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This Themed Intervention consists of short papers written by nine plenary speakers at the 2024 Annual Conference of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers plus a paper by the Society's Cartographic Collections Manager. In this introduction, I explain why I chose mapping as the conference Chair's theme. I give a sense of how the relationship between geography and mapping has been addressed through previous conference addresses and themes. I then explore three types of cartographic genealogies. The first shows how histories of cartography traditionally took the form of family trees. The second explores disjunctures between previous phases of cartography and brings us to current definitions of mapping. The third genealogy is that of previously subjugated forms of mapping knowledge and practice which are now defining features of the field (critical quantitative; empire, race, and Indigenous; counter‐; representational and more‐than‐representational). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the influence of digitalization on different modes of peer selection in public sector benchmarking. We do so in the context of a field study of the impact of "Kolada"—a digital database and benchmarking device comparing the performance of Swedish municipalities. We find that the municipal quality controllers often used algorithmically selected peer groups to identify "pure" performance gaps for a range of performance indicators. Politicians, departmental managers, and the citizenry, however, continued to prefer benchmarking against neighboring municipalities. Drawing on Gieryn's concept of cultural cartography, differences in peer selection are characterized as a form of credibility contest between digitally generated and local maps. Our paper contributes to the literature in three main ways. First, we demonstrate how peer selection involves a mutual interplay between new digitally generated, abstract maps of performance and local cartographic legacies sustained by complex social attachments. Second, our paper illustrates the importance of often overlooked social ties informing processes of peer selection, highlighting the importance of professional ties, neighborly familiarity, and affective relations. Third, our paper characterizes the power of "native truths." More generally, our paper indicates the epistemic authority of digital "truths" is contestable and may be resisted. Ultimately, the coexistence of "old" and new epistemic maps confers choice, which contributes to the legitimacy of new technologies enabling digitalized benchmarking to persist in shifting and locally meaningful ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a review of open data research based on bibliometric analysis of publications in Web of Science from 1998 to 2016. It shows that research on open data has grown rapidly since 2009 with the development of various open data initiatives. We identify the different themes using science mapping and performance analysis. The most important themes are semantic web, open government, and crowdsourcing. The basic and transversal themes are data sharing and public sector information. As for the emerging themes, these are Big Data and open government data. In addition, data journalism, monitoring, and recommender systems are specific themes that deserve special attention. The UK and the USA are the leading publishing countries, both in theoretical and practical research on open data. In China, most researchers focus on practical research, and there have been efforts to promote the development of open data. Papers introducing large‐scale projects receive more attention and citation quickly. Recently, researchers have been publishing more on objective topics, including possible issues and dilemmas in the era of Big Data and many problems such as budgets, ownership, licensing, culture, and sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a reflection on the design ethos and process behind the production of the Subjective Atlas of Palestine – the third of 15 Subjective Atlases that I have facilitated over the past 20 years as a graphic designer and initiator. They are bottom‐up cartographic publications that map countries, regions, or cities through the perspectives of local inhabitants, emerging from participative production processes where communities map their environment through myriad visualisations, such as graphs, maps, drawings, and photography. Unlike conventional mapping, this methodology for counter‐mapping fosters a place‐based understanding grounded in lived experiences, and promotes plural representation. How can designers facilitate collective imagination as a practice for counter‐mapping and reterritorialisation? In solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for a life of dignity and justice, I reiterate the creation and dissemination of the Subjective Atlas of Palestine as a timely reminder of cartography's implication in generating and sustaining a violent geopolitical order in Palestine–Israel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maps are politically, socially, and culturally inflected objects that can communicate information and teach us about the time and society that shaped them. They are not only tools to serve present needs, but are also rich historical sources that require curation, conservation, and care. This historical legacy is well represented in the map collection of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG). The stewardship of these historical maps offers many challenges, but also an opportunity for education, for example on the complex history of empire, and collaboration, for example with artists. This paper highlights the varied work of the RGS in the preservation and promotion of its large collection of maps, charts, and globes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As social scientists become increasingly aware of the limits of dominant models of subjectivity to address contemporary social, cultural, and environmental problems, Felix Guattari's emphasis on the machinic and processual dimensions of subjective production offers crucial insights. This paper explores the potential of Guattari's evocation of the "cosmos" for the reconceptualisation of subjectivity. Among the various concepts of exteriority that Guattari employs throughout his work, the notion of the cosmos evokes the ungrounding effects of encounters with radically unfamiliar ontological universes. The paper invents the notion of cosmic subjectivity as a way of theorising a mode of subjective production that draws from a maximum of ontological universes. Open to the diverse existential rhythms and durations of the universe, cosmic subjectivity abandons the myth of an a priori subject and rejects the universal sense of time that provides its ground. To speak of cosmic subjectivity is to entertain the possibility of subjective