Open thesis topics
Bachelor
Thema: Im Rahmen der gemeinsamen IFGIcopter und ILÖK UAV Initiative werden kontinuierlich vegetationsspezifische Fernerkundungsdaten unterschiedlichster UAV-Sensoren (Drohnen) aufgenommen und ausgewertet. Besondere Schwerpunkte sind die Erfassung und Analyse von Vegetationsmustern, Vitalitätsparametern und inversiver Arten mittels multispektraler UAS Daten. In diesem Kontext spielen die Datenverarbeitung und Visualisierung (auch 3D) mittels verschiedenster geoinformatischer Werkzeuge (GIS, kommerzielle Software, Web-Tools und Eigenprogrammierungen etc.) eine große Rolle. Wer Interesse an einer interdisziplinären Fragestellung in diesem Bereich hat, wende sich an die beiden Ansprechpartner [2017].
Ansprechpartner: Torsten Prinz / Jan Lehmann
Contact: Torsten Prinz
Reproducibility is a core element of the scientific method.
In the Geosciences, the insights derived from geodata are frequently communicated through maps, and the computational methods to create these maps vary in their ease of reproduction.
While GIS desktop applications (e.g., QGIS, ArcGIS) are widely used by professionals and researchers in the Geosciences for map production, they may hinder map reproducibility as the details of the map making process become more challenging to document.
For this thesis, a QGIS plugin will be developed, which automates the documentation of the datasets, the spatial operations and other metadata that were used to produce maps.
The plugin should output a structured JSON file that ties together all the necessary components, steps and information for the (re)production of a map within the environment of QGIS, in order to facilitate the reproducibility of maps that were not created programmatically.
The plugin will be developed in Python (unless the student feels comfortable with C++).
QGIS plugins for reference: https://plugins.qgis.org/plugins/MetadataDbLinker/, https://plugins.qgis.org/plugins/mapexport/, https://plugins.qgis.org/plugins/project_report/
Structured schemas for reference: https://schema.org/Map, https://schema.org/SoftwareApplication, https://www.researchobject.org/ro-crate/
Contact: Eftychia Koukouraki
IVE is a panoramic video footage that is displayed on large screens in a cave like environment that creates a sense of physical presence and enables people to better interact and intervene the image of their surroundings. However, the forms of interactions are very limited - yet needed - when users need to create objects on the screen as video overlays and interact with them (e.g., adding and scaling a tree, modifying a building façade etc.).
This study aims to explore the forms of interactions on IVE for effective creation and interaction of the overlays. The student will work with the IVE system in the Sitcom Lab at Ifgi. The study will cover the following steps: creating a video footage and overlays for IVE, exploration of the tools (e.g., smart phone, HTC Vive controllers, touch pad), design of the forms (e.g., adding, removing, scaling, rotating, placing the overlays) of interaction and the UI component.
Sketch maps are traditionally drawn on a flat sheet of paper. However, with accessible, consumer-grade Virtual Reality devices it is now very easy to put on a VR headset and "draw in the air". This might be particularly useful in situations where you want to communicate how the environment looks in the vertical. For instance, when you want to draw a path of drone flying above some landscape, or describe to another person how to navigate a multi-level shopping mall, or explain to a friend how to get out of a metro station near your home.
The goal of this thesis is to understand the potential of 3D sketch maps in VR as a tool for communicating spatial knowledge.
The thesis can be approached from two perspectives:
From the technological perspective it is possible to design new ways of drawing 3D sketch maps in Virtual Reality, and compare them to traditional paper sketch maps. It is also interesting to explore how complex 3D sketch maps can be analysed systematically and what tools can we design to support the analysis of such (sometimes very complex and very messy) 3D drawings.
From the research perspective it is necessary to conduct user experiments to understand whether people can make good use of this new possibility offered by VR, or do they always find it more intuitive to draw on paper. Also, it is important to identify contexts in which 3D sketch maps are necessary - perhaps for most navigational scenarios a sheet of paper is sufficient? If so, what are specific cases (aviation, complex buildings) where 3D sketch maps are necessary?
One straight-forward way to study this is to ask participants to play a VR game where vertical navigation is important (virtual scuba diving, submarine simulator, flying a star wars battleship, a drone, or a passanger plane, downhill skiing) and ask them to draw sketch maps based on this experience.
Contact: Jakub KrukarKaum ein anderes Feld der Informatik entwickelt sich so rasant das maschinelle Lernen. Mit über 100 Veröffentlichungen am Tag wird es zunehmend komplizierter einen Überblick über die für die Geoinformatik relevanten Bildanalyseverfahren zu behalten. Aus diesem Grund sollen in diesem Projekt ausgewählte Verfahren des maschinellen Lernens erarbeitet und auf diverse Bildanalyseaufgaben angewandt werden. Ziel ist es hierbei eine spezifische Algorithmenklasse des maschinellen Lernens kennen zu lernen und das Verfahren in den Kontext der existierenden Algorithmen einzuordnen.
Contact: Benjamin RisseContact: Jakub Krukar
Earth Observation (EO) data cubes are multidimensional arrays of spatial and temporal data, crucial for monitoring and analyzing environmental changes. Machine learning (ML) models applied to EO data cubes enable advanced data analysis and predictive capabilities. However, the diversity of programming languages used in the spatial data science and geoinformatics community, particularly R and Python, poses challenges for interoperability and reproducibility of these ML models.
The outcomes of this research are expected to facilitate smoother integration and collaboration among spatial data scientists and geoinformatics professionals who rely on different programming environments, promoting the reproducibility and interoperability of EO data analysis projects. This work will contribute to the broader goal of advancing geospatial data science by bridging the gap between diverse computational ecosystems.
Use Case:
Carrying out spatial-temporal analysis, such as time-series crop classification in Germany, leveraging the ONNX interoperability format : https://onnx.ai/
- Model Portability: How can a deterministic machine learning model, such as Support Vector Machine (SVM), be trained on Earth Observation data cubes in Python and then ported to R using the ONNX format?
- Performance Evaluation: What are the differences in performance and accuracy of the SVM model when ported from Python to R for time-series crop classification in Germany
- Interoperability Challenges: What are the challenges and potential solutions in ensuring interoperability and reproducibility of machine learning models between Python and R programming environments using ONNX?
- What is the feasibility of implementing identical deep learning models for Earth Observation data cubes in R, Python, and Julia, and ensuring their interoperability?
- How do the available tools and libraries for machine learning in R, Python, and Julia compare in terms of ease of use, performance, and integration with EO data cubes?
- What are the differences in command structure and interface among R, Python, and Julia for machine learning tasks related to EO data cubes, and how do these differences impact the reproducibility and interoperability of the models?
