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Publisher Copyright: © 2023 Juha Oksanen et al., published by Sciendo. In this case study we compared the fertiliser properties of an industrial wastewater treatment sludge and a sludge ash to the requirements of the Finnish Fertiliser Product Decree. The sludge was obtained from the activated sludge wastewater treatment plant of a Finnish non-integrated pulp mill. The sludge was furthermore incinerated at a laboratory in a muffle furnace (850 °C) to obtain sludge ash. The total Cd (4.9 mg/kg d.m.) concentration in the pulp sludge exceeded the Finnish limit value (1.5 mg/kg d.m.) for fertiliser products used in agriculture. In the sludge ash, the total concentration of Cd (39 mg/kg; d.m.) exceeded the Finnish limit value (25 mg/kg d.m.) for ash fertilisers used in forestry. These results restrict the potential reuse options of these residues. However, from the utilisation point of view, the enrichment of essential plant macro-nutrients was most notable, resulting to the following total concentrations of these elements in the sludge ash: P (26,000 mg/kg d.m.), S (40,000 mg/kg d.m.), K (11,000 mg/kg d.m.), Ca (83,000 mg/kg d.m.) and Mg (10,000 mg/kg d.m.). Therefore, we conclude that, the converting of sludge into ash may promote the reuse of this wastewater treatment residue to a more value-adding fertiliser by-product to be used as a soil improver and growing medium in landscaping or landfills sites or other closed industrial areas, where heavy metal limit values for fertilisers are not applied in Finland.

Collaborative spatial decision support tools can contribute with setups for including stakeholders into marine spatial planning (MSP) processes with the purpose of increasing trust in planning outcomes, facilitate knowledge co-creation and shared planning goals, and provide transparent, scientific, inclusive, and technical foundations for planning. A new collaborative spatial decision support setup based on the combination of functionalities from two spatial decision support tools called SEANERGY and Baltic Explorer was designed for and tested in a workshop in 2020 targeted local authorities, NGOs, and citizens in Denmark with an interest in MSP. While the setup needs further testing among a wider span of stakeholders to support a pluralistic approach, the findings illustrate promising potentials from ranking conflicts and synergies in collaborative settings to make marine activity interests spatially visible in MSP and gain an overview of opportunities for sea use multi-functionality in context-based, interactive, goal-oriented stakeholder processes. The use of a visual platform such as Baltic Explorer to systematically explore locations of marine uses was positively evaluated to facilitate the workshop conflict-synergy discussions. Challenges relate to how to deal with disagreements on conflict-synergy scores and the subjectivity of opinions, but the demonstrated flexible, quick, transparent way to test the sensitivity of spatial patterns to differences in input conflict-synergy scores is found to provide a promising setup for including stakeholder opinions through collaborative settings, a setup adjustable to supplementary large-scale, individual, more representative surveys as well.

Ever since location-based services and mobile applications collecting data gathered through Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) positioning have become popular, concerns about location privacy have been expressed. Research has shown that human trajectory repositories containing sequences of observed locations ordered in time constitute a rich source for analyzing movement patterns, but they can also reveal sensitive personal information, such as a person's home address. In this paper, we present a mechanism that protects visits to sensitive locations by suppressing revealing parts of trajectories. Our attack model acknowledges that the course of a trajectory, combined with spatial context information, can facilitate privacy breaches even if sensitive locations have been concealed. Thus, we introduce the concept of k-site-unidentifiability, a specialization of k-anonymity, under which a sensitive location cannot be singled out from a group of at least k sites that the trajectory could have visited. In an experimental study, we show that our method is utility-preserving and protects sensitive locations reliably even in sparsely built environments. As it can process each trajectory independently, individuals may also use our mechanism to enhance their privacy before publishing their trajectories.

Maritime spatial planning (MSP) is a decision-making process for managing human activities at sea. Stakeholder participation is critical to MSP processes. Spatial decision support systems (SDSSs) can be effective tools for analyzing problems in MSP, for example, the impact of human activities on marine ecosystems. However, despite the fact that multiple SDSSs have been developed for MSP, they are rarely used in real-world MSP processes. We aim to provide insight into stakeholders' understanding and perception of the appropriateness and completeness of SDSSs in an MSP stakeholder meeting. We studied whether SDSSs can benefit from being integrated into CGIS to support alternative methods for problem exploration and solving in groups. The results show that most, but not all, stakeholders understood well or fairly well what the tool does and how to use it, and agreed that the tool was appropriate and had the necessary requirements for problem solving. The results also show that problem exploration and solving with an SDSS in groups can benefit from the tool being integrated into a CGIS. Further research is needed to find effective solutions to overcome stakeholders' challenges in using GIS, and to develop flexible solutions that enable alternative problem-solving methods.