processes that are not subjugated to the dominant order, but become compatible with immanent processes of mutation. To give flesh to these claims, the paper briefly explores three science fiction films released in recent years, which gesture, in significantly different ways, beyond the human: War for the Planet of the Apes, Blade Runner 2059 and Arrival. Our use of the films is not meant to provide an outline of a new model of subjectivity, but to give a sense of the complexities of keeping subjective production open to the indeterminate forces of other ontological universes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a commentary on the theme section entitled "Troubling Institutions at the Nexus of Care and Control." Using the recent book Matters of Care (2017) by Maria Puig de la Bellacasa as a reference point, the authors of the commentary introduce the project of exploring how care and control admix across a range of institutional geographies, reflecting complex assemblages of places, peoples, practices and problems. Taking seriously the prompt by the section editors to think about the "troubling" of institutions, the authors draw provisional distinctions between those that are "troubled" and those that are "troublesome," mapping across to the range of more‐or‐less institutional – more‐or‐less carceral – spaces considered in the papers comprising the theme section. The commentary concludes with attention, inspired by Donna Haraway's notion of "staying with the trouble," to the task of staying both with the troubles bundled up in institutional landscapes and, indeed, with the very idea and practice of institutions themselves. This paper provides a commentary on the special section entitled 'Troubling Institutions at the Nexus of Care and Control.' Using the recent book Matters of Care (2017) by Maria Puig de la Bellacasa as a reference point, the authors of the commentary introduce the project of exploring how care and control admix across a range of institutional geographies, reflecting complex assemblages of places, peoples, practices and problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on several symposiums, conferences and summit related to photogrammetry in 2014 and 2015 including the International Society for Digital Earth summit, International LiDAR Mapping Forum, and the Videometrics conference.

Urbanization has amplified the importance of three‐dimensional structures in urban environments for a wide range of phenomena that are of significant interest to diverse stakeholders. With the growing availability of 3D urban data, numerous studies have focused on developing visual analysis techniques tailored to the unique characteristics of urban environments. However, incorporating the third dimension into visual analytics introduces additional challenges in designing effective visual tools to tackle urban data's diverse complexities. In this paper, we present a survey on visual analytics of 3D urban data. Our work characterizes published works along three main dimensions (why, what, and how), considering use cases, analysis tasks, data, visualizations, and interactions. We provide a fine‐grained categorization of published works from visualization journals and conferences, as well as from a myriad of urban domains, including urban planning, architecture, and engineering. By incorporating perspectives from both urban and visualization experts, we identify literature gaps, motivate visualization researchers to understand challenges and opportunities, and indicate future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several English‐language adaptations of the Indian epic Rāmāyaṇa have been published since the beginning of the 21st century. The epic has been regarded and recreated as a metonym for the Indian nation. Contemporary versions have often referred to Indian geography and have tried to poetically or literally associate mythic spaces with real ones. In this paper, I use discourse analysis in order to study some of the most influential 21st‐century English‐language retellings of the Rāmāyaṇa. I conclude that these and other versions of the epic describe India as a regionally divided nation which can ultimately be united through national geography, its association with mythology and the contrast between the geography of India and that of foreign nations. In this sense, I regard these contemporary versions as a ‘literary pilgrimage’ through which Indian readers can get to know the geography of their nation and regard it as sacred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines militant research through the lens of several challenges the author faced when experimenting with it as part of their PhD research. It engages with ongoing debates about the role and complexity of militant methodologies within‐against‐beyond the university. Specifically it suggests that the political economy of the academy is a challenge to militant research through the growing influence of the law of value within increasingly marketised academic contexts. The paper argues that the academic‐recuperation‐machine has the potential to assimilate what it terms the “minor knowledge” created through militant research within its circuits of institutionalisation and commodification, becoming just another output or tool in the toolbox. Relatedly it suggests these challenges do not simply require a reflection on positionality vis‐à‐vis academia/activism, but a collective struggle around academic labour in against‐beyond the university and how militant researcher might remain “in but not of” the neoliberal university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Categorising tasks is a common pursuit in the visualisation research community, with a wide variety of taxonomies, typologies, design spaces, and frameworks having been developed over the last three decades. While these classifications are universally purported to be useful in both the design and evaluation processes and in guiding future research, remarkably little attention has been paid to how these frameworks have-and can be-constructed and evaluated. In this paper we review the task classification literature and report on current practices in construction and evaluation. We consider the stages of task classification construction and identify the associated threats to validity arising at each stage and in response to the different methods employed. We provide guidance on suitable validation approaches in order to mitigate these threats. We also consider the appropriateness of evaluation strategies according to the different aspects of the classification which they evaluate. In so doing, we seek to provide guidance for developers of classifications in determining appropriate construction and evaluation strategies when developing a classification, and also for those selecting between competing classifications for use in the design and evaluation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In