Please contact:
Brian Pondi brian.pondi@uni-muenster.de
and
Edzer Pebesma edzer.pebesma@uni-muenster.de
Contact: Brian Pondi
- Re-Design des Geodatenportals StudMap14 ifgicopter
Das ZDM/IVV sucht ab sofort in Zusammenarbeit mit dem IFGI eine/n BSc-Kandidaten/in aus der Geoinformatikzwecks innovativen "Re-Designs" des Geodatenportals StudMap14 (http://gdione4all.uni-muenster.de/joomla/index.php/studmap14)
Kenntnisse/Einarbeitung in die GeoServer-Umgebung und Interesse an modernen GDI-Lösungen sind Voraussetzungen für dieses BSc-Projekt (ggf. ist eine Finanzierung mit 5 SHK-Stunden für 6 Monate möglich).
Bei Interesse direkt mit Dr. Torsten Prinz in Kontakt treten!
Die openSenseMap ist eine Plattform für Umweltsensordaten von Messstationen jeglicher Art. Zur Zeit werden nur Rohdaten von senseBoxen gespeichert und die Daten können sich nur pro senseBox angezeigt werden lassen. Zudem gibt es die Möglichkeit sich die gesammelten Daten für einen Zeitpunkt interpoliert darstellen zu lassen.
Ziel der Arbeit ist es, für die openSenseMap ein Portal zu entwicklen, in dem der Benutzer die Möglichkeit hat mehrere senseBoxen und Sensoren mit statistischen Methoden zu vergleichen und externe Datenquellen, wie zB. vom DWD, einzubinden.
Contact: Thomas BartoschekVirtual Realtiy is known to cause distortions in our pereception of distance. Things inside VR seem closer than they would be in reality. This is an interesting problem because many wayfinding studies use VR as a substitute of real life environments. Yet, if we know that distance estimations are consistently distorted in VR, can we trust VR results using other methods for measuring spatial knowledge?
The goal of this thesis is to compare different methods of measuring spatial knowledge, in particular:
- sketch maps (qualitative and metric-based analyses)
- distance estimation tasks
- pointing tasks
- perspective taking tasks
across the Virtual Reality environment and corresponding real life environment.
The hypothesis is that some of these methods work equally well in VR and in real life environments, while others should not be used in VR. For example, our analysis from the paper below suggests that people who explore the same building in VR and in the real world draw equally good sketch maps, even though their distance estimation is distorted in VR.
Contact: Jakub KrukarDie openSenseMap bietet live Daten zu verschiedensten Umweltphänomenen, Jedoch ist es zur Zeit schwierig diese Daten erkunden. Ziel dieser Bachelor Arbeit wäre es neue Möglichkeiten zu schaffen, die Daten interaktiv darzustellen. Interessant wären zum Beispiel live Interpolationen über Feinstaubwerte oder die Temperaturentwicklung in Innenstädten im Hochsommer. Um diese Daten einem möglichst grossem Publikum zur Verfügung zu stellen, soll in dieser Bachelorarbeit untersucht werden, welche Möglichkeiten hier neuste Webtechnologien bieten. Verschiedene Visualisierungen sollen generiert werden und mit einer Nutzerstudie evaluiert werden.
Contact: Thomas Bartoschek
In der Arbeit soll untersucht werden, inwieweit Qualitätssicherung von crowd-sourced Sensordaten in einem Sensornetzwerk automatisierbar ist. Dies ist ein neues und hoch relevantes Forschungsfeld: große Datenmengen erlauben die Anwendung statistischer oder machine learning-Verfahren. Traditionelle Verfahren sind häufig nicht nutzbar, da die Daten in Echtzeit vorliegen müssen. Zudem stellen crowd-sourced Daten eine spezielle Herausforderungen dar, da nicht davon ausgegangen werden kann, dass alle Daten mit korrekten bzw. konsistenten Messverfahren erhoben wurden. Schließlich haben low-cost-Sensoren selbst Messfehler, die von professionellen Sensoren stark abweichen. oder Messstationen sind von Citizen Scientists schlecht montiert. Das Ziel ist, die Einflussfaktoren auf die Datenqualität und die Messgenauigkeit der Sensoren zu erforschen, Verfahren zur automatisierten Identifikation fehlerhafter Daten und möglicher Fehlerquellen zu entwickeln sowie automatisiert Entscheidungen über Möglichkeit zur Korrektur der Daten (bspw. über Nachkalibrierung der Sensoren) oder Ausschluss bestimmter Daten zu treffen.
Contact: Thomas Bartoschek- AR evaluation toolkit SITCOM
Augmented Reality applications are widely available now and expected to increase further in the future. They are, however, difficult to evaluate effectively as they strongly depend on interacting with their environment. For example, to assess the effectiveness and usability of a particular user interface or overlay, it is important to consider how it interacts with what people see around them. Are users able to connect the overlay to the corresponding real-world object? Can they interact with the UI elements while being in the actual environment?
The goal of this thesis is to develop and evaluate an evaluation toolkit for AR applications, which allows for systematic, repeatable and low-effort evaluation. The approach to investigate here is to use a virtual environment (such as the Immersive Video Environment at ifgi) and to “trick” an app into believing it is located at the site shown by the virtual environment. This ensures a controlled environment and thus allows for a systematic evaluation of AR applications.
Research in SITCOM generally focusses on enabling all kinds of users to solve real-world problems using spatial information. Have a look at the group's web page for more details and example projects.
If you are generally interested in this area or have an idea of a thesis topic that falls into that area, feel free to get in touch with one of the current members of SITCOM.
Contact: Christian KrayMit WebGIS NRW (webgis.nrw) existiert ein prototypisches WebGIS für den Bildungskontext, das auf modernen open Source Technoligien basiert (MapBox GL). Ziel der Arbeit ist die Weiterentwicklung des WebGIS nach User Centered Design Prinzipien und eine Evaluation der Usability.
Contact: Thomas BartoschekIm Rahmen dieser Bachelorarbeit sollen neue Sensorkomponenten für Umweltphänomene (z.B. Wind, Wasser, Radioaktivität o.ä.) für die senseBox identifiziert und in das senseBox Ökosystem aus Open Source Hardware, openSenseMap Geodateninfrastruktur, Blockly-Programmierumgebung integriert und evaluiert werden.
Contact: Thomas BartoschekWhen people draw sketch maps, they generalise information compared to the ground-truth information they perceived in the world. For example many buildings belonging to university campus are drawn as a single polygon labelled "campus",
This is a challenge for analysing sketch maps because this information is not wrong, yet a computer system for automated analysis would interpret it as such.
In the paper linked below we presented a classification of generalisation types in sketch maps. We also also have a working software prototype for analysing generalisation in sketch maps.
In this thesis you will test the impact of one (chosen) variable on the level of generalisation. Sample research questions:
- If we ask people to draw different size of an area, do they start to generalise more?