While the role played by the state in stimulating innovation in the private sector has been a prevalent interest in innovation research, studies analysing the impacts of public interventions have usually focused on individual policies, programs or projects. Public stimulation is hence often studied from a relatively restricted and temporarily confined perspective, leaving a macro-level and longer-term perspective unrecognized. This article provides further evidence on the matter by examining how many innovations in Finland and Sweden have been publicly stimulated through funding or research collaboration, over a period of more than four decades (1970–2013). Our main source is a new innovation database constructed following the Literature Based Innovation Output (LBIO) method, which gathers the most significant innovations of both countries for the study period, totalling approximately 4100 Swedish and 2600 Finnish innovations. Our results indicate that the public sector has played a very prominent role in stimulating private innovation in both countries, and with an increasing trend. This is especially true for Finland, where 35–55% of the innovations of the period have been stimulated by public funding and 25–65% by collaboration with public research. In Sweden, the share of publicly stimulated innovations has been somewhat lower and erratic, but has increased over time.

Animations have become a frequently utilized illustration technique on maps but changes in their graphical loading remain understudied in empirical geovisualization and cartographic research. Animated streamlets have gained attention as an illustrative animation technique and have become popular on widely viewed maps. We conducted an experiment to investigate how altering four major animation parameters of animated streamlets affects people’s reading performance of field maxima on vector fields. The study involved 73 participants who performed reaction-time tasks on pointing maxima on vector field stimuli. Reaction times and correctness of answers changed surprisingly little between visually different animations, with only a few occasional statistical significances. The results suggest that motion of animated streamlets is such a strong visual cue that altering graphical parameters makes only little difference when searching for the maxima. This leads to the conclusion that, for this kind of a task, animated streamlets on maps can be designed relatively freely in graphical terms and their style fitted to other contents of the map. In the broader visual and geovisual analytics context, the results can lead to more generally hypothesizing that graphical loading of animations with continuous motion flux could be altered without severely affecting their communicative power.

We examine trends in innovation output for two highly ranked innovative countries: Finland and Sweden (1970–2013). Our novel dataset, collected using the LBIO (literature-based innovation output) method, suggests that the innovation trends are positive for both countries, despite an extended downturn in the 1980s. The findings cast some doubt on the proposition that the current stagnation of many developed countries is due to a lack of innovation and investment opportunities. Our data show that Finland catches up to, and passes, Sweden in innovation output in the 1990s. In per capita terms, Finland stays ahead throughout the period. We find that the strong Finnish performance is largely driven by innovation increase in just a handfull of sectors, but is not restricted to few companies. Both countries saw a rise in innovation during the dot-com era and the structural changes that followed. Since 2000 however, Sweden has outperformed Finland in terms of total innovations, especially in machinery and ICT, while the Finnish rate of innovation has stabilised. We suggest that these patterns may be explained by different paths of industrial renewal.

Funding Information: kindly performed all chemical analysis. This study was part of the joint research programme NSPPulp funded by TEKES, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (nowadays, Business Finland). Publisher Copyright: © 2021. All Rights Reserved. In this study, the physical and chemical properties of untreated, lime-stabilised and composted wastewater sludges from a Finnish pulp, board and paper mill integrate were compared in order to assess their fertiliser properties based on the requirement of the Finnish Fertilizer Product Decree. Furthermore, the extraction properties of heavy metals in the sludges were assessed by the three-stage sequential extraction procedure of the Community Bureau of Reference (BCR) and the solubility indices for heavy metals were calculated in order to evaluate the release potential of elements from the sample (sludge) matrix. The results of this study indicated that the total heavy metal (As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg, Ni, Pb and Zn) concentrations in all sludges were lower than the statutory Finnish limit values for fertiliser products. However, the untreated sludge required either lime-stabilisation or composting in order to fulfil the Finnish maximum concentrations of pathogens (coliforms and Escherichia coli) for fertiliser products.

The pulping industry generates vast amounts of bark residues and wastewater treatment sludges, which are combined and stored for varying periods in stacks, often in the open air, prior to utilization for energy via combustion. In order to optimize the storage strategy, the effects of incorporating sludge into bark on heating value and storage-related environmental impacts were investigated in laboratory and outdoor studies. Biological degradation activity was found to be higher in treatments containing 25% sludge (B75S25) and 50% sludge (B50S50) on a fresh mass basis, in comparison with pure bark (B100). Mean monthly dry mass loss was 2.1% (B100), 3.3% (B75S25), and 3.7% (B50S50) in the laboratory and 2.7%, 4.2%, and 4.8%, respectively, outdoors. Sludge addition was found to maintain degradation activity at low temperatures (+ 3°C). Co-storage of sludge and bark led to loss of energy, mainly due to increased loss of biomass and increased moisture content. Overall, biomass moisture content governed the heating value. Cumulative methane emissions over the storage period were higher from the sludge-containing treatments than from pure bark, but emissions of nitrogen-containing gases (N2O and NH3) were negligible throughout. Sludge addition roughly halved the cumulative chemical oxygen demand (COD) of leachate and minimized its concentration of phosphate-P. However, larger amounts of inorganic elements were released to the percolating water from the sludge-containing treatments. Overall, these results indicate that finding alternative uses for the sludge fraction would be beneficial.