scientific research, reproducibility and replicability are requirements to ensure the advancement of our body of knowledge. This holds true also for VGI-related research and studies. However, the characteristics of VGI suggest particular difficulties in ensuring reproducibility and replicability. In this article, we aim to examine the current situation in VGI-related research, and identify strategies to ensure realization of its full potential. To do so, we first investigate the different aspects of reproducibility and replicability and their impact on VGI-related research. These impacts are different depending on the objectives of the study. Therefore, we examine the study focus of VGI-related research to assess the current body of research and structure our assessment. This work is based on a rigorous review of the elements of reproducibility and a systematic mapping and analysis of 58 papers on the use of VGI in the crisis management field. Results of our investigation show that reproducibility issues related to data are a serious concern, while reproducibility issues related to analysis methods and processes face fewer challenges. However, since most studies still focus on analyzing the source data, reproducibility and replicability are still an unsolved problem in VGI-related research. Therefore, we show initiatives tackling the problem, and finally formulate strategies to improve the situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the improvement in digital mapping technologies and their accessibility, a great potential for the mapping of new things is emerging, as is the case with literary mapping. Drawing from a manifold theoretical framework, this article aims to involve readers from different fields of study in the complexity of literary cartography in the digital era. Starting from recent studies regarding the relationships between literature and cartography and from the ontogenetic turn in map studies, the article examines digital literary mapping projects where cartographic representations are produced by readers as analytical tools and/or as reading practices for literary texts. In order to uncover the trends of literary mappings, the paper focuses on three different processes/elements of the practice: projects' processes of data collection, the tools used to map out texts, and the developers of the projects. Beyond involving the reader with the state of this practice, the paper aims at providing hints for future literary mapping practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Property speculation has long served a role in the settler colonial appropriation of land and the racialised uneven development of contemporary cities. This future‐oriented approach to property acquisition and management is underpinned by notions of vacancy that erase past and present forms of possession and associate racialised spaces with lack and risk. Efforts to define, represent, and manage the speculative value of "vacant" properties through predictive mapping work to colonise the future in ways that erase the present and past. In this paper, I reflect on the role of speculative cartographies of property in both reifying and undermining normative urban property regimes. Specifically, I examine the city of Philadelphia's use of cartographic tools to identify "likely" property vacancy and how they relate to ongoing racialised dispossession. I then turn to consider the potential of speculative (counter) cartographies of property to contribute to new political realities, not just prevailing geographies. To do so, I engage with the work of artists and activists who are using mapmaking grounded in Afrofuturism to reclaim and reimagine the space‐times of properties deemed by city officials and developers to be "empty" or "wasted." I suggest that while speculative cartographies of property facilitate the consolidation of liberal property regimes, they also allow for their disruption by revealing their situatedness and contingency – and by facilitating alternative visions of urban futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims at providing an overview of recent scholarship from the last 3 decades on boundary‐making, borders, and the territorial shaping of modern states between the eighteenth and the twentieth centuries. Scholarship in various languages (namely English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian) and from various fields of inquiry will be reviewed in order to highlight their shared themes and common concerns from a comparatist, transdisciplinary, and international perspective. We contend that the field has seen an improvement in knowledge about boundary‐making, methodological changes, and a widening of primary sources and research materials. As a result, conventional narratives on state‐building, as well as the accompanying understanding of boundary lines as the mere result of institutional imposition by central state agencies, have been nuanced and enriched. We claim that expanding on these remarkable outcomes of recent scholarship on boundary‐making would help to further bridge the gap between traditional/geohistorical and postmodern/contemporary approaches to border studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Antipode is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper reviews the Bayesian melding approach while a companion technical report cited in the paper gives technical details about the Gibbs sampling algorithm used to implement the model and software developed for the research reported in this paper and available online can enable the method's use in other applications. This paper critically assesses the use of melding for mapping ozone concentration fields for possible future use in setting regulatory standards. This assessment has two stages. First a simulation study validates the computer code and goes on to investigate properties of the melding approach in situation where the 'truth' is known. Then it is critically tested on a ozone mapping application using ozone data from the air quality system (AQS) database and simulated data from the multiscale air quality simulation platform (MAQSIP) chemical transportation model for ozone. In all cases, the melding is testing against Kriging, a simpler and more traditional way of mapping spatial fields. Conclusions and recommendations for future work are provided. