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In this paper, we test how different public transport policy scenarios score in terms of fairness for a specific population group, considering a more complex representation of mobility-related inequalities and the policy implications of transport justice. To do so, we assess potential accessibility to public transport in Santiago de Chile under different policy scenarios, focusing on older people as a group whose demographic and socioeconomic conditions can determine different forms of disadvantage. We compare alternative accessibility policies based on the expansion of the Metro infrastructure network or on reduced public transport fares, considering the interaction between the spatial availability and the affordability of public transport. Results show that subsidized fares for public transport services are more beneficial to expand the accessibility of older people, especially those with lower incomes, while the expansion of the Metro network benefits mainly middle- and high-income older people. The proposed analysis is a first step towards a more detailed, place-based reading of mobility-related inequalities, aimed at assessing alternative policy measures.

In fragile territories, the COVID-19 pandemic has often worsened pre-existing forms of vulnerability, especially socio-economic and institutional ones Chile, a structurally vulnerable country in many respects, is unfortunately a good example: its communities are exposed to natural disasters and the effects of climate change, as well as to social imbalances The latter is a result of high economic inequality emerging from the country's market-driven policies implemented under Pinochet's dictatorship, which remains mostly unaltered since the return of democracy in 1990 In an environmentally and socially fragile context that has given way to the strong protests that have paralysed Chile's public life since Oct 2019, Chilean institutions show additional elements of vulnerability The centralist tradition of the Chilean state gives a central role to national institutions, which nonetheless citizens do not trust, while municipalities are closer to local communities However, municipalities have to manage a contradictory situation: past administrative reforms put municipalities in charge of providing basic public services such as schools and healthcare, necessary for citizens who cannot access private services, but local bodies are fiscally autonomous and receive a minor contribution from a national Municipal Common Fund

Street markets can contribute to food security, since they are a source of fresh food and comparably inexpensive goods, being very relevant for low-income groups. Their relevance is even higher when considering older people, due to their often-constrained financial resources and possibilities to move. To assess the potential contribution of street markets to food security, this paper aims at evaluating to what extent older people have access to such a relevant asset. We consider the case of Chile, an ageing country with an unequal pension system, which makes it relevant for older people to access healthy and inexpensive food. We analyze what proportion of older people (i.e., people over 65) has walking access within 10 min to a street market—feria libre—in each Chilean region, with particular detail in the country’s four major urban areas. We compare the resulting accessibility maps with census data to identify neighborhoods with higher proportions of older people and examine their socio-economic conditions. Our findings show that while street markets are less accessible to older people in comparison to the general population, the inhabitants who can access them belong mainly to low-income groups. The results provide relevant insights to develop neighborhood-based policies for spreading and strengthening street markets, especially in low-income areas with insufficient levels of access to other relevant urban opportunities.

The demand for geospatial data across different disciplines and organisations has led to the development and implementation of spatial data infrastructures (SDI) and the theory and concepts behind them. An SDI is an evolving concept about facilitating and coordinating the exchange of geospatial data and services between stakeholders from different levels in the spatial data community. Universities and other research organisations typically have well-established libraries and digital catalogues for scientific literature, but catalogues for geospatial data are rare. Geospatial data is widely used in research, but geospatial data produced by researchers is seldom available, accessible and usable, e.g., for purposes of teaching or further research after completion of the project. This chapter describes the experiences of a number of SDI implementations at universities and research institutes. Based on this, the Academic SDI, an SDI for research and education, is defined and its stakeholders are described. The purpose, scope and stakeholders of the Academic SDI are described based on the formal model of an SDI developed by the International Cartographic Association (ICA) Commission on SDIs and Standards (formerly the Commission on Geoinformation Infrastructures and Standards). The results contribute to understanding the state-of-the-art in SDI implementations at universities and research institutes; how the Academic SDI differs from a ‘regular’ SDI; and which role players need to be involved in a successful SDI implementation for research and education.