- do people generalise important streets more/less compared to less important ones (e.g., accounting for "integration" Space Syntax metric)?
- If we give people less time to draw, do they generalise or omit information?
- if we ask people to draw the sketch map with a different task (e.g., walking through a campus vs. walking near a campus vs. walking away from campus) - are generalisations different?
Contact: Jakub Krukar and Angela Schwering
Die Entwicklung von Geodateninfrastrukturen hat das Ziel, die Verfügbarkeit und Nutzbarkeit von Geodaten für verschiedenste Anwendungszwecke spürbar zu verbessern. Zwar ist in allen Strategiepapieren zu lesen, dass hierbei die Anforderungen der Anwender im Mittelpunkt stehen sollen, tatsächlich ist die Entwicklung aber in starkem Maße angebotsgetrieben, ohne systematische Berücksichtigung der Nutzeranforderungen und entsprechender Erfolgskontrollen.
Im Rahmen der Arbeit soll am Beispiel der GDI NRW gezeigt werden, wie durch eine leichtgewichtige, fokussierte UX-Analyse ein klares Bild der Stärken und Schwächen der GDI bezüglich der Anforderungen einer bestimmten Nutzergruppe (Windpark-Planer) erzeugt werden kann, und dass sich aus diesem Bild konkrete Entwicklungsziele ableiten und priorisieren lassen.
Gegenstand der Arbeit: Aufarbeitung der Grundlagen und Einwertung verwandter Arbeiten, Vorbereitung und Durchführung der UX-Analyse unter Einbeziehung von Experten-Interviews und eigener technischer Tests. Interpretation der Ergebnisse, Diskussion des Verfahrens, Empfehlungen.
Contact: Albert Remke
For decades, sketchmaps have been used as a tool for measuring spatial knowledge - i.e., for estimating how well participants know and understand some areas. However, evidence from psychological memory studies demonstrates, that drawing something can also be a good strategy to memorise a set of object. For instance, if you need to memorise the setting of a room, drawing the room as you see it is a better memorisation strategy than repeating the names of the objects verbally or in your head. This thesis will test whether drawing a sketch map is a good memorisation strategy for spatial environments and how this approach can be implemented in a gamified app. The problem is relevant for situations in which people must learn new spatial environments, e.g. to become taxi/delivery drivers, or when they move to a new city.
The thesis can be completed with focus on one of two aspects:
**Computational focus:** You will design a teaching app that (a) records the user's trajectory together with a list of landmarks that were visible along the route, and (b) after a delay, asks users to draw the area that they have travelled. Here the key problem may be to select routes and landmarks that the user should be asked to draw (based on the recorded trajectories).
**Evaluation focus:** You will design and conduct an experiment to evaluate the following research question: does drawing a sketchmap help people memorise the environment better, compared to alternative strategies? This does not require creating an app, and can be conducted as an in-situ experiment, or inside our Virtual Reality lab.
Navigation is usually studied either completely outdoors or completely indoors. But our real-life wayfinding is different - we continuously enter and exit buildings without feeling that this is now a completely different experience.
The goal of this thesis is to understand what happens when people exit/enter buildings - how their navigation changes, and how technology can embrace the difference between these two contexts.
This can be approached from two perspectives.
From the technological perspective it is possible to design a prototype navigation system that---assuming indoor localisation is possible---works indoors and outdoors, and changes its behaviour depending on this context.
From the research perspective it can be investigated how human navigation changes when people enter or exit buildings. This can be studied for instance with a mobile eye-tracking, by asking experiment participants to move indoors/outdoors and analysing how eye-tracking measures vary between these two contexts.
Contact: Jakub KrukarPerceived Spaciousness is the subjective feeling of how large a given space is. Just think about the difference between the seminar room 242 vs. the atrium in the centre of the GEO1 building. Does the atrium feel 5x larger? 10x larger? 20x larger? Or imagine walking through a small entrance into a large temple. How much volume does it need to have to create the feeling of "wow, this is huge!" ?
Resaerch has shown that people have very distorted way of judging this and that the volume of space alone (the amount of "empty air" surrounding you) is not the only important factor. It matters what shape this empty space has (is it taller or longer?), where you are currently standing (above or below the open space? close to the wall or in its centre?), and where you entered it from (entering into a large room from a small one vs a small one from a large one).
The goal of this thesis is to understand what affects our peceived spaciousness. The thesis can approached from two perspectives.
From the technological perspective it is necessary to create new ways of studying perceived spaciousness in Virtual Reality. Researchers used various ways to ask people "how spacious does this space feel right now?" - they asked them verbally to rank it from 1 to 7, or gave them a circular dial that participants rotated when they felt more spacious. VR opens the chance to create better ways to gather this kind of data.
From the research perspective VR offers us the chance to design architectural experiments impossible in real life. For instance, we can move a person from a very small space to an extremely spacious one in a matter of seconds, and test their reactions. We can change their pathway (e.g., reverse it so that they move from a large space to a small one) and see if the reaction is symmetric. We can also systematically modify the Virtual Reality rooms by changing their shape, size, or lighting, and test how these changes affect perceived spaciousness.
Contact: Jakub Krukar
In den vergangene Jahren ist die Zahl der Insekten dramatisch zurückgegangen, jedoch fehlt es nach wie vor an Verfahren für die nicht-invasive Überwachung von Insektenpopulationen. In diesem Projekt wird mittels eines neuen Insektendatensatzes, welcher verschiedene visuelle Hinweise wie Farbinformationen und Bewegungshinweise bietet die folgenden Ziele verfolgt: (1) neue Bildgebungsmodalitäten und Insektendatensätze testen; (2) die relevanten maschinellen Lerntechniken zu eruieren; und (3) angepasste maschinelle Lernmodelle zu entwickeln, um die winzigen Tiere in unübersichtlichen Umgebungen automatisiert zu erkennen. Insbesondere sollen aktuelle Algorithmen zur Objekterkennung genutzt werden, die nahezu universell in der Geoinformatik anwendbar sind und sich daher nicht auf die in dieser Arbeit vorgestellten terrestrischen Fernerkundungsdaten beschränken.
Contact: Benjamin Risse- Privacy preserving location-based services (adaptive algorithms, infrastructures, visualisations) SITCOM
In order to benefit from location-based services (LBS) such as navigation support, local recommender systems or delivery services, users need to share their location with the service provider. This can have negative implications for their privacy as the service provider might learn a lot about users, e.g. movement patterns, places they frequent and inferred knowledge such as health conditions.
At the same time, service provision would also be possible if users did not share their precise location: a weather forecast app, for example, might work well enough with very coarse-grained location information. For some LBS, having access to lower-quality location information might be problematic. For example, providing turn-by-turn instructions might be impossilbe if users share coarse-grained location information.