Maritime spatial planning (MSP) needs tools to facilitate discussions and manage spatial data in collaborative workshops that involve actors with various backgrounds and expertise. However, the reported use of spatial tools in real‐world MSP is sparse. A better understanding is needed of how geographic information systems (GIS) can effectively support collaboration in MSP. We studied the utility of GIS tools for collaborative MSP in five steps: first, identifying shortcomings in available GIS for supporting collaborative MSP; second, defining requirements for an effective collaborative GIS (CGIS) for MSP; third, designing and developing a prototype CGIS, Baltic Explorer; fourth, demonstrating the system; and fifth, evaluating the system. In a real‐world MSP workshop, we demonstrated that the functionalities of Baltic Explorer can support and facilitate discussions in collaborative work. We also found that more research is needed about the use of spatial data in collaborative MSP and integration of model‐based geospatial analysis into CGIS.

Determining stream networks automatically from digital elevation models is an issue that is actively being studied. The quality of elevation models has increased over time, but many hydrologically critical features, such as culverts, are often missing from the elevation data. To analyze the surficial water flow, one must either prepare a special elevation model or post-process an already-existing model. This study builds on the traditional, well-established method of determining the stream network from digital elevation models. We have extended the traditional method by locating culverts automatically, using road network data as an input. We show, by comparison to the reference data, that the culverts being most relevant for the stream network can be found with good accuracy. We demonstrate that by including the automatically located culverts in the automatic stream network determination, the quality of the generated network can be noticeably improved.

A proof of concept is presented on how to produce uncertainty-aware near real-time coastal flood inundation Web maps from water-level observations and predictions, which have been computed for tide gauge sites and made publicly accessible. The stochastic inundation simulation takes into account several sources of uncertainty, which have until now not been employed in either bathtub models or hydrodynamic models. The simulation is based on the Monte Carlo method. The feasibility of the proposed approach is demonstrated by an implementation using general-purpose computing on graphics processing units. The outcome of the research is that the current technologies enable the building of a novel system that connects to official data sources and that takes into account sources of uncertainty whose inclusion in the past has been avoided by being either weakly known or computationally too expensive.

An initiative has been started in Finland to build a harmonized raster geodata repository, called GeoCubes Finland, to help academic users in carrying out geospatial analysis operations in research projects of diverse disciplines. The aim of the initiative is to expand the adoption of GI methods and tools to new sectors of academic research. GeoCubes Finland is being built in the context of a large-scale program developing national geodata infrastructure for academic studies. The main building blocks of the GeoCubes Finland initiative are: a harmonized, multi-resolution raster geodata storage, a set of standardized mechanisms for accessing the raster contents of the storage, and support facilities for cloud-based geocomputing to help users carry out spatial analysis with the contained datasets.

Governmental services are being digitalized rapidly, and many European countries are currently implementing their eGovernance strategies. Although digitalization in general lowers the barriers between governance and citizens, there is also a significant risk that where a section of citizens is concerned, the barriers actually get higher. eGovernment services rely mostly on visual user interfaces, but globally approximately 1.3 billion people have some form of visual impairment. Furthermore, societies around the world will face the challenge of demographic transition, where most people are expected to live longer than 60 years and by 2080 almost 30% of the EU-28 population may be over the age of 65.In our study, we propose a complementary approach to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 for accessible spatial communication, where the content of web maps is optimized for people with abnormal eyesight and possibly degraded cognition. By defining plain cartography, we set the design principles for simplified digital maps (Figure 1) by taking how maps are seen into account and how they are understood by these special groups.We demonstrate the implementation of design principles in the Plain Map series produced by the National Land Survey of Finland and summarize the results of a usability test. Based on these results, the need of plain cartography for the visually impaired is high. In general, the feedback of the Plain Map series was very positive, and maps designed with increased clarity and high-contrast colors were seen much better than regular background maps. The implementation of the presented principles for generating plain map series is a small effort for National Mapping Authorities (NMAs), but it has an enormous impact through the improved accessibility of background maps in eGovernment services.