Long-term scenarios for mobility within cities usually neglect the energy supply challenge and how the implied risks affect urban mobility services. High levels of private transport and fossil fuel dependency tend to prevail in urban agglomerations of modern cities in many parts of the world. The resilience approach supports a new perspective on transportation solutions, not only based on how to consume less energy or emit less CO2, but how vulnerable urban mobility is in face of a fossil threat. This paper aims to assess the vulnerability of urban mobility in the face of fossil fuel threats under a social and geographical scope. We apply a case study with the city of Rio de Janeiro, confronting city inhabitants with a price increase of gasoline and oil-based public transportation. We found that more than 50% of the districts of Rio de Janeiro presents low-medium or low level of resilience of urban mobility. Furthermore, they are in areas with lower accessibility to metro stations and more citizens with reduced income levels. Resumo Cenários de longo prazo para a mobilidade dentro das cidades geralmente negligenciam o desafio do fornecimento de energia e como os riscos implícitos podem afetar os serviços de mobilidade urbana. Altos níveis de uso de transporte privado e dependência de combustíveis fósseis tendem a prevalecer nas aglomerações urbanas das cidades em muitas partes do mundo. A abordagem de resiliência suporta uma nova perspectiva sobre soluções de transporte, não apenas com base em quanto menos energia pode ser consumida ou CO2 pode ser emitido, mas também como a mobilidade urbana é vulnerável caso haja uma ameaça de petróleo. O objetivo deste trabalho é avaliar a vulnerabilidade da mobilidade urbana diante das ameaças de combustíveis fósseis em âmbito social e geográfico. Este artigo aplica um estudo de caso à cidade do Rio de Janeiro, confrontando habitantes da cidade com um aumento de preço do transporte público e privado à base de petróleo. Constatou-se que mais de 50% dos distritos do Rio de Janeiro apresentam um baixo-médio ou baixo nível de resiliência da mobilidade urbana. Além disso, estão localizados em áreas com menor acessibilidade às estações de metrô e onde mais habitantes apresentam reduzidos níveis de renda.

Citizen participation should be an essential part of an urban planning process if the needs of the local population are to be addressed. Citizen participation should also improve acceptance of private construction projects by residents that live in or near such development. A complementary form of citizen participation to public planning meetings is to permit citizen engagement via Web 2.0 technologies, which also has the potential to get citizens involved that are usually difficult to reach. We aim to build a social, i.e. participatory, planning platform that allows technology savvy citizens to inform themselves of future and ongoing development projects and to also discuss them online. In this work we discuss the functional needs and context-of-use constraints of such an e-planning platform. A conceptual model of the technical architecture is outlined and a prototype implementation is presented. This prototype is built on free and open source software components, including a social network, to enable platform adoption in other locations. Finally, we discuss the research needs that are to be addressed if the development of participatory e-planning platforms should advance.

La evolución demográfica de América Latina, y especialmente Chile, muestra un creciente envejecimiento de la población: ya en el 2050, uno de cada cuatro latinoamericanos y uno de cada tres chilenos tendrán más de 60 años. Entre los elementos que contribuyen al bienestar de las personas mayores, las posibilidades de movilidad y acceso juegan un rol fundamental y debieran entonces constituirse como prioridad en la formulación de planes y políticas de movilidad. Sin embargo, las tradicionales metodologías de la planificación de trasporte no logran capturar adecuadamente las formas en que las personas mayores se mueven y logran acceder a oportunidades urbanas. El artículo discute el valor de integrar diferentes métodos de análisis para una mejor representación de la movilidad de las personas mayores. Analizando la movilidad y la accesibilidad de una comunidad de personas mayores en el barrio San Eugenio, en Santiago de Chile, el artículo compara los resultados de entrevistas y encuestas por hogares, observando en qué medida contribuyen a la descripción de las prácticas de movilidad y acceso de la población examinada. Los resultados muestran la relevancia de enfoques cualitativos que, a escala barrial, examinan específicamente la población mayor, considerando que estos métodos hacen emerger prácticas de movilidad y patrones de accesibilidad difíciles de observar a través de análisis más agregados. La aproximación a la movilidad de las personas mayores permitida por las herramientas cualitativas requiere considerar las condiciones de su adopción por parte de la planificación de la movilidad al nivel barrial y urbano.