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper proposes an improvement on underwater vehicles control strategy using an adaptive sliding‐mode method. This improvement is threefold. First, water current compensation is explicitly dealt within in the control law. Second, a nonlinear parameterization is developed by employing new methods for the design of the sliding surface, aiming at vehicles tracking performance. Third, parameters of the designed sliding surface in the control law are varied according to a nonlinear mapping of thruster forces aimed to energy saving of propulsion system. Three different methods are given for the design of the sliding surface. The proposed control law guarantees global asymptotic stability of the tracking error, and the stability proof is provided in the paper even in the presence of variable currents. Moreover, the tracking performance and energy saving are compared with conventional methodologies to show the effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interview transcript can be a rich source of geographical references whose potential are not always fully realised in their conventional analysis. Geo‐referencing techniques can be used to assign a spatial footprint to place names, adding value to these data and allowing the geographic information within them to be exploited when coupled with GIS technology. This paper discusses a method of analysing and visualising interview transcripts in order to understand the spatial extent of public policy practitioners' activities. Through aggregation and statistical mapping it is possible to gain insight into the importance of space across a range of public policy themes and to understand the relationship between practitioner‐defined policy themes and the formal administrative boundaries within which they typically work. The research demonstrates that spatial working practices rarely conform to formal administrative boundaries and that there are varying degrees of spatial focus between different policy themes within localities. It also reveals that spatial working practices can continue to be influenced by historic geographies and can be pulled in different directions, reflecting both the devolved nature of the sector and the particular geographical context of the setting. It concludes that mapping the interview transcript can add value and provide additional insights to more conventional analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a labor-saving method to construct optimal facial animation blendshapes from given blendshape sketches and facial motion capture data. At first, a mapping function is established between target “Marker Face” and performer's face by RBF interpolating selected feature points. Sketched blendshapes are transferred to performer's “Marker Face” by using motion vector adjustment technique. Then, the blendshapes of performer's “Marker Face” are optimized according to the facial motion capture data. At last, the optimized blendshapes are inversely transferred to target facial model. Apart from that, this paper also proposes a method of computing blendshape weights from facial motion capture data more accurately. Experiments show that expressive facial animation can be acquired. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a Learning-based Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (LB-NMPC) algorithm to achieve high-performance path tracking in challenging off-road terrain through learning. The LB-NMPC algorithm uses a simple a priori vehicle model and a learned disturbance model. Disturbances are modeled as a Gaussian process (GP) as a function of system state, input, and other relevant variables. The GP is updated based on experience collected during previous trials. Localization for the controller is provided by an onboard, visionbased mapping and navigation system enabling operation in large-scale, GPS-denied environments. The paper presents experimental results including over 3 km of travel by three significantly different robot platforms with masses ranging from 50 to 600 kg and at speeds ranging from 0.35 to 1.2 m/s (associated video at http://tiny.cc/RoverLearnsDisturbances). Planned speeds are generated by a novel experience-based speed scheduler that balances overall travel time, path-tracking errors, and localization reliability. The results show that the controller can start from a generic a priori vehicle model and subsequently learn to reduce vehicle- and trajectory-specific path-tracking errors based on experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While maps have long been influential in the dissemination of geopolitical ideas, the critical geopolitical project often frames maps as evidence of the discourse it seeks to displace. As a result, very few maps appear on the pages of the field's most prominent journals. This paper explores this phenomenon and argues that novel approaches to mapping may actually strengthen critical geopolitical scholarship. We argue that scholars can learn much from contemporary approaches in critical cartography to provide geopolitical analysis with new, informative visualizations. We demonstrate this argument with an alternative cartographic representation of Kashmir. This paper makes two key contributions to critical geopolitics: (i) that alternative cartographic representations are well suited to aid in critiques of normative geopolitical ideas and (ii) that the map presented in this paper is but one way to illustrate emerging critical geopolitical scripts. Our hope is that this brief intervention to 'take back the map' will encourage like-minded scholars to (re)consider the merits of maps in articulating geopolitical narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the tensions involved in the production, presentation and revision of hazard maps, focusing on the controversies that have become increasingly common when they are used to change government policy. Our scope includes all the major environmental hazards currently being mapped in New Zealand, one of the world's most exposed and hazard‐aware countries. Selecting one country also allowed a multi‐hazard approach to be taken that helps provide messages for other countries. Drawing on interviews with 24 key informants, the paper identifies a range of reasons for explaining the recent growth in hazard mapping and why hazard maps sometimes resulted in high‐profile controversies. Two themes emerged out of this analysis: an inconsistency in modelling and mapping hazards that created opportunity for challenge and the selective mobilisation of scientific uncertainty to dispute the legitimacy of official maps, particularly on developed land. The findings highlight the multiple roles of mapping, positioning maps as potentially instruments of both depoliticisation and repoliticisation. We emphasise how conflicts are most likely when maps are used as technocratic instruments of depoliticisation, and that creating maps in a more open way can generate valuable opportunities to engage with communities in more creative policy‐making regarding the threats they face and how they can respond. Mapping processes that open up the space for critical debate can act as important debate‐support tools as well as decision‐support tools, particularly when used to give voice to those not normally heard or treated as equal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Recently, a lot of studies on identifier‐locator mapping management for mobility control have been proposed. However, these studies did not