Author: Manuela Schmidt

Manu is a trained cartographer and worked as an assistant for the research group from 2008 to 2015. She now works as a freelance cartographer and is still involved in the cartography group as a lecturer.
Posted on

CartoTalk Maria Brovelli: Via Regina − Using FOSS4G for slow tourism

We invite you to our first CartoTalk in 2015. Maria Brovelli from Politecnico di Milano will talk about Via Regina − Using FOSS4G for slow tourism.

Abstract: The importance of the tourism industry to the world economy has impressively grown over the last decades, and the paradigm of slow tourism has been emerging as a new way to achieve sustainability through the values of patience, peace of mind, citizens’ participation, environmentally friendly experience as focused on cultural understanding and rediscovery of knowledge. GIS-based technological innovation can be a key element for that purpose and FOSS4G can play a fundamental role.

“The Paths of Via Regina” is an INTERREG project (Cross-border Co-operation Operational Programme Italy – Switzerland 2007-2013) which aims at valorising the cross-border area between Italy and Switzerland covered by many historical paths departing from the historical Via Regina. These ancient routes have represented an important network of communication, cultural and commercial exchange throughout Europe and nowadays can be an important transalpine system of soft mobility links. The project is developed within the context of GeoWeb 2.0, that has opened new possibilities in terms of online dissemination and sharing of geospatial contents. Free and open source tools for processing, cataloguing, querying, editing and Web publishing maps have been used. According to the crowdsourcing paradigm, users not only access information but also become precious data producers. A mobile application through which pedestrian tourists can download forms, fill them along the trip and send them to the server for the final online publication was created. Moreover the Via Regina geoportal makes available two different viewers: a bi-dimensional one (for both traditional computers and mobile devices) and a multidimensional one. Both of them provide all kinds of soft-tourism tools for pedestrian, bicycle and horse travellers. Besides getting useful information from the geoportal for optimally organizing their trips, users can also enrich the geoportal through the contents (e.g. pictures and videos) collected during the trip and shared with the community.

About Maria Antonia Brovelli: Degree with honors in Physics, PhD in Geodesy. Currently Professor of GIS at Politecnico di Milano. From 2006 to 2011 she lectured GIS at the ETH Zurich. From 2001 to 2011 she was the scientific responsible of the Geomatics Laboratory of the Politecnico di Milano. Since 2011 she is Vice Rector for the Como Campus of Politecnico di Milano. She is co-chair of ISPRS WG IV/5 “Web and Cloud Based Geospatial Services and Applications”, Associate Editor of Applied Geomatics Journal (Springer); Member of the Scientific Committee of the Italian Photogrammetric and Topography Society (SIFET); Charter Member of OSGeo; Member of the Advisory Board of the ICA-OSGeo Labs Network.

Friday, 16 January 2015, 11:00
Forschungsgruppe Kartographie
Seminarraum 126

Posted on

Österreichische Runde des Barbara-Petchenik-Wettbewerbes 2015

Die International Cartographic Association (ICA) ruft seit 1993 im zweijährigen Rhythmus zum Barbara-Petchenik-Wettbewerb auf. Ziel des Wettbewerbs ist es, die grafische Repräsentation der Welt durch Kinderhand zu fördern. Der Wettbewerb ist nach der früheren Vizepräsidentin der ICA Barbara Petchenik benannt, deren kartographisches Schaffen vor allem Karten für Kinder gewidmet war. Die nationale Ausschreibung des Wettbewerbs wird von der ÖKK und der Forschungsgruppe Kartographie entsprechend der ICA-Richtlinien organisiert.

Der Wettbewerb 2015 hat das Rahmenthema “My place in today’s world”

Es soll eine dem Anliegen des Wettbewerbs entsprechende möglichst farbige Karte – über die ganze Welt oder einen großen Teil davon – auf Papier mit Buntstiften, Wasserfarben, etc. gezeichnet oder aus anderem Material (z.B. farbige Papiere, Plastik, Karton usw.) hergestellt werden. Die Karte muss von den SchülerInnen selbstständig gezeichnet worden sein.

Die SchülerInnen können allein oder in Gruppen (von maximal drei AutorInnen, alle aus der gleichen Altersgruppe) arbeiten. Beteiligen können sich SchülerInnen, die jünger als 16 Jahre sind. Die vier Altersgruppen sind die folgenden:

  • unter 6 Jahre
  • 6 bis 8 Jahre
  • 9 bis 12 Jahre
  • 13 bis 15 Jahre

Abgabetermin ist der 20. Februar 2015!
Continue reading “Österreichische Runde des Barbara-Petchenik-Wettbewerbes 2015”

Posted on

Presentation of three master theses on 5.12.2014

On Friday, December 5, three of our students successfully completed their studies in the International Master of Cartography (2nd intake) by presenting their theses:

Georg Gartner, Alice Rühl, Anna Vetter and Ekaterina Chuprikova
Georg Gartner, Alice Rühl, Anna Vetter and Ekaterina Chuprikova

Congratulations and all the best for your future!