The development and application of urban sustainability indicators has gained momentum in recent years, especially since the generation of specific urban indicators for the Agenda 2030. Urban sustainability is a broad concept involving many dimensions, therefore the generation of a short, but comprehensive list of indicators is a significant challenge. In this paper, we present a set of 29 indicators designed to characterise urban sustainability in Chile, which we also expect to be relevant to other cities, particularly in the Global South where issues of poverty and inequality are prevalent. We first outline the process of selecting the indicators through expert consultation. Then we present selected indicators, and the variables used to measure them. Subsequently the set is applied to six Chilean cities that are diverse in terms of population, socio-economic conditions and geography. We show that some indicators highlight negative nationwide trends that are common to the cities, while other indicators reveal notable differences that can be traced back to their local contexts. The CEDEUS indicators provide a complement to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for cities; therefore, a comparison is made with the SDGs. The indicator development process is critically examined and policy recommendations are given.

The recent trend towards open data and open science as well as a demand for holistic and interdisciplinary research requires platforms that allow the distribution and exchange of research data, including geographic information. While the requirements and benefits of data exchange are widely discussed, there are few proposals on how to implement data platforms that not only permit the exchange of research data among researchers, but also permit to distribute research results and data to the interest public. We elaborate what points are important for implementing a (geographic) data repository and propose then to adopt the concept of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) as a solution for the implementation of research data repositories. We present as a case study the geographic data and document repository of the Chilean research Centre on Sustainable Urban Development (CEDEUS), the CEDEUS Observatory. Besides the infrastructure to host and distribute data, communication tools are an important component of such a data repository service. For this case study we analyse which things have worked well and which things have not worked well based on the experiences collected during three years of operation. We close with some recommendations for the implementation of data repositories for research.

The popularity of a neighbourhood is often explained by its perceived "higher" quality of life. Good access to shops, restaurants, parks, etc., is seen as an indicator that reflects improved quality of life. We present a web-based tool for assessment of accessibility to such services. The system evaluates in real time an area that is accessible using pedestrian, transit, and cycling infrastructure. The accessible area is evaluated using "quality of life" indicators, such as the number of grocery stores, shopping and recreation facilities, and local crime within that area. This tool sets itself apart from pre-computed and neighbourhood-level walkability indices, because it makes use of detailed street-level data, rather than block-level generalizations. It uses real network travel time, and, when transit data are provided, permits the creation and evaluation of accessibility areas for a combination of travel modes such as walking with transit use.

Recent disasters, such as the 2010 Haiti earthquake, have drawn attention to the potential role of citizens as active information producers. By using location-aware devices such as smartphones to collect geographic information in the form of geo-tagged text, photos, or videos, and sharing this information through online social media, such as Twitter, citizens create Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI). To effectively use this information for disaster management, we developed a VGI framework for the discovery of VGI. This framework consists of four components: (i) a VGI brokering module to provide a standard service interface to retrieve VGI from multiple resources based on spatial, temporal, and semantic parameters, (ii) a VGI quality control component, which employs semantic filtering and cross-referencing techniques to evaluate VGI, (iii) a VGI publisher module, which uses a service-based delivery mechanism to disseminate VGI, and (iv) a VGI discovery component to locate, browse, and query metadata about available VGI datasets. In a case study we employed a FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) strategy, open standards/specifications, and free/open data to show the utility of the framework. We demonstrate that the framework can facilitate data discovery for disaster management. The addition of quality metrics and a single aggregated source of relevant crisis VGI will allow users to make informed policy choices that could save lives, meet basic humanitarian needs earlier, and perhaps limit environmental and economic damage.

