kompetenzen, und Wirtschaftswissenschaften wie auch juridische Fächer etablieren Perspektiven und Rahmenbedingungen für innovatives Agieren.

Das Studium ist projektorientiert konzipiert und fordert Studierende von Beginn an zur Lösung problemorientierter und ganzheitlicher Aufgabenstellungen heraus. Die Verankerung am 'SciTecHub'  der Universität in Itzling bietet eine unmittelbare Anbindung an angewandte und unternehmerische Perspektiven.

Natürlich steht AbsolventInnen auch der Zugang zu weiterführenden Masterstudien offen, je nach Wahl von Schwerpunkten z.B. Data Science, Geoinformatik, Geographie und anderen technisch wie auch sozialwissenschaftlich orientierten Fächern.

Details: https://www.uni-salzburg.at/DiG - BSc Digitalisierung-Innovation-Gesellschaft

Kinderuni Radstadt

2nd and 3rd of may, the Kinderuni took place in Radstadt, providing opportunities for kids to get in touch with scientific work. The iDEAS:lab offered a workshop about observations of weather phenomena, which the pupils could explore hands-on using the sensebox:edu. In small groups they built up weather measuring stations, explored sensors and measurement methods and drew comparisons of different light sources: How strong is the luminous intensity in part of the room illuminated by the sun versus in the shadow? How hot is a classical lightbulb in comparison to a LED light? The kids were eager to try out the different settings, seek extreme values - and even spontaneously recorded their results for comparisons. 

GeoFarmer app jointly developed

The GeoFarmer app allows community workers and farmers to easily collect and share information on climate-related agricultural interventions. Development agencies can use the tool to gather effective feedback and to respond to emergent needs. Users can collect and share geospatial data on weather, farm conditions including soil and crop types, and monitor the adoption of techniques to make farms more productive and resilient to climate change.
This useful GeoFarmer app was co-developed between the International Center for tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and Z_GIS and is based on the GeoCitizen framework. It has been deployed and tested in Colombia, Ghana, Tanzania and Uganda. Two visiting researcher from Salzburg, Mona Bartling and Christian Feil, worked together with Scientists from CIAT to adapt the GeoCitizen framework for the purpose of research for agricultural development in developing countries. 

“An app like this gives farmers a voice and helps close the communication gap between people working in the development sector, researchers working on development technologies, and farmers,” said Andrew Jarvis, a co-author and director of CIAT’s Decision and Policy Analysis research area. “We’re better at understanding farmers’ needs and we’re more responsive to emerging opportunities and unanticipated challenges", states Anton Eitzinger from CIAT.

Read more on future developments in the CIAT blog; research findings published 'open access' in Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, Volume 158, March 2019, Pages 109-121.

Photo Credit: Georgina Smith / CIAT. For more information contact g dot smith [at]cgiar.org

Z_GIS contact: Karl Atzmanstorfer

2019 EDC "Student of the Year" Award going to Florian Schöpflin

Congratulations to recent graduate Florian Schöpflin for winning the 2019 award!

As an ESRI Development Center, Z_GIS every year has the opportunity to nominate one top student based on his or her geospatial development competence. This year this special honour is awarded to Florian Schöpflin for work leading to his University of Salzburg "Applied Geoinformatics" MSc Thesis "Analysis of the potential of multimodal and intermodal mobility in the state of Salzburg" supervised by Dr Thomas Prinz at the RSA Studio iSPACE.

The aim of this thesis is to analyze the potential of sustainable modes of transportation in order to increase awareness of different options. Three geospatial models are developed, using commuter data (in grid format) including origin and destination as well as the number of commuters in this relation. With the help of the developed models, the theoretical shortest route of commuters is calculated using an ND derived from GIP (Graph Integration Platform), and depending on the calculated distances, suitable modes of transportation are assigned to each route. In addition, commuters exceeding a threshold distance are assigned to intermodal trips and are further used to analyze the potential of stop locations for serving as multimodal hubs. Based on these findings, a theoretical modal split for sustainable transportation modes is created. Finally, possible approaches to realize the detected mobility improvement potentials are presented.