consider the Internet‐of‐Things (IoT) environment. Thus, from the viewpoint of identifier‐locator mapping management for IoT devices, the existing schemes are still subject to scalability problems and performance degradation. In this paper, we propose a domain‐based identifier‐locator mapping management for IoT devices in a distributed manner, in which an identifier of IoT device represents the domain to which it belongs. Each domain gateway maintains the mapping information of identifiers and locators based on the domain information contained in the identifier. From the numerical analysis and testbed experimentation, we see that the proposed domain‐based distributed identifier‐locator mapping management scheme provides better performance than the existing schemes in terms of total delay, including registration delay and data delivery delay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Geographer is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper we study envy-free division problems. The classical approach to such problems, used by David Gale, reduces to considering continuous maps of a simplex to itself and finding sufficient conditions for this map to hit the center of the simplex. The mere continuity of the map is not sufficient for reaching such a conclusion. Classically, one makes additional assumptions on the behavior of the map on the boundary of the simplex (e.g., in the Knaster–Kuratowski– Mazurkiewicz and the Gale theorem). We follow Erel Segal-Halevi, Frédéric Meunier, and Shira Zerbib, and replace the boundary condition by another assumption, which has the meaning in economy as the possibility for a player to prefer an empty part in the segment partition problem. We solve the problem positively when n, the number of players that divide the segment, is a prime power, and we provide counterexamples for every n which is not a prime power. We also provide counterexamples relevant to a wider class of fair or envy-free division problems when n is odd and not a prime power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Map-making by air photography: 1920 In the context of the air photography article, Lord Burnham, mentioned in Lawrence's letter to Newcombe, may have been pivotal. It no doubt prompted Newcombe's writing of the 1920 newspaper article (incorrectly attributed to Lawrence), which is essentially a much-abridged form of his paper in I The Geographical Journal i (Newcombe, 1920). [Extracted from the article]

Despite the importance of national borders in the process of European integration and its destiny, border areas remain relatively misrecognised. This is particularly true as regards the contemporary geography of border cities across Europe. It is therefore difficult to assess what importance border cities and cross-border urban regions have and how they have evolved in parallel with the transformation of European borders. The aim of this paper is to highlight the urban dimension of border regions in Europe and, in particular, the diversity of configurations present. Through an original cartography of border cities, we hope to draw the attention of the research community interested in borders and border regions to an unfamiliar aspect of European borderlands and some of the issues and questions it raises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Photogrammetric Record is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper examines the relationship between collaborative disaster mapping and conceptions of risk. It looks at the practice of mapmaking during the 2007 wildfires in Southern California to explore sociotechnological issues in creating a shared understanding. By comparing and contrasting how two different, yet intertwined, maps were made this paper focuses on how the sociotechnical acts of alignment necessary for the production of the maps change how risk, threat and uncertainty are approached. One mapmaking practice pulled the actors into a more centralized alignment producing risks related to managing authority and security. The other provided a more distributed collaboration and produced risks related to public trust and consistency. This paper argues that mapmaking is characterized as a messy, distributed network of knowledge production in which the meaning of risk emerges through the collaborations that evolve in making sense of the wildfires, not as an a priori definition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a national analysis of coastal land use change in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It compares a survey conducted by volunteers in 1965 with the 2014 update created using digital topographic data and aerial photography in an open source GIS. The paper reviews the origins and impacts of differences in the way that land use classes are measured and reported, and highlights a generic issue when comparing thematic data. This is, that thematic data are frequently subject to changes in the way that classes are conceived, measured and classified with the result that similarly named classes in different datasets may have very different spatial extents with very different meanings and underlying semantics, even when there is little difference in reality. The sources and nature of such variation in landscape conceptualisations are discussed and placed into the context of historical GIS ( HGIS) analyses of thematic change. The critical issue is the need to separate actual differences on the ground from artefactual differences arising from methodological inconsistencies to support robust statistical analyses. A set of rubrics for updating historical thematic data is suggested to minimise the potential for such inconsistencies. These are applied to the National Trust's 1965 Neptune coastal land use survey and its 2014 update to quantify land use changes. The results describe the magnitude and direction of change, provide insights into the developmental pressures experienced at the coast and demonstrate the positive impacts of the Trust's management. Of potentially wider research interest to the HGIS and related research communities is the consideration of methods for mapping and quantifying thematic and areal changes. This is an underdeveloped research area in HGIS, when compared with the extensive methods for dealing with counts and boundary changes (e.g. census areas), but one that is critical for robust analysis of historical cartographic data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information about several papers discussed at a symposium on the geoinformation connecting societies which involved with three research societies working in several languages is presented. It consisted OF 12th Spatial Data Handling Conference, International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Technical Commission II Symposium and 54th German Cartographic Conference. The symposium featured on lectures and practical work on open-source web mapping and 3D cartography.