Recent advances in Web technologies have opened avenues to create socio-technical platforms that can empower citizens in urban planning processes. The rise of the GeoWeb and the popularity of Web 2.0 collaborative tools can facilitate the development of a new generation of bottom-up Public Participatory GIS PPGIS platforms that can incorporate user-generated content into Spatial Data Infrastructures SDIs. New service-based delivery mechanisms can provide architectural flexibility and adaptability, and enable the public to benefit from ubiquitous information access. From an e-participation perspective, Web 2.0 social networking functions support interactive communication among various PPGIS stakeholders, e.g., citizens, planners, and decision makers. The main contribution of this article is to present a reference architecture for e-planning platforms that 1 facilitates effective e-participation by allowing multidirectional map-based communication among various land development stakeholders e.g., planners, decision makers, citizens, etc., and 2 enables incorporation of visualization, evaluation, and discussion capabilities to support community planning processes. To achieve this, we developed a service-oriented architecture SOA that exploits SDI principles and Web 2.0 technologies. The platform architecture allows heterogeneous data sources, analytical functionality and tools, and presentation frameworks to be plugged into a coherent system to provide a planning and decision support platform. We present two real-world implementations of the proposed architecture that have been developed to support community engagement in the City of Calgary, Canada.

Gilbert and Perl (2007) established how different epochs in human history came with specific “transport revolutions.” Our research suggests that intermodal approaches could constitute an invisible transport planning revolution.Based on a review defining “social” sustainability as it applies to urban passenger transportation, we consider the potential of an intermodal focus to better integrate non-motorized (walking-cycling) and public transportation. We start from the premise that rather than being a primary “mono-mode” such as buses or trains, sustainable transport is best understood as an ecology of modes with specific strengths and complementarities that can be mobilized through planning.Using data from Metropolitan Santiago (Chile), we explore this potential, from a conceptual, mainly social, and spatial perspective. We find that paying more attention to different formats of cycling, public transport integration could significantly improve low-cost alternatives for individual and feeder trips....

Background A high degree of walkability is one of the keys to complete and liveable neighbourhoods. Apartments with shops, a pharmacy and a park around the corner are often in high demand. A study by National Association of Realtors but also newspaper and blog discussions show that walkable access to daily services is perceived by citizens to be important. Thereby a neighborhood is considered “walkable” if services for daily and weekly routines, such as bringing kids to school, grocery shopping, and visits to entertainment locations (e.g. cafe, bar, cinema) can easily and safely be walked to in 5 to 15 minutes. Aim Our aim is to build an online platform that permits to evaluate a neighbourhood’s accessibility based on access to points-of-interest (POI), such as parks, schools, stores, cafes, theatres etc. within a certain travel time. Thereby we want to account for the evaluation of different transport modes (walk, bike, bus) and different demographic groups. Methods In a first stage we developed a platform prototype for Calgary, Canada, and second Santiago de Chile. The platform is based on the free software OpenTripPlanner.org as routing backend, and a web-browser based user interface developed with the Python Django framework. Data comes mainly from OpenStreetMap, and transit data from local transit agencies. The method for the score calculation evaluates and weights the number and type of POI found within a network-based travel-shed. The sheds size is defined by the chosen travel mode and travel time. This method was original presented by WalkScore.com utilizing, however, a 1-mile circle for evaluation of walking. Results The prototype permits to measure urban accessibility for a particular map location given by the user (see http://webmapping.ucalgary.ca/WalkYourPlace/). We also added options for batch calculations to calculate accessibility for a complete city by evaluating a point grid. Conclusions With the platform it’s possible to evaluate accessibility and in particular walkability for a user defined location. However, evaluation of planning scenarios - before and after infrastructure changes are also possible. For instance, we evaluated if and how accessibility changes for a new subway line in Santiago de Chile currently under construction.

Over the last decade an increasing number of free and open source software projects have been founded that concentrate on developing several types of software for geographic data collection, storage, analysis and visualization. We first identify the drivers of such software projects and identify different types of geographic information software, e.g. desktop GIS, remote sensing software, server GIS etc. We then list the major projects for each software category. Afterwards we discuss the points that should be considered if free and open source software is to be selected for use in business and research, such as software functionality, license types and their restrictions, developer and user community characteristics, etc. Finally possible future developments are addressed.

