Nathan Jurgenson
Essay: When Atoms Meet Bits: Social Media, the Mobile Web and Augmented Revolution
Future Internet 2012, 4(1), 83-91; doi:10.3390/fi4010083 - published online 23 January 2012
Show/Hide AbstractAbstract: The rise of mobile phones and social media may come to be historically coupled with a growing atmosphere of dissent that is enveloping much of the globe. The Arab Spring, UK Riots, Occupy and many other protests and so-called “flash-mobs” are all massive gatherings of digitally-connected individuals in physical space; and they have recently become the new normal. The primary role of technology in producing this atmosphere has, in part, been to effectively link the on and the offline. The trend to view these as separate spaces, what I call “digital dualism”, is faulty. Instead, I argue that the digital and physical enmesh to form an “augmented reality”. Linking the power of the digital–creating and disseminating networked information–with the power of the physical–occupying geographic space with flesh-and-blood bodies–is an important part of why we have this current flammable atmosphere of augmented revolution.

Nuno Montenegro , Jorge C. Gomes , Paulo Urbano and José P. Duarte
Article: A Land Use Planning Ontology: LBCS
Future Internet 2012, 4(1), 65-82; doi:10.3390/fi4010065 - published online 6 January 2012
Show/Hide AbstractAbstract: Urban planning has a considerable impact on the economic performance of cities and on the quality of life of their populations. Efficiency at this level has been hampered by the lack of integrated tools to adequately describe urban space in order to formulate appropriate design solutions. This paper describes an ontology called LBCS-OWL2 specifically developed to overcome this flaw, based on the Land Based Classification Standards (LBCS), a comprehensive and detailed land use standard to describe the different dimensions of urban space. The goal is to provide semantic and computer-readable land use descriptions of geo-referenced spatial data. This will help to make programming strategies available to those involved in the urban development process. There are several advantages to transferring a land use standard to an OWL2 land use ontology: it is modular, it can be shared and reused, it can be extended and data consistency maintained, and it is ready for integration, thereby supporting the interoperability of different urban planning applications. This standard is used as a basic structure for the “City Information Modelling” (CIM) model developed within a larger research project called City Induction, which aims to develop a tool for urban planning and design.

Kim Lowell , Lindsay Smith , Ian Miller , Christopher Pettit and Eloise Seymour
Article: Extension Activity Support System (EASY): A Web-Based Prototype for Facilitating Farm Management
Future Internet 2012, 4(1), 42-64; doi:10.3390/fi4010042 - published online 4 January 2012
Show/Hide AbstractAbstract: In response to disparate advances in delivering spatial information to support agricultural extension activities, the Extension Activity Support System (EASY) project was established to develop a vision statement and conceptual design for such a system based on a national needs assessment. Personnel from across Australia were consulted and a review of existing farm information/management software undertaken to ensure that any system that is eventually produced from the EASY vision will build on the strengths of existing efforts. This paper reports on the collaborative consultative process undertaken to create the EASY vision as well as the conceptual technical design and business models that could support a fully functional spatially enabled online system.

Linnea Stenliden and Mikael Jern
Article: How Can We Study Learning with Geovisual Analytics Applied to Statistics?
Future Internet 2012, 4(1), 22-41; doi:10.3390/fi4010022 - published online 30 December 2011
Show/Hide AbstractAbstract: It is vital to understand what kind of processes for learning that Geovisual Analytics creates, as certain activities and conditions are produced when employing Geovisual Anlytic tools in education. To understand learning processes created by Geovisual Analytics, first requires an understanding of the interactions between the technology, the workplace where the learning takes place, and learners’ specific knowledge formation. When studying these types of interaction it demands a most critical consideration from theoretical perspectives on research design and methods. This paper first discusses common, and then a more uncommon, theoretical approach used within the fields of learning with multimedia environments and Geovisual Analytics, the socio-cultural theoretical perspective. The paper next advocates this constructivist theoretical and empirical perspective when studying learning with multiple representational Geovisual Analytic tools. To illustrate, an outline of a study made within this theoretical tradition is offered. The study is conducted in an educational setting where the Open Statistics eXplorer platform is used. Discussion of our study results shows that the socio-cultural perspective has much to offer in terms of what kind of understanding can be reached in conducting this kind of studies. Therefore, we argue that empirical research to analyze how specific communities use various Geovisual Analytics to evaluate information is best positioned in a socio-cultural theoretical perspective.

Pascal Neis , Dennis Zielstra and Alexander Zipf
Article: The Street Network Evolution of Crowdsourced Maps: OpenStreetMap in Germany 2007–2011
Future Internet 2012, 4(1), 1-21; doi:10.3390/fi4010001 - published online 29 December 2011
Show/Hide AbstractAbstract: The OpenStreetMap (OSM) project is a prime example in the field of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI). Worldwide, several hundred thousand people are currently contributing information to the “free” geodatabase. However, the data contributions show a geographically heterogeneous pattern around the globe. Germany counts as one of the most active countries in OSM; thus, the German street network has undergone an extensive development in recent years. The question that remains is this: How does the street network perform in a relative comparison with a commercial dataset? By means of a variety of studies, we show that the difference between the OSM street network for car navigation in Germany and a comparable proprietary dataset was only 9% in June 2011. The results of our analysis regarding the entire street network showed that OSM even exceeds the information provided by the proprietary dataset by 27%. Further analyses show on what scale errors can be reckoned with in the topology of the street network, and the completeness of turn restrictions and street name information. In addition to the analyses conducted over the past few years, projections have additionally been made about the point in time by which the OSM dataset for Germany can be considered “complete” in relative comparison to a commercial dataset.

Arzu Coltekin and Tumasch Reichenbacher
Review: High Quality Geographic Services and Bandwidth Limitations
Future Internet 2011, 3(4), 379-396; doi:10.3390/fi3040379 - published online 20 December 2011
Show/Hide AbstractAbstract: In this paper we provide a critical overview of the state of the art in human-centric intelligent data management approaches for geographic visualizations when we are faced with bandwidth limitations. These limitations often force us to rethink how we design displays for geographic visualizations. We need ways to reduce the amount of data to be visualized and transmitted. This is partly because modern instruments effortlessly produce large volumes of data and Web 2.0 further allows bottom-up creation of rich and diverse content. Therefore, the amount of information we have today for creating useful and usable cartographic products is higher than ever before. However, how much of it can we really use online? To answer this question, we first calculate the bandwidth needs for geographic data sets in terms of waiting times. The calculations are based on various data volumes estimated by scholars for different scenarios. Documenting the waiting times clearly demonstrates the magnitude of the problem. Following this, we summarize the current hardware and software solutions, then the current human-centric design approaches trying to address the constraints such as various screen sizes and information overload. We also discuss a limited set of social issues touching upon the digital divide and its implications. We hope that our systematic documentation and critical review will help researchers and practitioners in the field to better understand the current state of the art.