Georg Gartner was invited as keynote on the LBS Forum 2015 of the HongKong Government’s LSCM, incubating innovative research development in the area of Location-based Services. The research activities of our Research Group Cartography are of high relevance in this context.
200 cartographers will meet in Vienna
Next week will be a very busy week for our Research Group: We will host the 1st ICA European Symposium on Cartography (EuroCarto). From Tuesday to Thursday participants can expect a dense program of cartographic input. Feel free to scroll through the program on eurocarto.org.
Just before the conference, a meeting of representatives of the International Cartographic Association (ICA) will take place at TU Wien. All ICA commission chairs are invited to join and plan their activities for the next years. This will also include a meeting of the Working Group on the International Map Year (IMY).
On Wednesday, the consortium of the Cartography M.Sc. programme will meet to discuss the future of the Erasmus+ Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree.
genderatlas.at ist online!
Seit Sommer 2013 arbeitet unsere Forschungsgruppe an dem Projekt genderATlas – einem interaktiven Onlineatlas zur Visualisierung geschlechterdifferenzierter Daten für Österreich. Am 22. Oktober fand die Fachtagung “Warum Gleichstellungspolitik einen genderATlas braucht” statt, in deren Rahmen der finale Prototyp des genderATlas veröffentlicht wurde.
In derzeit 13 Karten werden verschiedene Themen aus den Bereichen Arbeit, Bildung, Mobilität, Politik und Gesellschaft aufbereitet, darunter beispielsweise …
- Visualisierung der Bürgermeisterinnen in Österreich – inklusive einer Zeitleiste der Bürgermeisterinnen in Niederösterreich von 1948 bis heute
- Interaktive Straßenkarte von Wien mit Details zur Benennung von Straßen nach Männern bzw. Frauen
- interaktive Karten zu Pendelbewegungen – österreichweit und für die Gemeinden des Burgenlands
Federführend für die technische Umsetzung des genderATlas war Florian Ledermann. Die im Rahmen des Projekts entwickelte API mapmap.js wurde auf der International Cartographic Conference in Rio im Sommer diesen Jahres vorgestellt [Paper].
genderATlas ist eine Kooperation der Forschungsgruppe Kartographie der TU Wien (Projektleitung, technisch-kartographische Umsetzung) mit dem Institut für Geographie und Regionalforschung der Universität Wien (Inhaltliche Aufbereitung und Evaluierung) und der ÖIR Projekthaus GmbH (Datenpool und Betriebskonzept). Das Projekt wurde im Rahmen der Programmlinie FEMtech Forschungsprojekte des BMVIT gefördert.
Wir freuen uns über das enorme Medienecho, u.a. von ORF Science, ö1 Mittagsjournal, Kurier und dieStandard.
Summary: Over the last two years, the Research Group Cartography worked on project genderATlas – an online atlas of Austria that visualizes data about the life situations of women and men in their regional distribution in an innovative and easily accessible way. The final prototype was published on October 22 at genderatlas.at (German only).
Great student projects, summer semester 2015
After a busy summer semester we would like to showcase a selection of extraordinary projects from the classes Webmapping, Multimedia Cartography, Project Map Creation and Applied Cartography:
- Indy Wien Map Guide by Myles Cook (pdf, 12mb), Project Map Creation
- Hiking map for Brdy Hills by Vlach Pavel (pdf, 11mb), Project Map Creation
- Tombstone Territorial Park Map by Allie Strel (pdf, 12mb), Project Map Creation
- Prater Running Map by Aleksandra Draksler (pdf, 24mb), Project Map Creation
- Typographic Map of Vienna by Shuoyan Huang (pdf, 9mb), Project Map Creation
- Thematic Map about Vorderland-Feldkirch (pdf, 2mb) by Lisa Ertl, Applied Cartography (assignment)
- Thematic Map about Asylum seekers in Europe 2010–2014 (pdf, 5mb) by Katharina Berger, Applied Cartography (assignment)
- kaffein.wien by Isaak Granzer and Gabriel Neuner, Web Mapping (group project)
- Krkonoše MTB Track by Pavel Vlach and Jakub Jaroš, Web Mapping (group project)
- Designing animated maps with the map reader in mind by Silvia Klettner, Multimedia Cartography
A huge thanks to all students for their hard work! Enjoy the summer.
Projects from earlier semesters can be found here: summer 2014 | winter 2014 | 2013 | 2012
Farewell to the fourth intake of the International Master on Cartography
The fourth intake of the International Master Programme on Cartography has finished the “Vienna Semester” and is now heading to TU Dresden for the third semester. We organized a farewell session to review the semester and to showcase results of their hard work in this semester.
We wish them all the best!
To find out more about the International Master in Cartography, please visit cartographymaster.eu.
CartoTalk Wilhelm Berg: New developments in webmapping with Mapbox
We were very happy to host a CartoTalk by Wilhelm Berg, developer at Mapbox.
Abstract: Mapbox is a service provider offering map tiles – similar to Google, Microsoft or Apple. However, Mapbox puts a lot of focus on making it easy for developers to design custom maps for the web or mobile.
Mapbox is based on open data (OpenStreetMap) and open software, which is available on Github. Currently, over 470 repositories are offered, which cover a broad spectrum of functionalities from mapbox.js (based on Leaflet), to iOS C++ SDK, Android C++ SDK and Mapbox Studio (map design tool).
The talk will introduce some of the innovative solutions, which are created and published based on this, such as a cloudless atlas, Landsat live, MBTiles specifications, UTFGrid specifications and vector tile specifications.