Raster geodatasets are an important data source for map-related web applications. However, existing differences in how those datasets are georeferenced, formatted and made available complicate their integration for analysis and visualisation purposes. Furthermore, the inconsistent cell resolutions make it difficult to perform efficient and reliable display of the datasets over a range of scales. In particular, it is challenging to achieve satisfactory user experience in visual exploration of interactive analysis operations carried out on these datasets.Dataset harmonisation carried out as a pre-processing procedure seems to be necessary for resolving the raster geodata inconsistency challenge. After the pre-processing step, the harmonized datasets have to be stored into an easily accessible data storage, preferably in close connection with the computing platform where the analysis operations are to be performed.Multidimensional datacube has emerged as a conceptual framework for organising a repository of harmonised raster geodatasets. Satellite images have so far been the most popular geospatial application area for datacubes. The set of dimensions of such geodatacube typically consist of two or three coordinate axes, time, and the content theme. While being ingested into the datacube, the involved datasets are brought into a common georeferencing frame, series of cell resolutions, and storage format. The selected harmonised resolution levels can actually be seen as a set of individual geodatacubes.An initiative has launched in Finland to build a harmonised multi-resolution geodatacube, called GeoCubes Finland, containing some of the most important national geodatasets. The datasets currently incorporated into the geodatacube include digital elevation models together with land cover, superficial deposit, forest inventory and administrative unit datasets. GeoCubes Finland is being built as part of the Finnish Open Geospatial Information Infrastructure for Research (oGIIR) programme, aimed at developing the geospatial research infrastructure of the country. The data storage and the related computing facilities have been implemented on a cloud service platform provided by CSC - IT Center for Science that serves Finnish universities and research institutes.

Mobile activity tracking data, i.e. data collected by mobile applications that enable activity tracking based on the use of the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), contains information on cycling in urban areas at an unprecedented spatial and temporal extent and resolution. It can be a valuable source of information about the quality of bicycling in the city. Required is a notion of quality that is derivable from plain GNSS trajectories. In this article, we quantify urban cycling quality by estimating the fluency of cycling traffic using a large set of GNSS trajectories recorded with a mobile tracking application. Earlier studies have shown that cyclists prefer to travel continuously and without halting, i.e. fluently. Our method extracts trajectory properties that describe the stopping behaviour and dynamics of cyclists. It aggregates these properties to segments of a street network and combines them in a descriptive index. The suitability of the data to describe the cyclists' behaviour with street-level detail is evaluated by comparison with various data from independent sources. Our approach to characterizing cycling traffic fluency offers a novel view on the cyclability of a city that could be valuable for urban planners, application providers, and cyclists alike. We find clear indications for the data's ability to estimate characteristics of city cycling quality correctly, despite behaviour patterns of cyclists not caused by external circumstances and the data's inherent bias. The proposed quality measure is adaptable for different applications, e.g. as an infrastructure quality measure or as a routing criterion.

Glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) is an ongoing phenomenon that characterizes the landscape of the High Coast (63°04'N, 18°22'E, Sweden) / Kvarken archipelago (63°16'N, 21°10'E, Finland) UNESCO World Heritage site. GIA occurs as the Earth’s crust that was depressed by the continental ice sheet during the last glacial period is slowly rebounding towards isostatic equilibrium. The maximum rate of land uplift in the area is more than eight millimetres per year, which – along with the very different topographical reliefs of the opposite coasts – makes the region an excellent study area for land uplift as a phenomenon. As there is a marine area between the coasts, shore displacement is an essential part of the phenomenon in the study area. The cartographic representation of GIA and shore displacement has classically relied on static maps representing isobases of the uplift rates and of ancient shorelines. However, to dynamically visualize and communicate the continuity and the nature of the phenomena, an animated map is required. To create a visually balanced, seamless animation, we need to create high-resolution image frames that represent digital elevation models (DEMs) together with extracted shorelines of different moments of time. To create these frames, we developed a mathematical model to transform the DEM in a given time for the past ~9300 years. We used the most recent LiDAR-derived DEMs of Finland and Sweden, and a bathymetric model of the Gulf of Bothnia as our initial data, along with a land uplift rate surface derived from geophysical measurements. We compared the current uplift rates with the shoreline observations of the ancient Baltic Sea stages, Litorina Sea and Ancylus Lake, and created a linear model between the elevations of the shorelines and the present-day uplift rates, as there was a near-linear correlation in both cases. Based on the current uplift rates and the elevations and the dating of the ancient shorelines, we derived an exponential model to describe the non-linear correlation between the elapsed time and the occurred land uplift. Near the present time, we adapted the formula proposed by Ekman (2001) to make the model more robust closer to the present day. We assumed that although the uplift rate varies in time, the spatial relation of uplift rates remains the same. Furthermore, as the land uplift is an exponentially decelerating phenomenon occurring with a significantly lower annual rate than shortly after the de-glaciation (Eronen et al. 2001, Nordman et al. 2015), and with most of the total uplift already having occurred (Ekman 1991), we assumed a constant rate of uplift from the present day to the near geological future. We did not consider potential sea level changes caused by human-driven climate change in the predictions, as the geological time scale vastly exceeds the time range of the climate models. Neither did we take into account the historical transgression phases, as they did not appear dominating in the area. The elevation and bathymetry data were harmonized and resampled into 4K (3840 x 2160) pixel dimensions to utilize the best commercially available screen resolutions and to avoid unnecessary sub-pixel level computations. This resulted in a spatial pixel size of about 200 metres. The initial spatial resolution of the DEMs of Finland and Sweden was 2 metres and 1 metre, respectively, while the bathymetric data had a spatial pixel size of 400 metres. This, along with the fact that the bathymetric data was partly modelled and inaccurate near the coastlines, meant that it had to be oversampled to generate plausible coastal bathymetry and to allow any future estimations of shore displacement. All the datasets were resampled to EPSG:3857 Pseudo-Mercator projection to facilitate any future use in web map applications. As the visualized area is only about 430 kilometres in the north-south direction, the use of this projection did not introduce cartographic issues. The rendered frames required by the animation were produced with a programmatic conversion of raster files to RGBimages. The visualization of shore displacement was implemented by a discontinuity in elevation dependent colour scale at sea level. The bathymetry was visualized with a continuous colour scale in shades of blue until the elevation of zero metres. Elevations above zero were visualized with a colour scale starting from green to create an impression of a discrete shoreline (Figure 1). Figure 1. Examples of individual frames for the land uplift animation. Litorina stage 7300 BP (a), 3000 BP (b), current stage (c), and 1000 years after present (d). The imprecision of the predicted shoreline placement compared to the past reconstructions can be observed in the last frame. The whole process from computing the DEMs to rendering the frames was implemented in Python, without the need for traditional GUI operated GIS or image processing software. The raster data was read and processed with GDAL and NumPy libraries, and the visualization was carried out using Matplotlib and Python Imaging Library. Each DEM was given the same elevation based colour scale and an individually created hillshading that was blended with the image by multiplication. The whole process was carried out as an open source solution. The interval between the calculated frames was set to five years as, particularly at the Swedish coast, the shore displacement can appear abrupt with a longer time interval. The frame duration was set to 0.05 seconds, which means a 100-second duration for an animation of 10 000 years. The resulting DEM reconstructions show good agreement with comparable data, such as the Litorina reconstructions by the Geological Survey of Finland (GTK). Also, the mathematical model appears to be in line with previous reconstructions conducted in the area (e.g. Nordman et al. 2015). So far, any continuous series of paleogeographic DEM reconstructions comparable to ours has not been published for this area. The animation provides an understandable way of perceiving the continuous but decelerating nature of the land uplift phenomenon and also highlights the differences in the post-glacial history of Finnish and Swedish coasts. To further improve the visualization, we must consider the removal of post-glacially developed features in the present day DEM, e.g. the various rivers that can both cause bias in the shore displacement and uplift estimations and appear visually distractive. In the very early frames of the animation, the retracting ice sheet must also be present. Also, a balanced addition of other cartographic elements, such as present-day hydrography and place names, can further improve the overall presentation.

