Cartography M.Sc. graduates Valerian Lange and Josè Pablo Ceballos received 1st and 2nd place in the AGEO Awards 2023 for the best master theses in the Geographic information field in Austria.
The award took place on July 4, at the GI Salzburg Conference at the University of Salzburg. This prize, awarded for the 14th time by the Austrian umbrella organization for geographical information AGEO, pursues the goal of promoting excellent graduates from Austrian universities in the field of spatial information science.
Awardees of the AGEO Awards 2023, Josè Pablo Ceballos is third from the left
Twenty students of the Cartography Master Programme have completed their semester in Vienna. In a farewell session on June 28, we looked back at the semester and the results of the students’ work. As a tradition, we had a students’ map exhibition during that session.We wish our students to enjoy their summer holidays and to return rested and ready for the third semester at TU Dresden!
On June 28, the students of the Cartography Master programme visited the UN office in Vienna (UNOV). The chief of the UN-SPIDER Programme at UNOOSA in Vienna, Lóránt Czárán, gave the students an excursion in the exhibition space in UNOV. Then the visit continued in a conference room, where students listened to the presentations about the geospatial and cartography-related projects in the different UN offices.
Exhibition at UNOOSA, a copy of Neil Armstrong’s costumeExhibition at UNOOSA, a Lunar sample
Coen Bussink from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime gave a presentation, Collection and Sharing of Geospatial Data on Drugs and Crime, where he told how the office helps the national governments monitor drug plant cultivation and wildlife abuse. Ashraf Abushady, Senior Advisor on Digitalisation and AI from the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) showed the presentation on UNIDO Digital Transformation and AI Strategies. It revealed the current trends in industrial development and how UNIDO supports countries in creating sustainable and hi-tech industries. Lóránt Czárán gave a talk about the Coordination of Global Geospatial Information Management across the UN System, where he described the challenges and the outcomes of the recently created UN Geospatial Network’s work. Finally, he presented the projects within the earth observation mission of the UNOOSA.
Coen Bussink, UNODCAshraf Abushady, Senior Advisor on Digitalisation and AI (UNIDO)Lóránt Czárán, the chief of the UN-SPIDER Programme at UNOOSA
The UNOV officers answered all students’ questions about the different offices’ work and the work in the UNOV. They encouraged Cartography Master students to apply for jobs at the UN and advised them on the possible career tracks there. We thank the UNOOSA and Lóránt Czárán for introducing the insides of the comprehensive UN environment!
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.
Prof. Gartner’s presentationDr. Kessler’s introduces the workshopProf. Gartner with guests and Cartography M.Sc. students on the rooftop of the Gußhaus Campus
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.
Dinner at ZwölfApostelKellerVisiting globe museumDr. Marcelo de Lima Galvao presenting the his research of Geo AI
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.
Team GlobetrotterTeam GeoRelief
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.
Team SeelenGartenTeam Spatial Help
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!
Group picture of PennState guests and Cartography M.Sc. students
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.
“Part of my family has roots in the UK, so receiving this award from the British Cartographic Society means a lot to me, also on a personal level.” Florian will invest the prize money of 100£ to expand his personal collection of cartographic books and atlases.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the increasing demand for online education have highlighted the importance of implementing digital approaches in education. In response, the EU-funded ERASMUS+ project DigiGeo has emerged, bringing together the Research Unit Cartography and four international partner universities from Czechia, Norway, Finland and Germany. Together, we are exploring new ways to transfer contact, technology- and field-based geoscience education, which typically requires in-person attendance from both teachers and students, into digital environments.
One aspect of the DigiGeo project is to involve students with their perspectives and ideas. Last week, the second summer school within the project took place at Palacký University in Olomouc, attended by 24 students and 14 lecturers from the respective partner universities. Building on theoretical knowledge and methods presented in earlier online lectures and small workshops, the students worked collaboratively, with the support of all lecturers, to develop new, fully digital thematic lessons for online geoscience training.
We thank all students for their active participation and valuable contributions to this summer school! For more insights on the project, visit the DigiGeo website.
We are happy to host a CartoTalk by our former colleague Prof. Haosheng Huang, Professor of Cartography and GIScience at Ghent University, Belgium. He will be presenting: GeoAI for Mobility Analytics and Prediction.
Thursday, 27.04. 2023, 16:00-17:30 Seminarroom 126, Erzherzog-Johann-Platz 1/120-6, 1040 Wien
Abstract: Incorporating geographic knowledge or concepts into machine learning (ML) might help to reduce the required amount of training data and improve the performance and explainability of ML models. A research theme is currently emerging in GIScience and Cartography regarding the development of geospatial artificial intelligence (GeoAI) techniques for geographic knowledge discovery. This presentation will give a summary of our recent research activities in this domain, with a focus on applications in mobility analytics and prediction.
Haosheng Huang is a Professor in Cartography and GIScience at Ghent University, Belgium. He was previously a senior lecturer and research group leader (2016-2020) at the GIScience Center at the University of Zurich, Switzerland; a researcher and lecturer (2007-2016) at the Research Group Cartography, TU Wien, Austria; and a visiting scholar (2010) at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. Haosheng Huang received his Ph.D. (with Distinction/Honours) in Cartography and Geoinformation from TU Wien in 2013.
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Haosheng Huang is currently the Chair of the ICA Commission on Location-Based Services (Since 2015). He is Associate Editor of the Journal of Location Based Services (Taylor & Francis) and Journal of Maps (Taylor & Francis) and serves as an editorial board member and guest editor at several international journals.
Haosheng Huang’s research interests lie in Cartography and GIScience, particularly on LBS, mobile cartography, spatial cognition, urban informatics, and GeoAI. He has (co-)authored more than 70 refereed research papers published in journals and conference proceedings and has edited 12 books and conference proceedings. He has also been invited as a keynote speaker at several conferences, workshops, and universities. For more details, visit https://users.ugent.be/~haohuang/.
Twenty students from 16 countries will study with us in Vienna for four months. We wish them much exploration in the cartographic field and to enjoy their time in Vienna.
Students of the 12th intake with Prof. Dr. Gartner (left) and the local coordinator of the Vienna semester, Olesia Ignateva, MSc (right).