GIScience 2016 Short Paper Proceedings Can we use OpenStreetMap POIs for the Evaluation of Urban Accessibility? S. Steiniger 1 , M.E. Poorazizi 2 , D.R. Scott 1 , C. Fuentes 1 , R. Crespo 3 CEDEUS & Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile A, Avda. Vicuna Mackenna 4860, Macul - Santiago - Chile Email: ssteiniger@uc.cl University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, AB T2N 1N4, Canada Email: mepooraz@ucalgary.ca Universidad Bernardo O’Higgins, Avenida Viel 1497 Ruta 5 Sur - Santiago, Chile Email: ricardo.crespo@ubo.cl Abstract High urban accessibility, measured in terms of easy and fast to reach public and private services, such as schools, parks and shops, is considered an important indicator for quality of life. We developed a web-based platform to measure urban accessibility for transportation planning. Several cities that we aim to study are in Chile where data on urban services is scarce. We evaluated if OpenStreetMap (OSM) can be used as a source of Points of Interest (POI) to evaluate urban accessibility. Based on a field survey in Santiago de Chile, we found that completeness of the OSM POI database is geographical very diverse (7% - 73%) and therefore accessibility scores change significantly. However, scores in some areas did not change much when POIs were added to the OSM database. Given the lack of alternative data sources we recommend using OSM, but suggest evaluating POI completeness in areas with average and low accessibility scores. 1. Urban Accessibility Urban accessibility measures how easy or difficult it is to visit places of one’s day-to-day activities by measuring travel time. As daily activities are considered things such as going to work or school, visiting the library or a park, doing (grocery) shopping, going out to a restaurant, or visiting a movie theatre. Traditionally, transportation planning has focused on measuring accessibility as accessibility to work places, as work-related trips generate high travel demand. Following newer but also classic accessibility measurement theory and practice (e.g., Talen and Anselin 1998; Geurs and van Wee 2004), we developed a web-based platform that measures urban accessibility by counting activity opportunities within a certain travel time – or “travel-shed”. The platform should later be used to evaluate how accessibility changes when investments into urban infrastructure or changes to public transit schedules are made. To evaluate urban accessibility based on activity opportunities and with respect to different modes of travel (e.g. walking, biking, public transit) different data sources are needed: (a) activity opportunities in form of Point of Interest (POI) data, (b) road and pedestrian path network information, and (c) bus and subway/LRT schedules if accessibility with public transit is of interest. In this paper we aim to evaluate how completeness of the (OpenStreetMap) POI database affects calculated walkability scores. 2. Why OpenStreetMap as a Data Source Our first platform prototype was implemented to measure accessibility in Calgary, Canada (Steiniger et al. 2013). For this prototype we used road network data from OpenStreetMap and Points of Interest (POI) were received from MapQuest’s proprietary online database.

Over the past twenty years a set of methods for home-range estimation and analysis of animal observation data have been developed. Whereas comparisons among the estimation methods and different estimation software are available, only the adahabitat analysis toolbox for R is under a free and open source software license and includes established and new home range estimation approaches, such as Kernel Density Estimation, Brownian Bridges and Local Convex Hulls. However, R and adehabitat are rather catering the needs of the scientific user and not the wildlife manager with respect to its general look & feel, and further, provide only a limited set of functions for the analysis of home ranges with environmental geodata, e.g. land-cover and elevation data. This article presents a free and open-source home range analysis toolbox that (i) focuses on the evaluation of GPS collar data, (ii) aims to be fairly straight forward to use by the wildlife manager, and (iii) integrates with a desktop GIS to allow data analysis beyond the creation of home ranges. Since the developed software is distributed under a free and open source license also research can benefit since implemented algorithms can be directly tested and improved.