Utilization of movement data from mobile sports tracking applications is affected by its inherent biases and sensitivity, which need to be understood when developing value-added services for, e.g., application users and city planners. The authors have developed a method for generating a privacy-preserving heat map with user diversity (ppDIV), in which the density of trajectories, as well as the diversity of users, is taken into account, thus preventing the bias effects caused by participation inequality. The method is applied to public cycling workouts and compared with privacy-preserving kernel density estimation (ppKDE) focusing only on the density of the recorded trajectories and privacy-preserving user count calculation (ppUCC), which is similar to the quadrat-count of individual application users. An awareness of privacy was introduced to all methods as a data pre-processing step following the principle of k-Anonymity. Calibration results for the authors' heat maps using bicycle counting data gathered by the city of Helsinki are good (R2 > 0.7) and raise high expectations for utilizing heat maps in a city planning context. This is further supported by the diurnal distribution of the workouts indicating that, in addition to sports-oriented cyclists, many utilitarian cyclists are tracking their commutes. However, sports tracking data can only enrich official in-situ counts with its high spatio-temporal resolution and coverage, not replace them.

Terrain analysis based on modern, high-resolution Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) has become quite time consuming because of the large amounts of data involved. Additionally, when the propagation of uncertainties during the analysis process is investigated using the Monte Carlo method, the run time of the algorithm can increase by a factor of between 100 and 1000, depending on the desired accuracy of the result. This increase in run time constitutes a large barrier when we expect the use of uncertainty-aware terrain analysis become more general. In this paper, we evaluate the use of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) in uncertainty-aware drainage basin delineation. All computations are run on a GPU, including the creation of the realization of a stationary DEM uncertainty model, stream burning, pit filling, flow direction calculation, and the actual delineation of the drainage basins. On average, our GPU version is approximately 11 times faster than a sequential, one-core CPU version performing the same task. Display Omitted We created and documented a GPU program for performing efficiently DEM uncertainty-aware drainage basin delineation.We provide detailed GPU algorithms presenting the separate stages of the calculation.On average our program is 11 times faster than a one-core sequential CPU program.By our methods we are one step closer to development of interactive uncertainty-aware spatial analysis tools.

