Welcome to the website of the Research Unit Cartography at TU Wien. We are one of the seven research units that form the Department of Geodesy and Geoinformation.
We are a proud partner university of the International Master of Cartography.
A group of students from Penn State visited our research group in the second week of May to give a workshop on working with big geospatial data of the pandemic. The workshop started on May 8 with a speech from Prof. Dr. Gartner about the current research in our group and a lecture from Dr. Kessler about his research on map projections. Dr. Kessler and Beth King, from the Geography Department of Penn State, introduced the assignment to students for the workshop: to develop a geographic visualisation of data related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Students were divided into 4 groups: Penn State students were working together with Cartography MSc students.
Besides working on a workshop project, our guests from the Penn State and Cartography MSc students participated in other educational and social activities. On Tuesday, they visited the Globe Museum in Vienna and had dinner together in a traditional Viennese restaurant. On Wednesday PennState students visited the AR lab in the Geoinformation group of our department, where Dr. Marcelo de Lima Galvao presented his research on Geo AI with the Microsoft HoloLens.
The final presentation of the projects was on Thursday at TU Wien. Students produced four exciting projects. The first group, Team Globetrotter, presented an algorithm that ranked EU countries that were most vulnerable to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The prototype dashboard showed three investment areas: hospitals, vaccinations, and information.
The second group, GeoRelief, sought to provide COVID-19 vaccinations for young Ukrainians in response to the ongoing Russian occupation that responds to a clearly defined humanitarian need. They introduced a dashboard that would help determine populations with the most need of COVID-19 vaccines, representing data and tools gleaned from these organisations.
The third group, SeelenGarten, presented a clear mission and vision statement, linking the variables of green spaces with COVID-19 mental health impacts. They presented visuals such as sample geovisualization tools, NDVI details, and data related to the tree canopy and green spaces in their prototype.
The fourth group, Spatial Help, addressed the public health challenge of dealing with the aftermath of COVID-19. This team presented a fact-based characterization of COVID-19’s impact on mental health. Their dashboard’s representation of mental health facilities, showed the location of nearby service providers with the use of a quantitative modelling approach to measure vulnerable populations.
Cartography Research Group thanks the workshop organisers Dr. Kessler, Beth King and Brookelynn Constant as well as the Penn State students for visiting our research group and Cartography MSc students for their fruitful collaboration!
From May 2nd to May 5th, the Erasmus Mundus Master Cartography students received training from Philippe De Maeyer, a professor at Ghent University and an author of school atlases. The training focused on the creation and production of atlases.
In groups, the students examined methods for collecting data for atlas maps and how to make informed decisions about content and visualization. They also critically analyzed multiple atlases available on the market. During the final half-day, the groups presented their conclusions and discussed them with the entire group.
We are pleased to invite you to the concluding conference of our Erasmus+ project, DigiGeo, which will take place on May 24th 2023, in Olomouc. We aim to bring together students and scholars who share an interest in the field of Geosciences within higher education. Specifically, we`d like to explore the impact of the virtual/online/digital transformation era we experienced due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
For more details, visit DigiGeo Conference.
Andrea Binn, University Assistant
Olesia Ignateva, University Assistant
Florian Ledermann, Senior Lecturer
Wangshu Wang, University Assistant