The goal of this topic is thus to develop and evaluate approaches for different types of LBS to adapt to different levels of quality of location information. The topic can be tackled from different perspectives and therefore can serve as a starting point for several different theses projects:
- on the algorithmic level, an analysis of common algorithms used in LBS to provide certain services (such as routing) can be carried out to develop and evaluate new/improved algorithms that can better cope with different levels of location quality
- on the infrastructure level, different frameworks and libraries for the development of LBS can be analysed regarding how well they support copting with different levels of location quality; this can then inform the design and evaluation of an improved solution
- on the visualisation/user interface level, an analysis of exsting solutions to convey instructions/information to users in LBS can be carried out with respect to how well they work when provided with location information of lower quality; this can then inform the design and evaluation of improved, adaptive visualsations and user interfaces
Students interested in this topic area can have a look at the SIMPORT project and the publications listed below:
-
Linking location privacy, digital sovereignty and location-based services: a meta review. (2023) S Özdal Oktay, S Heitmann, C Kray. Journal of Location Based Services, 1-52.
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‘Informed’consent in popular location based services and digital sovereignty. (2022) J Dreyer, S Heitmann, F Erdmann, G Bauer, C Kray. Journal of Location Based Services 16 (4), 312-342.
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Ranasinghe, C., Schiestel, N., & Kray, C. (2019, October). Visualising location uncertainty to support navigation under degraded gps signals: A comparison study. In Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (pp. 1-11).
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Ranasinghe, C., Heitmann, S., Hamzin, A., Pfeiffer, M., & Kray, C. (2018, December). Pedestrian navigation and GPS deteriorations: User behavior and adaptation strategies. In Proceedings of the 30th Australian Conference on Computer-Human Interaction (pp. 266-277).
Contact: Christian Kray
Master
Thema: Im Rahmen der gemeinsamen IFGIcopter und ILÖK UAV Initiative werden kontinuierlich vegetationsspezifische Fernerkundungsdaten unterschiedlichster UAV-Sensoren (Drohnen) aufgenommen und ausgewertet. Besondere Schwerpunkte sind die Erfassung und Analyse von Vegetationsmustern, Vitalitätsparametern und inversiver Arten mittels multispektraler UAS Daten. In diesem Kontext spielen die Datenverarbeitung und Visualisierung (auch 3D) mittels verschiedenster geoinformatischer Werkzeuge (GIS, kommerzielle Software, Web-Tools und Eigenprogrammierungen etc.) eine große Rolle. Wer Interesse an einer interdisziplinären Fragestellung in diesem Bereich hat, wende sich an die beiden Ansprechpartner [2017].
Ansprechpartner: Torsten Prinz / Jan Lehmann
Contact: Torsten Prinz
Sustainability is a broad concept with various interconnecting aspects. As one of them citizens’ feelings and perceptions of environmenment is usually neglected in practice due to the insufficient tools and expertise. However, the improvements in the citizen science and the possibilities provided by the digital visualisation techniques allow a better understanding of people’s emotions towards existing circumstances. This knowledge leads to more accurate assessment of sustainability and better decisions at the local scale.
The thesis aims addressing the local emotional indicators for noise quality in Münster through analysing and spatio-temporal modelling of dynamic emotions. To achieve this aim, the study suggests to replicate selected locations in Münster at different time frames by using the Immersive Video Environment (IVE) and work with the citizens to collect information about their emotions. The student is free to choose the software and language for the analysis and spatio-temporal modelling. Basic knowledge of working with Unity and one of the programming languages will be an asset for this study.
Suggested readings:
Kals, E., Maes, J. (2002). Sustainable Development and Emotions. In: Schmuck, P., Schultz, W.P. (eds) Psychology of Sustainable Development. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-0995-0_6Kals, E., Maes, J. (2002). Sustainable Development and Emotions. In: Schmuck, P., Schultz, W.P. (eds) Psychology of Sustainable Development. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-0995-0_6
Murphy, Enda and Eoin A. King. “Mapping for sustainability: environmental noise and the city.” (2013).
IVE is a panoramic video footage that is displayed on large screens in a cave like environment that creates a sense of physical presence and enables people to better interact and intervene the image of their surroundings. However, the forms of interactions are very limited - yet needed - when users need to create objects on the screen as video overlays and interact with them (e.g., adding and scaling a tree, modifying a building façade etc.).
This study aims to explore the forms of interactions on IVE for effective creation and interaction of the overlays. The student will work with the IVE system in the Sitcom Lab at Ifgi. The study will cover the following steps: creating a video footage and overlays for IVE, exploration of the tools (e.g., smart phone, HTC Vive controllers, touch pad), design of the forms (e.g., adding, removing, scaling, rotating, placing the overlays) of interaction and the UI component.
Buildings of the future will have to be much more flexible than they are now. One envisioned possibility is that building interiors will change their shapes depending on the current context of use, personal preference of their users, or tasks that the occupants have to perform within them at the given moment. While this may sound like a distant vision of the future, Virtual Reality equipment already allows us to study such scenarios today.
In this thesis, you will design a Virtual Reality building that participants will explore in Head-Mounted Displays. The VR system will monitor spatio-temporal data of the building user, and create the remaining (yet unvisited) parts of the building in response to this data, before the user gets there.
The specific context of this thesis can be adjusted based on your interests. One possibility would be to detect navigational confusion based on the occupant's walking trajectory, and - in response - provide a navigationally simplified space in the next room that the occupant is going to visit. Another possibility is to detect loss of attention in a virtual museum gallery, and - in response - provide the user with a more exciting space in the next room. The application should be evaluated in a simple user study.
Contact: Jakub Krukar and Chris KraySketch maps are traditionally drawn on a flat sheet of paper. However, with accessible, consumer-grade Virtual Reality devices it is now very easy to put on a VR headset and "draw in the air". This might be particularly useful in situations where you want to communicate how the environment looks in the vertical. For instance, when you want to draw a path of drone flying above some landscape, or describe to another person how to navigate a multi-level shopping mall, or explain to a friend how to get out of a metro station near your home.
The goal of this thesis is to understand the potential of 3D sketch maps in VR as a tool for communicating spatial knowledge.
The thesis can be approached from two perspectives:
From the technological perspective it is possible to design new ways of drawing 3D sketch maps in Virtual Reality, and compare them to traditional paper sketch maps. It is also interesting to explore how complex 3D sketch maps can be analysed systematically and what tools can we design to support the analysis of such (sometimes very complex and very messy) 3D drawings.
From the research perspective it is necessary to conduct user experiments to understand whether people can make good use of this new possibility offered by VR, or do they always find it more intuitive to draw on paper. Also, it is important to identify contexts in which 3D sketch maps are necessary - perhaps for most navigational scenarios a sheet of paper is sufficient? If so, what are specific cases (aviation, complex buildings) where 3D sketch maps are necessary?