Posted on

Präsentation von zwei Bachelorarbeiten am 25.11.2014

Wir laden Sie herzlich zur Präsentation von zwei Bachelorarbeiten am Dienstag, 25. November 2014, 13Uhr, ein. 

  • Franz Glaner: Die Möglichkeiten der Nutzung von Airborne-Laserscanning-Daten für die Erstellung von Orientierungslaufkarten
  • Florian Payer: Produktivitätsleistung von Open Source Drawing gegenüber proprietären Gestaltungswerkzeugen für die digitale Kartografie

Ort: Erzherzog-Johann-Platz 1, 4. Stock, Besprechungszimmer des Dekanats für Informatik

Posted on

How much map is in your day?

One of our students – Felix Zaussinger, a bachelor student of Geodesy and Geoinformation – created a nice movie on the omnipresence of maps in his life. Well done, Felix!


So, how much map is in your day?

Posted on

New topics for bachelor’s and master’s theses

Below is a list of possible topics for bachelor’s and master’s theses from our group. In case of interest, please contact the underlined supervisor.

Master: Kartenproduktion mittels unterschiedlicher GIS/DTP-Workflows

Die Anforderungen eines qualitativen Kartenerstellungsprozesses (z.B. für Wander- und Freizeitkarten großen und mittleren Maßstabes) erfordern derzeit noch den Einsatz unterschiedlicher Tools aus GIS- und DTP-Systemen. Mit einem österreichischen Kartenverlag sollen unterschiedliche Vorschläge zur Erhöhung der Effizienz im Produktionsablauf für kartographische Bearbeitungsprozesse erarbeitet werden.

  • Besondere Kenntnisse: Vorkenntnisse kartographischer Desktop Publishing Software (lllustrator, OCAD), GIS-Software (ArcGIS) von Vorteil
  • Besondere Erfordernisse: enge Verknüpfung mit einem oberösterreichischen Kartenverlag
    inkl. eventuellem Aufenthalt erwünscht
  • Betreuer: Gartner, Schmidt

Bachelor: Erstellen eines Basiskartenstils nach Vorlage einer bestehenden Karte

Die Stile einer bestehenden Basiskarte sollen zunächst systematisch erfasst (z.B. mit Hilfe von ScaleMaster-Tabellen) und im Anschluss mit OpenStreetMap-Daten umgesetzt werden.

  • Besondere Kenntnisse: Erfahrung mit OSM und Webmapping-Kenntnisse von Vorteil
  • Betreuer: Gartner, Schmidt

Bachelor: Vergleich frei verfügbarer Verwaltungsgrenzdatensätze

Mittlerweile gibt es eine Reihe frei verfügbarer Grenzdatensätze für Österreich. Von dem weltweit verfügbaren Datensatz Natural Earth über verschiedene aus OpenStreetMap abgeleitete Geometrien, bis hin zu Datensätzen aus administrativen Quellen (BEV, Länder-GIS). In der Arbeit sollen die Unterschiede der Datensätze (Qualität, Aktualität, Lizenz, Provenienz, Verfügbarkeit von Metadaten) herausgearbeitet und einfach verständlich unter CC-Lizenz aufbereitet werden.

  • Betreuer: Gartner, Schmidt, Ledermann

Master: Indoor route planning

Route planning is a basic element in navigation, and aims at computing an optimal route between an origin and a destination. Current indoor route planners often provide users with shortest routes. This research will explore methods to provide routes with other characteristics, such as simplicity and fewest-turns. The main building of TU Wien (or other similar public places) will be used as a test area.

  • Requirements: Interests in data modelling and analysis
  • Supervisor: Gartner, Huang

Master: Indoor semantic wayfinding

Currently, semantic-enriched navigation systems become more and more popular. Instead of providing metric-based route instructions such as “walk straight in 100 meters”, semantic-based navigation systems provide users with semantic-enriched instructions, such as “walk straight, pass the theatre, and walk to the crossing” or simply “cross the park”.  This kind of guidance is more natural to users, and can improve users’ navigation performances. However, current literature only addresses semantic wayfinding for outdoor environment, while the applications in indoor environment have not been approached. This research aims at answering some fundamental questions of indoor semantic wayfinding , such as “what is an indoor landmark?” and “what are the direction and motion concepts used in indoor naivgation?” Methodology and approaches (mainly, field user study) from our previous research project SemWay (mainly for outdoor, refer to the following papers for more details) will be reused for indoor environment. The answers to these fundamental questions can be assembled to build semantically enriched indoor navigation systems.

