What is special about spatial data?
What is the role of spatial computing and volunteered geographic information in human-computer interaction?
Abstract:
In more and more scientific disciplines spatial information plays an important role. For example, volunteered geographic information (VGI), in the form of geotagged tweets or other forms of social media VGI, are becoming increasingly critical to many applications and scientific studies. An important assumption underlying much of this research is that social media VGI is “local”, or that its geotags correspond closely with the general home locations of its contributors.
Starting from this assumption, I will highlight several important areas within the special computing domain through different case studies and projects. The course will cover important topics ranging from the characteristic of volunteered geographic information, mobile guides, the creation of interactive maps, to different positing systems.
This theoretical part is completed with a hand-on session on building a “spatial sensor”. We will build a logging device to log environmental data using sensors for climate (weather, air quality), transport (traffic density or noise pollution) and many more phenomena. Basic scripting skills are useful for the second part of the class.