Students and communities engaging with complex geographical issues require tools to assist them structure and contextualise data. This paper examines the use of mind mapping as a tool in geographical education. Case studies are presented from a sample of undergraduate and cross-cultural educational settings demonstrating the use of mind mapping in communication, analysis and problem solving. In critiquing this educational tool, we conclude that mind mapping is particularly effective with communities whose cultures are strong on visual communication but weaker on written communication and in cross-cultural situations where use of written English would disadvantage learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a methodology to assess the quality of cartographic generalisa-tion, which consists of representing geographic space in a simplified way according to the scale and the objectives of the intended map. The automation of this process makes the derivation of data easier, but the quality of the results is often not evaluated. This paper proposes an assessment model based on: (1) characterisation of the data in their initial and final states at different levels of analysis; (2) a data quality assessment by comparison of the two characterisations; and (3) aggregation of the various assessment results to summarise data quality. The assessment algorithm has been implemented and the method has been tested to assess the generalisation of a small urban area. A visualisation tool for assessment of the results has been developed to validate the generalisation evaluation. The results of the research are presented and discussed at the end of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examining the category of the Insular as a key framing of US extraterritorial, inter-oceanic power during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the paper examines two overlapping sets of geographical discourses and mapping practices - broadly characterised as geopolitical-imperial and scientific-governmental - that reflected US efforts to map (remap) the Philippines after 1898, beginning with the purchase of Spanish ( Jesuit) geographical knowledge. Turning to the spatially extensive and, it is argued, geopolitically loaded survey and mapping sciences, including geography, ethnology, geology, forestry and geodesy, the paper explores how cartographic practices were not only integral to a more accurate representation of the islands on paper but were also linked in practice with processes of governmental knowledge production and territorial transformation. In these efforts to extend US colonial sovereignty across the archipelago during the first decade of the twentieth century, US Insular officials grappled to know the territories which they presumed to govern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The source mechanism of a microseismic event, or any small earthquake, can be described by its moment tensor. The source type is described by a 3‐vector formed from the ordered, principal (eigen) values of the moment tensor and the source orientation from the normalized eigenvectors. The direction and magnitude of the principal‐value vector describe the source type and scalar moment, respectively. The source type can be described by the position of the principal‐value vector on the permitted lune of a unit sphere. As with any projection or cartography mapping, many parameterizations have been suggested to describe this position. Two dominate in the literature – the Riedesel–Jordan and Hudson–Pearce–Rogers parameters. All have advantages and disadvantages. In this paper, we review the most popular parameterizations, illustrating their similarities and the distortion they cause in the mapping between a uniform distribution of source types in the permitted lune and the parameter space. A new parameterization is suggested based on the solid angles formed by the principal‐value vector. This has the advantage of being simple to define geometrically in the principal‐value space (although the formulae are complicated), being naturally normalized and having a more uniform mapping than other parameterizations. However, we do not claim that this is the best or ideal parameterization, just a reasonable choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a novel real‐time end‐to‐end system for facial expression transformation, without the need of any driving source. Its core idea is to directly generate desired and photo‐realistic facial expressions on top of input monocular RGB video. Specifically, an unpaired learning framework is developed to learn the mapping between any two facial expressions in the facial blendshape space. Then, it automatically transforms the source expression in an input video clip to a specified target expression through the combination of automated 3D face construction, the learned bi‐directional expression mapping and automated lip correction. It can be applied to new users without additional training. Its effectiveness is demonstrated through many experiments on faces from live and online video, with different identities, ages, speeches and expressions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a queer approach to feminine writing is related to the development of new female subject positions through conceiving of other understandings of time. To conceptualize this relationship, the novel The Hours by Michael Cunningham is analysed and interpreted as a queer story of how women - writing, reading and enacting a novel - acquire an opening to a life that breaks with the heteronormative conception of time. This one-day novel that interweaves the lives of three women in a multiple assemblage offers the 'formula' of the triptych, which can be considered a primary form of life as multiplicity. Interconnecting the writings of Virginia Woolf, Michael Cunningham, and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, the cartographic analysis zooms in on three aspects of time by addressing respectively the motifs of the party, the kiss and the day: time as pause, time as exquisite moment and time as affect. By re-establishing the relationship between writing, time and the becoming-woman of life, the paper aims to indicate that queer writing can help to re-imagine new possibilities for (work) life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information about several papers discussed at the exhibits sponsored by the British Ecological Society is presented. Topics include the purpose of land use mapping first as a record on maps of the actual and existing land use, and the Human Settlement and land use in Snowdonia against the background of vegetation ecology in the area. The meeting featured several speakers including Dr Woodhead, Dr Reynoldson, and Mr Le Cren.