One straight-forward way to study this is to ask participants to play a VR game where vertical navigation is important (virtual scuba diving, submarine simulator, flying a star wars battleship, a drone, or a passanger plane, downhill skiing) and ask them to draw sketch maps based on this experience.
Contact: Jakub KrukarContact: Jakub Krukar
Earth Observation (EO) data cubes are multidimensional arrays of spatial and temporal data, crucial for monitoring and analyzing environmental changes. Machine learning (ML) models applied to EO data cubes enable advanced data analysis and predictive capabilities. However, the diversity of programming languages used in the spatial data science and geoinformatics community, particularly R and Python, poses challenges for interoperability and reproducibility of these ML models.
The outcomes of this research are expected to facilitate smoother integration and collaboration among spatial data scientists and geoinformatics professionals who rely on different programming environments, promoting the reproducibility and interoperability of EO data analysis projects. This work will contribute to the broader goal of advancing geospatial data science by bridging the gap between diverse computational ecosystems.
Use Case:
Carrying out spatial-temporal analysis, such as time-series crop classification in Germany, leveraging the ONNX interoperability format : https://onnx.ai/
- Model Portability: How can a deterministic machine learning model, such as Support Vector Machine (SVM), be trained on Earth Observation data cubes in Python and then ported to R using the ONNX format?
- Performance Evaluation: What are the differences in performance and accuracy of the SVM model when ported from Python to R for time-series crop classification in Germany
- Interoperability Challenges: What are the challenges and potential solutions in ensuring interoperability and reproducibility of machine learning models between Python and R programming environments using ONNX?
- What is the feasibility of implementing identical deep learning models for Earth Observation data cubes in R, Python, and Julia, and ensuring their interoperability?
- How do the available tools and libraries for machine learning in R, Python, and Julia compare in terms of ease of use, performance, and integration with EO data cubes?
- What are the differences in command structure and interface among R, Python, and Julia for machine learning tasks related to EO data cubes, and how do these differences impact the reproducibility and interoperability of the models?
Please contact:
Brian Pondi brian.pondi@uni-muenster.de
and
Edzer Pebesma edzer.pebesma@uni-muenster.de
Contact: Brian Pondi
Virtual Realtiy is known to cause distortions in our pereception of distance. Things inside VR seem closer than they would be in reality. This is an interesting problem because many wayfinding studies use VR as a substitute of real life environments. Yet, if we know that distance estimations are consistently distorted in VR, can we trust VR results using other methods for measuring spatial knowledge?
The goal of this thesis is to compare different methods of measuring spatial knowledge, in particular:
- sketch maps (qualitative and metric-based analyses)
- distance estimation tasks
- pointing tasks
- perspective taking tasks
across the Virtual Reality environment and corresponding real life environment.
The hypothesis is that some of these methods work equally well in VR and in real life environments, while others should not be used in VR. For example, our analysis from the paper below suggests that people who explore the same building in VR and in the real world draw equally good sketch maps, even though their distance estimation is distorted in VR.
Contact: Jakub KrukarIn der Arbeit soll untersucht werden, inwieweit Qualitätssicherung von crowd-sourced Sensordaten in einem Sensornetzwerk automatisierbar ist. Dies ist ein neues und hoch relevantes Forschungsfeld: große Datenmengen erlauben die Anwendung statistischer oder machine learning-Verfahren. Traditionelle Verfahren sind häufig nicht nutzbar, da die Daten in Echtzeit vorliegen müssen. Zudem stellen crowd-sourced Daten eine spezielle Herausforderungen dar, da nicht davon ausgegangen werden kann, dass alle Daten mit korrekten bzw. konsistenten Messverfahren erhoben wurden. Schließlich haben low-cost-Sensoren selbst Messfehler, die von professionellen Sensoren stark abweichen. oder Messstationen sind von Citizen Scientists schlecht montiert. Das Ziel ist, die Einflussfaktoren auf die Datenqualität und die Messgenauigkeit der Sensoren zu erforschen, Verfahren zur automatisierten Identifikation fehlerhafter Daten und möglicher Fehlerquellen zu entwickeln sowie automatisiert Entscheidungen über Möglichkeit zur Korrektur der Daten (bspw. über Nachkalibrierung der Sensoren) oder Ausschluss bestimmter Daten zu treffen.
Contact: Thomas BartoschekSketch mapping, i.e. freehand drawings of maps on a sheet of paper, is a popular and powerful method to explore a person's spatial knowledge. Although sketch maps convey rich spatial information, such as the spatial arrangement of places, buildings, streets etc., the methods to analyse sketch maps are extremely simple. At the spatial intelligence lab, we developed a software suite, called SketchMapia, that supports the systematic and comprehensive analysis of sketch maps in experiments. In this master thesis, you develop systematic test data for a sketch map analysis method and evaluate the SketchMapia analysis method w.r.t. its compleness, correctness and performance against other sketch map analysis methods.
Contact: Angela Schwering, Jakub KrukarRecent years have seen a sharp increase in fabricated or outright false information being widely distributed (e.g. conspiracy theories, base-less claims, invented events). The broad availability of generative AI will most likely not only strengthen this trend but make it much harder to recognise fabricated information.
The idea behind this topic is to investigate ways to use location information strategically to verify the truthfulness of shared information. A large percentage of all information has a direct link to a real-world location, for example, photographs (or generated images) taken at a particular place (or claimed to be taken at that location).
This location in turn can be used to check the truthfulness of the information or media in different ways. One approach could be to use trustworthy cartographic information to compare image contents or textual descriptions to information from a map. A second approach could look into checking facts on site, e.g. via a location-based service that directs fact-checkers to where they can assess the truthfulness of some information by following a particular protocol that ensures they can provide strong evidence (e.g. via AR-based comparative overlays). A third approach could investigate ways to use location-sensor data (GPS, compass, gyro, timestamps) to create a blockchain for photos taken a particular location. This could provide a way for individual to create trustworthy information and for others to verify information. Finally, using reliable historical location information (maps, photos, datasets) to assess the truthfulness of newly posted information is another approach worthwhile investigating. For all different approaches, looking into potential attacks (particularly those presented by prompt engineering for current LLMs or coordination between malicious people on site) would be important.
Either of these approaches can become a thesis topics. In principle, these topics could be done either as Master thesis or a Bachelor thesis. However, they will require thorough background research and can potentially be technically demanding. If you are interested in this general topic area or one of the listed examples, please get in touch with Chris.
Contact: Christian KrayFor urban projects to meet the needs and preferences of people, it is essential to ensure public participation. Ideally, this is done along the entire planning process and enables a broad range of groups to get involved.
