Farewell to the 12th intake of the Cartography Master students

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!

Cartography Master students visit the UN office in Vienna

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.

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.

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!

Cartography Master students with Lóránt Czárán

Penn State’s pandemic visualization workshop for Cartography MSc students

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!

Group picture of PennState guests and Cartography M.Sc. students

Workshop on Atlases with Philippe De Maeyer

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.

DigiGeo Final Conference in Olomouc

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.

© Vít Pászto | Palacký University Olomouc

Henry Johns Award for Florian Ledermann

Congratulations to Florian Ledermann for winning the Henry Johns Award of the British Cartographic Society, awarded yearly for the best paper published in The Cartographic Journal. Florian’s paper “The Effect of Display Pixel Density on the Minimum Legible Size of Fundamental Cartographic Symbols” was chosen as the best paper of the year 2022.

“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.

Second Summer School of the Erasmus+ project DigiGeo

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.

CartoTalk by Haosheng Huang

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/.

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Welcome the 12th intake of the Cartography Master!

On the 7th of March, a new intake of the International Master in Cartography program started a new semester at the Research Unit Cartography of the TU Wien.

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).

CartoTalk by Maria Antonia Brovelli

We are happy to host a CartoTalk by Prof. Maria A Brovelli, Professor of “GIS” and “The Copernicus Green Revolution for sustainable development” at Politecnico di Milano (PoliMI). She will be presenting the Insubri.parks project and the GeoCollectorBot.

Tuesday, 17.01. 2023, 10:00-11:00
Seminarroom 126, Erzherzog-Johann-Platz 1/120-6, 1040 Wien 

Abstract:
Green areas such as natural and peri-urban parks provide support to biodiversity and landscape preservation while boosting local economic growth in their hosting territories, thanks to the establishment of eco-tourism activities. Smart management and promotion actions are vital for the sustainable exploitation of such benefits for citizens and visitors. These tasks may be hindered by a lack of economic resources and digital skills of public authorities but also by fragmented local political contexts to which these areas may be subjected. The parks in the Insubria region (between Southern Switzerland and Northern Italy) represent a relevant example of the above.

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The INSUBRIPARKS project aims at the harmonisation of management and promotion practices for the Insubria parks. The project activities encompass multiple actions, from the establishment of unified territorial marketing strategies to the development of supporting IT tools. Accordingly, the seminar provides an overview of the IT tools ecosystem which was designed and developed within the project and an outlook on its role in empowering smart monitoring and promotion for these parks. Tools include a Web portal (enriched with Web mapping components) for a unified presentation of the tourism offers, an analysis framework for social media data exploitation in park visitors’ fluxes assessment, and a mobile tool for users’ engagement in the park areas monitoring. The mobile app GeoCollectorBot will be presented in detail and will be used in the training.

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Maria Antonia Brovelli is a Professor of “GIS” and “The Copernicus Green Revolution for sustainable development” at Politecnico di Milano (PoliMI) and a member of the School of Doctoral Studies in Data Science at “Roma La Sapienza” University.

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From 2006 to 2011 she lectured GIS at the ETH of Zurich and from 1997 to 2011 she was the Head of the Geomatics Laboratory of PoliMI (Campus Como). From 2011 to 2016 she was the Vice-Rector of PoliMI for the Como Campus. Currently she is the coordinator of the Copernicus Academy Network for the PoliMI and the Head of the GEOLab, the Interdepartmental Lab where 7 Departments of POLIMI are contributing

She is Vice President of the  ISPRS Technical Commission on Spatial Information Science, former member of ESA ACEO (Advisory Committee of Earth Observation); co-chair of the United Nations Open GIS Initiative, chair of the UN-GGIM (Global Geospatial Information Management) Academic Network, mentor of the PoliMI Chapter of YouthMappers (PoliMappers), one of the three curators of the geospatial series of the AI for Good, organized by ITU in partnership with 40 UN Sister Agencies.

Her research activity is in the field of geomatics. Her interests have been various, starting from geodesy, radar-altimetry and moving later to GIS, webGIS, geospatial web platform, VGI, Citizen Science, Big Geo Data, geoAI. She is participating and leading research on these topics within the frameworks of both national and international projects and scientific networks. One of her main interests is in Open-Source GIS, where she is playing a worldwide leading role.

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