It has been argued that crowd-sourcing offers a radical alternative to conventional ways of mapping, challenging the hegemony of official and commercial cartographies. In this view mapping might begin to offer a forum for different voices, mapping different things, enabling new ways of living. Instead of the Latourian notion of the map as immutable mobile, fixing knowledge and bodies and facilitating governance, the wikification of mapping might facilitate a more mutable politics. This paper focuses on these possibilities by examining OpenStreetMap ( OSM), arguably the most significant and emancipatory of neo-geographic assemblages. While not underplaying the importance of a political economic understanding of the Geoweb, it suggests we need to attend more to the contexts through which emergent knowledge communities enact alternatives, and that notions of practice are central in any evaluation of changing politics of representation. Communities involved in OSM contest the geographies that they call into being, and this process can be narrated through a consideration of local action, in different map spaces and places. A processual view of mapping reveals the extent of mutability of OSM, and highlights many of the tensions evident in collaborative remapping. New ways of mapping reciprocally create and reinforce newly expert knowledge communities that may be emancipatory, but that may also reify power relations. Crowd-sourced mapping is likely to comprise a hybrid of mutable and immutable elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geographers have argued that the emergence of the geospatial web, or geoweb, represents a radical shift away from the state's monopolization of geospatial technologies. Like the public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS) movement before it, the geoweb research agenda has emphasized a desire for empowerment and participatory democracy. However, this research agenda has also inherited a conceptualization of power that emphasizes the linkages between empowerment and public visibility, and this paper argues that this inheritance opens potentially sensitive geoweb data to exploitation. Geographers therefore have an important role to play in emphasizing the need to explore ways of harnessing the power of the geoweb for marginalized communities while nonetheless maintaining those communities' privacy. This paper uses work with the Maijuna indigenous people of Peru as a case study to begin a discussion about how the political goals of disempowered people may be best obtained through both public and private uses of the geoweb. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the highlights of the Europgraphics 2009 Workshop on 3D Object Retrieval which was held in Munich, Germany on March 29, 2009. Among the papers submitted at the event were those by Raif Rustamov describing a new three-dimensional (3D) shape descriptor that maps the surface features onto a template surface, Kanezaki and colleagues on a new 3D shape features that considers an object's nature and Bucksch and colleagues on a new algorithm aimed at the skeletonisation of a laser scanner point cloud representing a botanical tree.

A key skill that geomorphologists possess is the ability to use multi‐scale perspectives in their interpretations of landscapes. One way to gain these perspectives is with the use of nested hierarchical frameworks. In fluvial geomorphology, such frameworks help with assessment of large‐scale controls (e.g., tectonic activity, climate change) on the pattern and dynamics of smaller‐scale physical features (e.g., channels, floodplains, bars), and conversely illustrate how these smaller‐scale features provide the building blocks from which to make interpretations of fluvial processes and dynamics over larger spatial and temporal scales. Given the rapid pace of technological developments, the range of relatively inexpensive tools available for visualising and mapping landscapes at different spatial scales is expanding exponentially. In this paper, which focuses on the World Heritage‐listed Okavango Delta in Botswana, we demonstrate how various visualisations generated by different technologies at different spatial scales (catchment, landscape unit, reach, site and geomorphic unit) are providing critical baseline information to enhance interpretation and communication of fluvial geomorphology, with potential application in water resources management. In particular, our nested hierarchical approach could be used as an interactive communication tool for non‐specialists and embedded within existing and future management plans for the Delta. The construction of nested hierarchies that synthesise information and analyses can be a valuable addition to the environmental manager's toolkit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaluation of complex wireless systems through simulations is commonly tackled with an abstraction of physical link behavior. This procedure is performed in 2 phases: Firstly, training is performed at the link level, resulting in a mapping function from signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) to block error rate (BLER); and secondly, physical layer signal processing is replaced by the resulting link-level mapping function. Several methods have been proposed in the literature for link abstraction. The well-known exponential effective SINR mapping (EESM) is likely to be the most extensively used procedure for multicarrier transmission. In short, EESM estimates an effective SINR from the whole set of SINRs of useful subcarriers by means of a single parameter mapping function, which must be previously optimized through training. Later on, BLER is assumed as that of the effective SINR over an additive white Gaussian noise channel. In this paper, we propose a novel method for BLER prediction named as logistic regression-based link method (LRLM). Mean and standard deviation of the SINR set can accurately capture BLER behavior for wideband multicarrier systems through a simpler function, thus reducing the amount of information to be stored