Different approaches have been proposed in this context. They vary according to the degree of participation (from just being informed to actively taking decisions), to the temporal dimension (synchronous vs. asynchronous) as well as to the location (on site or remotely) and the medium (online, mobile or in person).
The goal of this thesis is to investigate, develop and evaluate hybrid options that combine multiple media and facilitate synchronous and asynchronous participation in urban planning projects. This could, for example, take the form of a web-based system that can be accessed through a public display and allows for synchronous/asynchronous communication between citizens and planners.
There is flexibility regarding the exact combination of technologies and functionalities that is investigated as well as with respect to how urban planning projects are visualised (maps, 3D, Augmented Reality).
Tthe thesis can be developed either as a Master or Bachelor thesis. There is potential for evaluating the approach/system in the context of one of the events/activities organised by the StadtLabor Münster.
Contact: Christian Kray- AR evaluation toolkit SITCOM
Augmented Reality applications are widely available now and expected to increase further in the future. They are, however, difficult to evaluate effectively as they strongly depend on interacting with their environment. For example, to assess the effectiveness and usability of a particular user interface or overlay, it is important to consider how it interacts with what people see around them. Are users able to connect the overlay to the corresponding real-world object? Can they interact with the UI elements while being in the actual environment?
The goal of this thesis is to develop and evaluate an evaluation toolkit for AR applications, which allows for systematic, repeatable and low-effort evaluation. The approach to investigate here is to use a virtual environment (such as the Immersive Video Environment at ifgi) and to “trick” an app into believing it is located at the site shown by the virtual environment. This ensures a controlled environment and thus allows for a systematic evaluation of AR applications.
Research in SITCOM generally focusses on enabling all kinds of users to solve real-world problems using spatial information. Have a look at the group's web page for more details and example projects.
If you are generally interested in this area or have an idea of a thesis topic that falls into that area, feel free to get in touch with one of the current members of SITCOM.
Contact: Christian KrayWalkability is a notion referring to the extent that streets foster the activity of walking, both as a mobility mode and leisure activity. The perception of walkability is dependent on the streets’ physical characteristics, e.g. wide sidewalks, presence of greenery, etc. and on the individuals’ subjective perception thereof, e.g. the imparted sense of safety and beauty.
This thesis will build upon an ongoing project exploring a unique mixture of technologies and methods to give an account on how individuals subjectively perceive the walkability of streets.
In a previous experiment, participants were invited to a so-called Cave Automatic Virtual Environment, where images of streets were displayed. Wearing an eye-tracking device, they were asked to inspect the images and report their perception of the displayed streets. Data obtained in a follow-up interview with the participants complement a rich dataset to investigate how the physical features of streets, the individuals’ eye-movement when inspecting the images, and their demographic and behavioral traits relate to their reported walkability perception.
The student will be able to explore the diversity and richness of the available dataset when addressing an independent, project-related, research question.
References:
Liao B, Berg PEW, Wesemael PJV, Arentze TA (2022) Individuals’ perception of walkability: Results of a conjoint experiment using videos of virtual environments. Cities, 125, 103650.
Li Y, Yabuki N, Fukuda T (2022) Measuring visual walkability perception using panoramic street view images, virtual reality, and deep learning. Sustainable Cities and Society, vol 86, 104140.
Contact: Tessio Novack
Learning Analytics is a method to collect, measure, analyze and visualize data about learners and their context. It enables the understaning of the learning process and allows an adaption of learning paths based on the collected data. It also gives feedback to the learner and teacher about the learning process. The spatial intelligence lab has developed several learning platforms (GeoGami, Blockly for programming senseBox), where data revealing information about the learning proces sis collected. The thesis will investigate how real time data on the learning process can be used to guide the learning process using learning analytics.
Contact: Thomas BartoschekThe ability to orient oneself and read maps is essential to successfully navigate in unfamiliar environments. It is well known that the ability to orient oneself with maps varies from person to person. While there are numerous navigation systems to help us find our way, very few efforts have been made to use GI technologies to promote orientation and map reading skills and overcome the individual differences. GeoGami is a location-based game using digital maps to systematically teach navigational map reading competence. The thesis will investigate how to design trainings to promote people’s navigational map reading competence with digital maps. How to design trainings for specific sub-competencies of navigational map reading such as self-localization, map alignment or object recognition? How to design virtual environments to provide an optimal environment to systematically test navigational map reading competence?
Contact: Angela Schwering, Yousef Qamaz, Mitko AleksandrovIn their seminal paper Wiener et al. (2009) defined the taxonomy of human wayfinding tasks. The taxonomy is based on the type of knowledge possessed by the navigator. However, it did not differentiate between any subcategories of the "Path Following" task. In other words, according to the taxonomy, there is no difference between (a) knowing your route without knowing anything about the wider surrounding enviornment, and (b) knowing your route AND knowing about the wider surrounding enviornment.
Schwering et al. (2017) argued that there are substantial differences between such two tasks and that they deserve to be distinguished in an updated taxonomy.
The goal of this thesis will be to test the hypothesis that following the same route, with the same knowledge about the route, is a cognitively different task depending on whether the navigator has, or does not have, survey knowledge about the broader envionment.
Wiener, J. M., Büchner, S. J., & Hölscher, C. (2009). Taxonomy of human wayfinding tasks: A knowledge-based approach. Spatial Cognition & Computation, 9(2), 152–165.
Schwering, A., Krukar, J., Li, R., Anacta, V. J., & Fuest, S. (2017). Wayfinding Through Orientation. Spatial Cognition & Computation, 17(4), 273–303. doi:10.1080/13875868.2017.1322597
Contact: Jakub Krukar
When people draw sketch maps, they generalise information compared to the ground-truth information they perceived in the world. For example many buildings belonging to university campus are drawn as a single polygon labelled "campus",
This is a challenge for analysing sketch maps because this information is not wrong, yet a computer system for automated analysis would interpret it as such.
In the paper linked below we presented a classification of generalisation types in sketch maps. We also also have a working software prototype for analysing generalisation in sketch maps.
In this thesis you will test the impact of one (chosen) variable on the level of generalisation. Sample research questions:
- If we ask people to draw different size of an area, do they start to generalise more?
- do people generalise important streets more/less compared to less important ones (e.g., accounting for "integration" Space Syntax metric)?
- If we give people less time to draw, do they generalise or omit information?
- if we ask people to draw the sketch map with a different task (e.g., walking through a campus vs. walking near a campus vs. walking away from campus) - are generalisations different?