  • Requirements: Interest in empirical user studies
  • Supervisor: Gartner, Huang

Master: Diagrammatic Maps from OpenStreetMap Data

Rendering diagrammatic and small-scale maps, like depictions of country-wide road or railway networks, requires the generalization of overly detailed geometry as well as the consistent reproduction of network topologies of large geographic extent. In contrast to these requirements, data created in volunteered geographic information (VGI) systems like OpenStreetMap exposes a high level of local geometric and semantic detail, large individual differences in data annotation styles and fragile topological integrity.

The goal of this project is to develop methods for extracting the necessary information to create high-quality diagrammatic & schematic maps from VGI data, to identify relevant use cases and their specific requirements (e.g. road, rail, river networks), to review the literature for suitable approaches and to suggest guidelines for the volunteered geographic information community to improve the data to better support such representations if necessary.

  • Requirements: Scripting/Programmierung, OpenStreetMap-Erfahrung von Vorteil
  • Supervisor: Gartner, Ledermann

Master: NutzerInnen-Test linearer Zeit-Kartogramme

Im Gegensatz zu Isochronen sind lineare Kartogramme eine selten angewandte kartographische Methode. Mittels NutzerInnen-Test sollen die Stärken und Schwächen der Methode im Vergleich zur Isochronen-Darstellung ermittelt werden.

  • Besondere Kenntnisse: Interesse an empirischen NutzerInnen-Studien, Programmierkenntnisse von Vorteil
  • Besondere Erfordernisse: hohe Eigeninitiative
  • Betreuer: Gartner, Schmidt
Posted on

Master thesis presentation by Jan Behrens

Georg Gartner, Jan Behrens, Manuela Schmidt
Georg Gartner, Jan Behrens, Manuela Schmidt

On 21 August 2014, Jan Behrens, student from the International Master in Cartography (2011 intake), successfully completed his master studies by presenting his thesis on the topic of

„Testing the Usability of OpenStreetMap’s iD Tool“

Congratulations, Jan!

His thesis can be online accessed from the TU library.

Unfortunately, Corné van Elzakker from ITC Enschede, who was as an external supervisor for Jan’s thesis could not attend the presentation. We would like to thank him for his excellent support and are looking forward to future cooperation!

Posted on

International Master in Cartography selected for Erasmus+

International Master in CartographyI am happy to inform you that the International Master Programme Cartography – our joint master degree in cooperation with TU Munich, TU Vienna and TU Dresden focusing on modern cartography – has been selected for Erasmus+ by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency. Out of 58 submitted applications, we are one of 9 successful joint master degrees in the “Erasmus Mundus” section.

This means that the International Master in Cartography will be supported by the European Union’s Erasmus+ programme, allowing also the University of Twente to join in. The 5 year grant will help to support a preparatory year (starting in October 2014), followed by three student intakes (2015, 2016, 2017).

The evaluation pointed out the excellence of the exisiting teams in Munich, Vienna and Dresden as well as the professional structure and cooperation. It was also highlighted that the “unique selling point” in offering a Master Programme in Cartography is seen as a most successful strategy.

– Georg Gartner

Posted on

Welcome Timea, Florian and Wangshu

We are happy to introduce our new team members: Timea Turdean, Florian Ledermann and Wangshu Wang. Timea and Florian will both work in the genderATlas project.

Portrait Florian Ledermann
Florian Ledermann started working in our group in June. He has previous research experience in the fields of virtual/augmented reality and information visualization. As a freelance web developer, Florian implemented award-winning web applications for several institutions and independent projects. In the genderATlas project he is responsible for building the technical framework for the atlas.

Portrait Timea Turdean
Timea Turdean started working in our group in May. She wrote her diploma thesis on the topic of Identifying people’s affective responses to the environment from social media data. In the genderATlas project she focusses on social media data analysis.

Portrait Wangshu Wang
Wangshu Wang completed the International Master in Cartography. She wrote her diploma thesis on the topic of Modeling individual’s familiarity of places using social media. She received a PhD scholarship from China Scholarship Council and will work in our group on her PhD in the field of location-based services and cartography.

Welcome!

Privacy Policy Proudly powered by WordPress