This article presents results from a user study on experimental maps created for outdoor activities and demonstrates methods suitable for analyzing the map survey data. The first goal of the study was to find out to what degree the experimental maps created for the study satisfy the needs of map users in general. The second was a detailed exploration of opinions on the different map types to look for trends related to age, frequency of map use, or amount of time spent in nature. A third goal was to gauge interest and willingness to pay for experimental maps as printed products. In addition, the article demonstrates how cross-tabulation and correspondence analysis can be used to conduct versatile quantitative analysis and interpret map survey data. The survey results suggest that the conventional topographic-map-like products for outdoor activities currently offered by map publishers should be supplemented by new kinds of maps to attract and educate digital natives to become active map users. At the same time, the quality of information and representation of terrain accessibility on maps for outdoor activities must not be compromised simply to fulfil the broad-based needs of map users. RESUME: Cet article presente les resultats d’une etude realisee par des utilisateurs sur des cartes experimentales creees en vue d’activites de plein air et fait la demonstration de methodes qui conviennent a l’analyse de donnees topographiques. Le premier but de l’etude etait de decouvrir dans quelle mesure les cartes creees pour l’etude repondaient aux besoins des utilisateurs de cartes en general. Le deuxieme but etait d’explorer en profondeur les opinions relatives aux differents types de cartes afin d’examiner les tendances en fonction de l’âge, de la frequence de l’utilisation de la carte ou du temps passe dans la nature. Un troisieme but etait de mesurer l’interet envers des cartes experimentales imprimees et de determiner dans quelle mesure on etait pret a payer pour ces cartes. De plus, l’article montre comment la tabulation recoupee et l’analyse des correspondances peuvent servir a realiser des analyses quantitatives polyvalentes et a interpreter les donnees topographiques. Selon les resultats de l’etude, il semble que les produits ressemblant a des cartes topographiques conventionnelles qu’offrent actuellement les editeurs cartographiques pour les activites de plein air devraient etre completes par des cartes nouveau genre afin d’attirer et de renseigner les neophytes numeriques pour en faire des utilisateurs actifs des cartes. Par contre, la qualite de l’information et de la representation de l’accessibilite du territoire sur les cartes destinees aux activites de plein air ne doit pas etre sacrifiee dans le seul but de repondre aux besoins fort varies des utilisateurs des cartes.

This paper compares several different visual highlighting methods that are applied to spatio-temporal data to support analytical reasoning based on situation awareness maps. In our work, visual hig...

The paper describes processing methods for portraying forest areas on maps utilizing point symbols. The forest map design is based on the use of individual tree data, which is detected from airborne laser scanning data and colour-infrared orthophotos. Several generalisation and symbolisation approaches have been tested in order to use the tree data set for cartographic purposes. Our generalisation method differentiates between trees in dense forests and tree structures in open areas, such as isolated trees, tree groups, tree rows and sparsely scattered trees. The tree symbols are integrated visually with the other map content. The results show that the production of attractive and useful maps requires an advanced generalisation method due to the massive amount of tree objects extracted from the laser scanning data as well as a generalisation level and a symbol type for the trees that are carefully chosen according to the map scale. Furthermore, sophisticated visualisation methods are needed for co...

Sharing hyperlocal geospatial knowledge with one’s community may foster many positive outcomes, such as increasing a sense of community. However, much of this information travels by word of mouth and, therefore, does not reach everyone in time or even at all. We present the human-centred concept design process of #hylo, a geosocial network in which users can easily share personal, hyperlocal geospatial knowledge about their surroundings. Users may gain hyperlocal information of their own places, filtered with their own interests. We expect #hylo to increase (1) attachment to location, (2) interest in the area, and (3) social participation in local community. We explain the design process and show results from initial user studies that were encouraging, as the participants were interested in this kind of hyperlocal information and found it useful. Even those who are usually hesitant to post in social media, found this kind of community-focused, hyperlocal platform to be a pleasant place to share information.

Crowd-sourced data of high spatial and temporal resolution can provide a new basis for mobility analyses given that its various types of biases distorting the results are identified and adequately handled. In this paper, trajectory patterns that can affect the validity of mobile fitness app data are examined by means of cycling trajectories (n = 50,524) from the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, in Finland. In addition to mass events and group journeys, we evaluated the biasing effect of routes that have been repeatedly recorded by the same application user. Based on the results, repeatedly recorded commuting routes may skew fitness application data more than group patterns. Many of the changes in the frequencies and length distributions at different temporal granularities before and after extracting the ‘bias patterns’ were statistically significant. Also the skewed distribution of tracks among users (i.e. contribution inequality) became more even. The biases induced by behavioural patterns ought to be considered when evaluating the validity of fitness app data in analyses of general mobility behaviour and when designing value-added applications based on the data. Considering the trade-off between privacy and data accuracy regarding dissemination of sensitive crowd-sourced movement data, the findings emphasise the importance of preserving the possibility to detect individual-level phenomena in order to produce valid analysis results.