Contact: Jakub Krukar and Angela Schwering
Maps are predominant representational artifacts in the Geosciences for communicating research results and describing phenomena. Frequently we have to compare maps for a number of reasons: change detection, accuracy assessment, replicability and reproducibility evaluation. Comparing maps is commonly done with visual side-to-side comparison, which can be error-prone and cognitively exhausting for the reader. The aim of this thesis is to assist this comparison and to keep track of the observed differences by manually highlighting them. For this purpose, a prototype for annotating map differences will be developed and evaluated. The student has to ivestigate which annotation form is apropriate for each kind of difference and to use an appropriate structured vocabulary to decribe them.
Suggested reads:
Oren, E., Möller, K., Scerri, S., Handschuh, S., & Sintek, M. What are semantic annotations. Relatório técnico. DERI Galway, 9, 62 (2006).
Diaz, L., Reunanen, M., Acuña, B., Timonen, A. ImaNote: A Web-based multi-user image map viewing and annotation tool. ACM J. Comput. Cult. Herit. 3, 4, Article 13 (2011). http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1957825.1957826
Eye-tracking is a common method for studying the usability of buildings and spatial behaviour in buildings. Many of such studies are conducted in Virtual Reality: either on desktop computers or in head-mounted displays. However, this is a problem because the field of view and head movement in such set-ups is greatly restricted. This might affect what people do or do not see when navigating a building, especially if important information is visible in the periphery of their visual field.
In this thesis you will try to answer the question: What visual information in the periphery do participants of VR experiments miss when navigating a building?
You will compare two groups of people: one group navigating the real building, and the other group navigating the virtual replica of GEO1. You will analyse the eye-tracking data and compare it across the two conditions. The virtual replica of GEO1 is provided.
Contact: Jakub Krukar
For decades, sketchmaps have been used as a tool for measuring spatial knowledge - i.e., for estimating how well participants know and understand some areas. However, evidence from psychological memory studies demonstrates, that drawing something can also be a good strategy to memorise a set of object. For instance, if you need to memorise the setting of a room, drawing the room as you see it is a better memorisation strategy than repeating the names of the objects verbally or in your head. This thesis will test whether drawing a sketch map is a good memorisation strategy for spatial environments and how this approach can be implemented in a gamified app. The problem is relevant for situations in which people must learn new spatial environments, e.g. to become taxi/delivery drivers, or when they move to a new city.
The thesis can be completed with focus on one of two aspects:
**Computational focus:** You will design a teaching app that (a) records the user's trajectory together with a list of landmarks that were visible along the route, and (b) after a delay, asks users to draw the area that they have travelled. Here the key problem may be to select routes and landmarks that the user should be asked to draw (based on the recorded trajectories).
**Evaluation focus:** You will design and conduct an experiment to evaluate the following research question: does drawing a sketchmap help people memorise the environment better, compared to alternative strategies? This does not require creating an app, and can be conducted as an in-situ experiment, or inside our Virtual Reality lab.
Navigation is usually studied either completely outdoors or completely indoors. But our real-life wayfinding is different - we continuously enter and exit buildings without feeling that this is now a completely different experience.
The goal of this thesis is to understand what happens when people exit/enter buildings - how their navigation changes, and how technology can embrace the difference between these two contexts.
This can be approached from two perspectives.
From the technological perspective it is possible to design a prototype navigation system that---assuming indoor localisation is possible---works indoors and outdoors, and changes its behaviour depending on this context.
From the research perspective it can be investigated how human navigation changes when people enter or exit buildings. This can be studied for instance with a mobile eye-tracking, by asking experiment participants to move indoors/outdoors and analysing how eye-tracking measures vary between these two contexts.
Contact: Jakub KrukarModern IoT applications often rely on sensors that run on microcontroller units and communicate via network protocols such as LoRaWAN or Bluetooth Low Energy. To operate autonomously for extended periods of time, application resource requirements must be minimized. This master's thesis investigates the development of resource-efficient IoT applications through the utilization of AI models. These models aim to save energy by reducing the computational load, camera resolution or data transmission, while maintaining the ability to perform specific tasks. You will develop, implement and compare different resource-efficient AI models with sensors such as cameras, distance sensors, vibration sensors and test your implementation in different application scenarios.
Contact: Benjamin Karic, Thomas Bartoschek- How do TensorFlow and PyTorch compare in terms of model fitting correspondences and the structure of intermediate layers when applied to EO data cubes?
- What are the differences in the interface and tooling availability between TensorFlow and PyTorch for spatio-temporal modeling, e.g. using ConvLSTM?
- How does the performance and interoperability of spatio-temporal deep learning models vary across different versions of TensorFlow and PyTorch when applied to EO data cubes?
NB : ONNX format can be used to port DL models between Tensorflow and Torch ; https://onnx.ai/
Please contact:
Brian Pondi brian.pondi@uni-muenster.de
and
Edzer Pebesma edzer.pebesma@uni-muenster.de
Perceived Spaciousness is the subjective feeling of how large a given space is. Just think about the difference between the seminar room 242 vs. the atrium in the centre of the GEO1 building. Does the atrium feel 5x larger? 10x larger? 20x larger? Or imagine walking through a small entrance into a large temple. How much volume does it need to have to create the feeling of "wow, this is huge!" ?
Resaerch has shown that people have very distorted way of judging this and that the volume of space alone (the amount of "empty air" surrounding you) is not the only important factor. It matters what shape this empty space has (is it taller or longer?), where you are currently standing (above or below the open space? close to the wall or in its centre?), and where you entered it from (entering into a large room from a small one vs a small one from a large one).
The goal of this thesis is to understand what affects our peceived spaciousness. The thesis can approached from two perspectives.
From the technological perspective it is necessary to create new ways of studying perceived spaciousness in Virtual Reality. Researchers used various ways to ask people "how spacious does this space feel right now?" - they asked them verbally to rank it from 1 to 7, or gave them a circular dial that participants rotated when they felt more spacious. VR opens the chance to create better ways to gather this kind of data.
From the research perspective VR offers us the chance to design architectural experiments impossible in real life. For instance, we can move a person from a very small space to an extremely spacious one in a matter of seconds, and test their reactions. We can change their pathway (e.g., reverse it so that they move from a large space to a small one) and see if the reaction is symmetric. We can also systematically modify the Virtual Reality rooms by changing their shape, size, or lighting, and test how these changes affect perceived spaciousness.
Contact: Jakub Krukar
Hardly any other field of computer science is developing as rapidly as machine learning. With over 100 publications a day, it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain an overview of the variety of existing and new deep learning concepts and methodologies such as self-supervised learning, transformers and NeRF models. Given the computationally heavy data analysis of geoinformatics, often requiring to process huge datasets of spatio-temproal data, a variety of machine learning paradigms are of particular importance. The aim of this project is therefore to investigate a particular state-of-the-art deep learning algorithm with a particular focus (but not limited to) geoinformatics applicability.