compared to EESM. Moreover, LRLM is very flexible and may include extra predictors to reduce the number of different models to be stored. Performance results show that LRLM is able to predict accurately the BLER for all modulation and coding schemes and transport block sizes defined for Long-Term Evolution technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: This paper systematically reviews the glacial geomorphological evidence of the Loch Lomond Stadial (LLS; Younger Dryas) glaciation in Britain (12.9–11.7 ka). The geomorphology of sub‐regions within Scotland, England and Wales is assessed, providing the most comprehensive synthesis of this evidence to date. The contrasting nature of the evidence at the local scale is reviewed and conceptual themes common to multiple sub‐regions are examined. Advancements in glaciological theory, mapping technologies, numerical modelling and dating have been applied unevenly to localities across Britain, inhibiting a holistic understanding of the extent and dynamics of the LLS glaciation at a regional scale. The quantity and quality of evidence is highly uneven, leading to uncertainties regarding the extent of glaciation and inhibiting detailed analysis of ice dynamics and chronology. Robust dates are relatively scarce, making it difficult to confidently identify the limits of LLS glaciers and assess their synchroneity. Numerical models have allowed the glacier–climate relationships of the LLS to be assessed but have, thus far, been unable to incorporate local conditions which influenced glaciation. Recommendations for future research are made that will allow refined reconstructions of the LLS in Britain and contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of glacier–climate interactions during the Younger Dryas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws attention to the unexploited potential of cartographic material related to Ploieşti city, Romania, from the oldest reports to the modern. The cartographic document may bring valuable, more often than not original, information in order to improve understandings of behavioural patterns and the evolution of prehistoric communities. The study of the distribution and dynamics of burial mounds (tumuli) associated with the Bronze Age, within the perimeter of Ploieşti city and its metropolitan area, is one of the first applications of this kind of analysis made in Romania, and succeeds in showing the importance of using direct or indirect data from this category of cartographic documents for archaeological studies. Moreover, it demonstrates that, because geosystems and social systems are not static in space and time, a diachronic cartographic study provides the opportunity for a phenomenological focus on the evolutional issues of tumuli - spatiality, boundaries, distances and density. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Undergraduates' participation in research has been demonstrated to contribute to the development of critical, technical thinking and problem-solving skills, increase confidence, and enhance interest in research and graduate studies. For fields like cartography and geographic information science (GIS), teaching content should be up-to-date. Furthermore, practice plays a key role in daily teaching and learning. Therefore, research participation is of great significance for undergraduates majoring in cartography and GIS. Here a mentoring method is proposed for undergraduates, based on the apprenticeship model which combines mentoring functions and styles. Thirty-one undergraduates were mentored using the method. An evaluation based on objective outcomes and subjective self-perceptions showed that the mentoring method was effective: 71% of the subjects contributed to at least one peer-reviewed paper or software program. Possible factors affecting the mentoring results include the length of time the undergraduates were involved in mentorship and engaged in research. The longer the undergraduates participated in the mentorship and the more time they spent on research, the more numerous their achievements. Participants demonstrated significant improvements in the following areas: Changes in attitudes toward learning and research, enhanced career/graduate school preparation and personal gains. Significant differences in 'learning ethical conduct' and 'professional skills' were observed between genders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mobile vehicle is gaining popularity nowadays using map services like Google Maps and other mapping services. However, map services users have to expose sensitive information like geographic locations (GPS coordinates) or address to personal privacy concerns as users share their locations and queries to obtain desired services. Existing mix zones location privacy protection methods are most general purposed and theoretical value while not applicable when applied to provide location privacy for map service users. In this paper, we present new (multiple mix zones location privacy protection) MMLPP method specially designed for map services on mobile vehicles over the road network. This method enables mobile vehicle users to query a route between 2 endpoints on the map, without revealing any confidential location and queries information. The basic idea is to strategically endpoints to nearby ones, such that (1) the semantic meanings encoded in these endpoints (eg, their GPS coordinates) change much, ie, location privacy is protected; (2) the routes returned by map services little change, ie, services usability are maintained. Specifically, a mobile client first privately retrieves point of interest close to the original endpoints, and then selects 2 points of interest as the shifted endpoints satisfying the property of geoindistinguishability. We evaluate our MMLPP approach road network application for GTMobiSim on different scales of map services and conduct experiments with real traces. Results show that MMLPP strikes a good balance between location privacy and service usability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]