Processing high-resolution digital elevation models (DEMs) can be tedious due to the large size of the data. In uncertainty-aware drainage basin delineation, we apply a Monte Carlo (MC) simulation that further increases the processing demand by two to three orders of magnitude. Utilizing graphics processing units (GPUs) can speed up the programs, but their on-chip random access memory (RAM) limits the size of the DEMs that can be processed efficiently on one GPU. Here, we present a parallel uncertainty-aware drainage basin delineation algorithm and a multinode GPU compute unified device architecture (CUDA) implementation along with scalability benchmarking. All of the computations are run on the GPUs, and the parallel processes communicate using a message-passing interface (MPI) via the host central processing units (CPUs). The implementation can utilize any number of nodes, with one or many GPUs per node. The performance and scalability of the program have been tested with a 10-m DEM covering 390,905 km2, i.e., the entire area of Finland. Performing the drainage basin delineation for the DEM with different numbers of GPUs shows a nearly linear strong scalability.

The paper describes the map design process of the MenoMaps project, which aims to create new kinds of maps for supporting outdoor leisure activities, and to carry out research on the utilisation of multi-publishing in a cartographic context. The idea behind a multi-publishing service is that the service is able to deliver different kinds of outdoor maps through a number of channels and at varying scales and designs from a single data core. The data core utilizes integrated data sources, including the Finnish topographic and map databases of the National Land Survey of Finland, as well as datasets from the Nuuksio National Park test environment of the Finnish Geodetic Institute, including high-resolution orthophotos and digital terrain models based on airborne laser scanning (LIDAR). In contrast to traditional national park cartography, the multi-publishing framework sets new challenges for the map design. The paper summarizes the design process and gives examples of the in-house developed map design for s...

Delineation of drainage basins from a digital elevation model (DEM) has become a standard operation in a number of terrain analysis software packages, but limitations of the conventionally used techniques have become apparent. Firstly, the delineation methods make assumption of error-free data, which is an unreachable utopia even with modern sensor technology. Secondly, even though the computing capacity has increased dramatically during the last decades, sizes of geospatial data sets have increased simultaneously. Thus far, the typical problems arising when using uncertainty-aware geospatial analysis are 1) the computational complexity of the analysis and 2) memory allocation problems when large datasets are used. In this paper, we raise the question about the general need for developing scalable and uncertainty-aware algorithms for terrain analysis and propose improvements to the existing drainage basin calculation methods. The distributed uncertainty-aware catchment delineation methods with and without spatial partitioning of the DEM are introduced and the performance of the methods in different cases are compared.

The aim of our study was to characterize statistical and spatial details of the errors in a fine toposcale DEM derived by contour data. The fine toposcale DEMs are typically represented in a 5–50 m grid and used in the application scale 1:10 000–1:50 000. The errors were determined by using high‐quality reference data covering the entire study area from an airborne laser scanner. The work was motivated because of the essential role played by the correct characterization of DEM error in error‐propagation studies. The results showed that the spatial autocorrelation of the fine toposcale DEM error was the result of a complex combination of random and systematic‐like components, and its appropriate modelling by geostatistical methods is problematic because of the small extent of the areas in which the assumption of stationarity is valid. In addition, describing the shape of the DEM error distribution was impossible with a single parameter of dispersion. This was due to a large number of outliers, which sugges...

This paper presents research showing how random errors in a fine toposcale digital elevation model (DEM) are propagated to DEM-based surface derivatives. The focus was on two constrained derivatives, slope and aspect, and one unconstrained derivative, drainage basin delineation. The error propagation was explored by using numerical and analytical methods, and in both approaches the DEM error was modelled as a second-order stationary Gaussian random process. The results were summarised in the case study, in which 32 realistic scenarios of DEM error models were used. The scenarios were based on exponential and Gaussian spatial autocorrelation models with four sills (0.0625, 0.25, 1.00, and 4.00m^2) and practical ranges (0, 30, 60, and 120m). We found that, as expected, increase in DEM error increased the error in surface derivatives. However, contrary to expectations, the spatial autocorrelation model appears to have varying effects on the error propagation analysis depending on the application. In constrained surface derivatives, such as slope and aspect, the maximum error in results appeared to exist when the practical range of the error's spatial autocorrelation was roughly equal to the size of the surface derivative's calculation window. In unconstrained terrain analysis, such as drainage basin delineation, the variance of the results appeared to increase while the spatial autocorrelation range increases. Until now, the use of spatially uncorrelated DEM error models have been considered as a 'worst-case scenario', but this opinion may now be challenged because none of the DEM derivatives investigated in the study had maximum variation with spatially uncorrelated random error. In addition, the study revealed that the role of the appropriate shape of the spatial autocorrelation model, either exponential or Gaussian, was not as important as the choice of appropriate autocorrelation parameters: practical range and sill. However, the shape of the spatial autocorrelation model appeared to have more influence on the calculation of slope and aspect than on the drainage basin delineation. For error propagation analysis purposes an analytical approach appears to be more useful for constrained derivatives, while the Monte Carlo method is appropriate for analysing both constrained and unconstrained derivatives.