Being a geographer and hydrologist by education Wilhelm Berg has used and programmed GIS since day one of his studies at university. For his company BergWerk GIS he has developed big data solutions ranging from desktop to web and mobile. Since 1,5 years he is partnering with Mapbox to ensure key Mapbox tools (mapnik, osmium, OSRM, Mapbox Studio, …) deliver the same performance and stability on Windows as on other operating systems.
Wednesday, 17 June 2015, 15:00
Forschungsgruppe Kartographie
Seminarraum 126
CartoTalk David Fairbairn: Archaeological landscape characterisation using LiDAR data
We are happy to invite you to a CartoTalk by our guest professor David Fairbairn from Newcastle University. The CartoTalk is organized in conjunction with the research seminar of the Research Group Photogrammetry.
Archaeological landscape characterisation using LiDAR data
Abstract: The contemporary availability of high-resolution, high-accuracy digital terrain models sourced from LiDAR data collection exercises has allowed archaeologists and other landscape scientists to examine landscapes of interest in more detail and in a more quantitative manner. This talk describes some initial examination of human-influenced (i.e. disturbed) landscapes in northern England from various periods in history, with reference to LiDAR-sourced data, and speculates whether it will be possible to use further non-geometric characteristics of the LiDAR data to derive additional information about such landscapes. The methods of representation of such disturbed landscapes are also considered.
David Fairbairn has been employed by the Newcastle University since 1978. A wide variety of geospatial data handling issues have been of research interest over that period, including the structuring and presentation of terrain data, the quantification and use of indices of map complexity, the effective visualisation of map designs, the linkage between mapping and navigation, and issues connected to crowdsourcing and cartographic requirements for SDIs.
Tuesday, 26 May 2015, 14:00, Seminar room 122
Gusshausstraße 27-29, 3rd floor, wing CC
Summer job in the cartography group
Thank you for your interest. We filled the vacancy.
Nachschau des TU200-Orientierungslaufs
Anlässlich des 200-Jahr-Jubiläums der Technischen Universität Wien organisierte die Forschungsgruppe Kartographie des Departments für Geodäsie und Geoinformation gemeinsam mit dem Orientierungslaufverein OL Ströck Wien einen Orientierungslauf rund um das Hauptgebäude der TU Wien. Bei bestem Wetter nahmen mehr als 100 TU-KollegInnen daran teil.
Viele davon versuchten sich erstmals im Orientierungslauf. Beinahe alle wurden schon bald vom OL-typischen Ehrgeiz gepackt, die auf einer extra angefertigten Orientierungslaufkarte im Maßstab 1:3.000 eingezeichneten Kontrollposten möglichst rasch zu finden. Dabei mussten Innenhöfe durchquert werden, Routenwahlen getroffen werden und die an diversen TU-relevanten Punkten angebrachten Kontrollpunkte durch einen am Finger angebrachten Chip ausgelöst werden.
Die schnellsten Laufzeiten durch Alexander Berger (Physik), Martin Pongratz (Elektrotechnik) und Franz Glaner (Geodäsie und Geoinformation) betrugen knapp über 5 Minuten. Diese Läufer sind allerdings “Orientierungslaufprofis”, wie es generell erstaunlich viele TU-Angehörige gibt, die Orientierungslauf betreiben. Vielleicht ist die Kombination aus physischer und mentaler Herausforderung dabei besonders attraktiv.
Die besten Läufer unter jenen, die OL zum ersten Mal betrieben haben, waren:
Damen:
- Lydia Jahn (E226) 7:54
- Anita Gerstenmayer (ASC) 8:38
- Aleksandra Draksler (E120/6) 10:10
Herren:
- Andreas Bauernfeind (KUS ÖBV) 5:11
- Benedikt Regner (Student) 6:17
- Matus Trnovec (Eletrotechnik) 7:01
Teams:
- SC 42 Kitzbühel 7:04
- E206/4 7:15
- E230, DK URBEM 8:27

Fotos: © Paul Grün, weitere Bilder | detaillierte Ergebnisse
CartoTalk Eleonora Ciceri: Humans in the loop – Optimization of active and passive crowdsourcing
We invite you to our next CartoTalk by Eleonora Ciceri from Politecnico di Milano.
Abstract: Humans in the loop: Optimization of active and passive crowdsourcing Abstract: Crowdsourcing has become a hot topic in the last years: many companies base their core business on it and computer scientists study how to optimize it. Yet, there still are unsolved questions that need to be answered. On the one hand, in an active crowdsourcing context (i.e., the one in which workers actively contribute by solving tasks on crowdsourcing marketplaces) there is the need of identifying among all the possible tasks the ones that are useful (i.e., which ones bring additional knowledge and information) and discard the others. On the other hand, in a passive crowdsourcing context (i.e., the one in which we analyze user-generated content), if someone is in need of identifying topic-related content and influencers (i.e., people that influence other users in thoughts and actions), it is important to identify content features and users behaviors that an automatic pipeline could exploit to find relevant content and influential users without the help of humans. In this brief seminar, we will discuss what crowdsourcing really is, and we will cover these aspects, presenting some of the results that we achieved with our research.
Eleonora Ciceri is a Post-Doc researcher at Politecnico di Milano, Italy. She had a BSc degree in 2009, an MSc degree in 2011, and a doctoral degree in Computer Science Engineering at Politecnico di Milano. Her research interests are top-K query processing, social media, crowdsourcing, human computation and multimedia.
Friday, 8 May 2015, 14:00
Forschungsgruppe Kartographie
Seminarraum 126