Technological advances over the past 5 to 10 years have made Geographic Information Systems a powerful and affordable tool for geographic analysis and urban planning. These technological advances have also enabled and shaped new forms of communication and participation, particularly within the domain of social networking via webpages such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Connecting the analytical power of GIS with mapping tools and interaction capabilities of web 2.0 technologies, as well as with environmental, economic, and social models should result in a promising toolbox for urban planning. This article presents a framework that outlines requirements and constraints for a web-accessible planning platform within the context of sustainable urban development of established neighbourhoods in the City of Calgary, Canada. The platform focuses not only on the urban planner as user, but more specifically on the citizen as a contributor to the planning and development process, to further include public opinion in the planning process. The following three aspects for the implementation of the participatory planning platform are

International audience; Utilising urban context recognition and machine learning to improve the generalisation of buildings Abstract The introduction of automated generalisation procedures in map production systems requires that generalisation systems are capable of processing large amounts of map data in acceptable time and that cartographic quality is similar to traditional map products. With respect to these requirements, we examine two complementary approaches that should improve generalisation systems currently in use by national topographic mapping agencies. Our focus is particularly on self-evaluating systems, taking as an example those systems that build on the multi-agent paradigm. The first approach aims to improve the cartographic quality by utilising cartographic expert knowledge relating to spatial context. More specifically, we introduce expert rules for the selection of generalisation operations based on a classification of buildings into five urban structure types, including inner city, urban, suburban, rural, and industrial and commercial areas. The second approach aims to utilise machine learning techniques to extract heuristics that allow us to reduce the search space and hence the time in which a good cartographical solution is reached. Both approaches are tested individually and in combination for the generalisation of buildings from map scale 1:5000 to the target map scale of 1:25 000. Our experiments show improvements in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. We provide evidence that both approaches complement each other and that a combination of expert and machine learnt rules give better results than the individual approaches. Both approaches are sufficiently general to be applicable to other forms of self-evaluating, constraint-based systems than multi-agent systems, and to other feature classes than buildings. Problems have been identified resulting from difficulties to formalise cartographic quality by means of constraints for the control of the generalisation process.

Geographic Information tools (GI tools) have become an essential component of research in landscape ecology. In this article we review the use of GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and GI tools in landscape ecology, with an emphasis on free and open source software (FOSS) projects. Specifically, we introduce the background and terms related to the free and open source software movement, then compare eight FOSS desktop GIS with proprietary GIS to analyse their utility for landscape ecology research. We also provide a summary of related landscape analysis FOSS applications, and extensions. Our results indicate that (i) all eight GIS provide the basic GIS functionality needed in landscape ecology, (ii) they all facilitate customisation, and (iii) they all provide good support via forums and email lists. Drawbacks that have been identified are related to the fact that most projects are relatively young. This currently affects the size of their user and developer communities, and their ability to include advanced spatial analysis functions and up-to-date documentation. However, we expect these drawbacks to be addressed over time, as systems mature. In general, we see great potential for the use of free and open source desktop GIS in landscape ecology research and advocate concentrated efforts by the landscape ecology community towards a common, customisable and free research platform.

International audience; Automated processes such as cartographic generalisation require formal abstraction of the geographic space in order to analyse, process and transform it. Spatial relations are key to understanding geographic space and their modelling is a critical issue. This chapter reports on existing classifications and modelling frameworks for spatial relations. A generic model is proposed for building an ontology of spatial relations for automatic processes such as generalisation or on-demand mapping, with a focus on so-called multiple representation relations. Propositions to use such ontology in an automated environment are reported. The three use cases of the chapter describe recent research that uses relations modelling. The first use case is the extension of CityGML with relations for 3D city models. The second use case presents the use of spatial relations for automatic spatial analysis, and particularly the grouping of natural features such as lakes or islands. Finally, the third use case is a data migration model guided by relations that govern the positioning of thematic data upon changing reference data.