GIS analysis‐based drainage basin delineation has become an attractive alternative to traditional manual delineation methods since the availability and accuracy of Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) and topographic databases has been improved. To investigate the uncertainty in the automatic delineation process, the present study represents a process‐convolution‐based Monte Carlo simulation tool that offers a powerful framework for investigating DEM error propagation with thousands of GIS‐analysis repetitions. Monte Carlo‐based probable drainage basin delineations and manual delineations performed by five experts in hydrology or physical geography were also compared. The results showed that automatic drainage basin delineation is very sensitive to DEM uncertainty. The model of this uncertainty can be used to find out the lower bound for the size of drainage basins that can be delineated with sufficient accuracy.

The paper describes the creation of a physical 3D model representing the Solvalla recreation area in South Finland. The data processing part includes the extraction of elevation models and other topographic features from LIDAR data and aerial photographs as well as steps to stack up the separate layers to the digital model suitable for the 3D printing. The present prototype is directed at the special needs of visually impaired persons. This influences the design of topographic objects such as roads and paths, the representation of certain areas such as water bodies and the choice of the colours in the model. The printed 3D model is used in a small user test with visually impaired persons.

The paper presents the usability evaluation of a map-based multipublishing service for outdoor leisure activities. The multi-publishing service allows users to access the same spatial information contents through different channels, such as printed maps, map applications for the web or mobile phones and other interactive media. These channels together form an interface for the geospatial information. The users may use the channel or the combination of channels that is best suited for the current situation. The user experience is constituted across the channels, thus the channels need to be networked and the seamless interaction between the channels needs to be ensured.

The idea to study innovators’ understandings for innovation failure dates back to a research the authors, together with colleagues, accomplished on company innovation processes a few years ago. During intensive periods of data gathering, we carried out tens of interviews with innovators and directors of small and large innovative companies from different sectors across Finland. Most of the interviews were done in pairs and, right after each meeting with innovators and company people, we used to discuss and consider first impressions and insights gained during the interviews.

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in innovation, entrepreneurship and technological change, and their impact on regional and national economic development and welfare. It is generally accepted that innovation is a major, if not the most important, source of productivity growth and that RD Ottaviano and Puga, 1998; Krugman, 1991a; Marshall, 1920). In another research tradition, the concept accessibility has been used in order to analyze the evolution of the regions (Hirschman, 1958; Myrdal, 1957). In some studies, such abstract concepts as ‘production milieu’ (Davelaar, 1991) and ‘innovative milieu’ (Camagni, 1991) have been used to highlight the importance of agglomeration and local networks. However, when it comes to knowing in precise detail the interconnections between geography, innovation and evolution over time, we get less clear answers.

Automatic delineation of drainage basins from digital elevation models (DEMs) is a well established technique used in terrain analysis. The conventional methodological framework was first developed in the 1980s, after which time complexities and memory requirements of the algorithms for N-cell DEMs have been improved to the point where they are optimal O(N) or nearly optimal O(N log(N)). In addition to algorithmic developments, uncertainty in the drainage basin delineation results has been handled with spatial probability models, which replace a single DEM D with a distribution of possible correct DEMs p(D). If a probability model is used, results are in the form of distributions and can be visualized as a probability map of uncertain drainage basin delineations. In this paper, we improve existing algorithms by deriving distributed algorithms for computing probability maps of the delineations. Our work is based on the use of Monte Carlo integration, process convolution, and Wang & Liu's fast method for removal of DEM depressions. The new algorithms are designed to large, high resolution DEMs. When distributed algorithms process DEM data in a computer cluster with K nodes, the memory requirements for a single node grow according to O(N/K). The performance and behaviour of algorithms are measured in different settings.

Artikkelin tavoitteena on tarkastella vaikuttavuutta, sen arviointia ja sitä tukevia työkaluja osaamiskeskusohjelmassa. Painopisteenä on ohjelman klustereiden toiminnan seurannassa, arvioinnissa ja toiminnan kehittäminen sekä sen tueksi kehitetty vaikuttavuuskonsepti.

Paper analyses the role of innovation in small Finnish entrepreneurial firms. The study is based on a questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews carried out late 2005. In the light of company cases an innovation has been crucial factor for existence of business at the first instance. According to the survey results, identification of market niche and customer needs turns out to be the most important source for innovation among both small and larger companies. Increase in profitability and competitiveness emerge as the most beneficial impacts of innovation in all companies but also new contacts and co-operation arisen in the process of innovative activity are highly valued, especially in micro firms. Despite of importance of an innovation, in small entrepreneurial firms emerge also number of challenges hampering commercialisation of a novel idea. These range from obstacles pioneer company encounters in gaining market credibility and acceptance to lack of business experience in general. The results are expected to give new information about the role of innovations play in competitiveness of small entrepreneurial firms in Finland.