The implementation of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) for governments and companies is a task that has gained ample attention in recent years. Different categories of spatial software such as desktop GIS, server GIS, web map servers, spatial database management systems, web map development toolkits, etc., are required to realize the software components of an SDI. We catalogue a (selected) variety of free and open source projects that develop and maintain spatial software that fit within these categories. Our analysis reveals that for all categories of software used in SDIs a free software product is available. This enables adopters to implement an SDI on a limited financial budget, and allows the distribution of a proven SDI architecture without legal constraints. Our software evaluation shows that free and open source solutions support a wide range of industry standards that ease interoperability between SDI components.

International audience; Over the past few years the world of free and open source geospatial software has experienced some major changes. For instance, the website FreeGIS.org currently lists 330 GIS‐related projects. Besides the advent of new software projects and the growth of established projects, a new organisation known as the OSGeo Foundation has been established to offer a point of contact. This paper will give an overview on existing free and open source desktop GIS projects. To further the understanding of the open source software development, we give a brief explanation of associated terms and introduce the two most established software license types: the General Public License (GPL) and the Lesser General Public License (LGPL). After laying out the organisational structures, we describe the different desktop GIS software projects in terms of their main characteristics. Two main tables summarise information on the projects and functionality of the currently available software versions. Finally, the advantages and disadvantages of open source software, with an emphasis on research and teaching, are discussed.

Recognition of urban structures is of interest in cartography and urban modelling. While a broad range of typologies of urban patterns have been published in the last century, relatively little research on the automated recognition of such structures exists. This work presents a sample-based approach for the recognition of five types of urban structures: (1) inner city areas, (2) industrial and commercial areas, (3) urban areas, (4) suburban areas and (5) rural areas. The classification approach is based only on the characterisation of building geometries with morphological measures derived from perceptual principles of Gestalt psychology. Thereby, size, shape and density of buildings are evaluated. After defining the research questions we develop the classification methodology and evaluate the approach with respect to several aspects. The experiments focus on the impact of different classification algorithms, correlations and contributions of measures, parameterisation of buffer-based indices, and mode filtering. In addition to that, we investigate the influence of scale and regional factors. The results show that the chosen approach is generally successful. It turns out that scale, algorithm parameterisation, and regional heterogeneity of building structures substantially influence the classification performance.

Adequate representation of cartographic expert knowledge is essential if maps are to be created in an automated way. Part of this expert knowledge is made up by the structural knowledge embedded in the relations that exist among the objects depicted on a map, as these define the structures and patterns of the corresponding real-world objects that should be maintained and emphasized in the cartographic generalization process. With this article we aim to provide a foundation for the analysis and representation of such relations among objects in thematic and topographic maps, which we term horizontal relations. We start off by defining the terminology underlying map object relations and by discussing how these relations interact with map constraints and cartometric measures. We then present a typology of horizontal relations that may be found in a map with respect to map generalization. The typology is the result of a study of thematic and topographic maps, as well as an analysis of the literature on the use...

En este trabajo se discuten estas cuestiones y se presenta un estudio piloto cuyo objetivo es desarrollar indicadores para evaluar la sustentabilidad de los barrios residenciales en Chile, con la intención de transformarse en una herramienta de trabajo tanto para los vecinos de los barrios, como para actores externos que estén interesa-dos en intervenir de acuerdo con la realidad del país. Se elaboró una lista de 85 indicadores de sustentabilidad basada en una revisión de la literatura, las políticas chilenas y en reuniones de expertos. Los indicadores abarcan 10 áreas de sustentabilidad como seguridad, empleo e ingresos, educación, acceso y movilidad, etc. El trabajo incluye un estudio de 13 barrios ubicados en 6 ciudades chilenas: Copiapó, La Serena, Santiago, Concepción, Temuco y Valdivia. Además, se eligieron tres referencias, es decir, barrios modelos con un ingreso más alto o una ubicación central para poder explorar la gama completa de valores de indicador. El artículo describe finalmente cómo fueron seleccionados los indicadores y los barrios y se presenta una herramienta exploratoria de análisis de datos para compararlos.