Contact: Benjamin Risse"Replication" refers to the process of re-creating an experiment published by other researchers in an effort of obtaining results pointing to the same conclusion. A "replication crisis" showed that many published research is not replicable. We can distinguish two types of replication:
- an "exact replication" is the attempt of recreating every detail of the original experiment
- a "conceptual replication" is the attempt of creating a similar experiment, with similar hypotheses, but perhaps with a different stimuli, instructions, or groups of participants.
This thesis focuses on a "conceptual replication" of navigation research.
Navigation research is usually performed in very specific spatial context (such as the city in which the paper's authors are based or the virtual environment that they have created). This introduces a challenge to generalizability and replicability of navigation research because we do not know whether classic research findings would be equally applicable in different spatial contexts (e.g., a different city).
This thesis focuses on replicating an existing wayfinding paper (to be chosen by the student) in Münster, or in a virtual environment available at ifgi.
The key challenge is finding a way to make the new spatial context (of Münster) comparable to that of the original paper.
Thesis co-supervised by Daniel Nüst (with technical support w.r.t. replicability).
Examples of papers that can be replicated:
https://doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2014.963131
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2011.06.005
Contact: Jakub Krukar
- Detecting the Invisible - Detection and Tracking of Tiny Insects in Complex Wildlife Environments CVMLS
In recent years, the number of animals in general and insects in particular has decreased dramatically. In contrast to bigger vertebrates there is however still a lack of techniques for non-invasive insect monitoring. In this project, novel visual and temporal data will be used to address the following objectives: (1) develop a state of the art computer vision and machine learning algorithm on complex multimodal wildlife recordings; and (2) evaluate the algorithm based on a challenging wildlife dataset. In particular, current algorithms for object recognition will be used, which are almost universally applicable in geoinformatics and are therefore not limited to the terrestrial remote sensing data presented in this thesis.
Contact: Benjamin Risse- Privacy preserving location-based services (adaptive algorithms, infrastructures, visualisations) SITCOM
In order to benefit from location-based services (LBS) such as navigation support, local recommender systems or delivery services, users need to share their location with the service provider. This can have negative implications for their privacy as the service provider might learn a lot about users, e.g. movement patterns, places they frequent and inferred knowledge such as health conditions.
At the same time, service provision would also be possible if users did not share their precise location: a weather forecast app, for example, might work well enough with very coarse-grained location information. For some LBS, having access to lower-quality location information might be problematic. For example, providing turn-by-turn instructions might be impossilbe if users share coarse-grained location information.
The goal of this topic is thus to develop and evaluate approaches for different types of LBS to adapt to different levels of quality of location information. The topic can be tackled from different perspectives and therefore can serve as a starting point for several different theses projects:
- on the algorithmic level, an analysis of common algorithms used in LBS to provide certain services (such as routing) can be carried out to develop and evaluate new/improved algorithms that can better cope with different levels of location quality
- on the infrastructure level, different frameworks and libraries for the development of LBS can be analysed regarding how well they support copting with different levels of location quality; this can then inform the design and evaluation of an improved solution
- on the visualisation/user interface level, an analysis of exsting solutions to convey instructions/information to users in LBS can be carried out with respect to how well they work when provided with location information of lower quality; this can then inform the design and evaluation of improved, adaptive visualsations and user interfaces
Students interested in this topic area can have a look at the SIMPORT project and the publications listed below:
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Linking location privacy, digital sovereignty and location-based services: a meta review. (2023) S Özdal Oktay, S Heitmann, C Kray. Journal of Location Based Services, 1-52.
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‘Informed’consent in popular location based services and digital sovereignty. (2022) J Dreyer, S Heitmann, F Erdmann, G Bauer, C Kray. Journal of Location Based Services 16 (4), 312-342.
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Ranasinghe, C., Schiestel, N., & Kray, C. (2019, October). Visualising location uncertainty to support navigation under degraded gps signals: A comparison study. In Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (pp. 1-11).
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Ranasinghe, C., Heitmann, S., Hamzin, A., Pfeiffer, M., & Kray, C. (2018, December). Pedestrian navigation and GPS deteriorations: User behavior and adaptation strategies. In Proceedings of the 30th Australian Conference on Computer-Human Interaction (pp. 266-277).
Contact: Christian Kray
Assigned thesis topics
Bachelor
With climate change more frequent and more intense forest fires pose a serious threat to the environment and societies. In a collaboration between the Institute of Landscape Ecology and the Institute of Geoinformatics we aim to extend a web-based burn simulator (known as Ember-sim) to simulate the spread of fire across the landscape based on established fire behaviour models. The burn simulator will then be used for educational purposes, research, and training professional fire practitioners, governmental officers and volunteers from the community.
The project can be delivered at the BSc or MSc level and the potential candidate will be in charge of extending Ember-sim originally developed for the Australian continent, for Germany. Project starting date is open until position is filled.
Are you experienced with JavaScript and have interest in climate change-related topics?
Please contact:
Prof. Mana Gharun mana.gharun@uni-muenster.de
Or
Dr Christian Knoth christian.knoth@uni-muenster.de
Author: Ahmed Aly
Supervisor: Mana Gharun, Christian Knoth
Anfahrtskizzen sind Karten, die optimiert sind, um die Route aus verschiedenen Richtungen zu einem bestimmten Zielort zu zeigen. Zumeist sind sie manuell erstellt, wobei
- Informationen selektiv ausgewählt wurden
- schematisiert dargestellt wurden
Die Arbeit soll Anfahrtsskizzen analysieren und die dahinterliegenden Mechanismen extrahieren, wie Anfahrtsskizzen erfolgreich visualisiert werden können. Die Ergebnisse werden systematisch in einer Nutzerstudie getestet.
Beispiele für Anfahrtsskizzen:
http://www.hautarztpraxis-muenster.de
Author: Jens GolzeSupervisor: Angela Schwering
Eine Vielzahl verfügbarer Apps soll ihre Nutzer*innen dabei unterstützen, sich auf nachhaltigere Art zu verhalten. Dies kann zum Beispiel das Mobilitätsverhalten betreffen (Rad statt Auto), den Energiekonsum (Pulli statt Heizung) oder auch Aktivitäten (Mitwirkung bei Urban Gardening).
Ziel dieser Bachelorarbeit ist es, eine repräsentative Auswahl dieser Apps systematisch zu analysieren, um einen Überblick über die verschiedenen Arten von Apps, der Hauptthemen und -strategien zu gewinnen. Von Interesse sind insbesondere auch welche Techniken aus dem Bereich "Nudging" und "Persuasive Technology" zum Einsatz kommen.
Das Thema kann auf unterschiedliche Weise bearbeitet werden, je nach Wunsch der bearbeitenden Person, z.B. als reine Analyse basierend auf detaillierter Betrachtung der Apps, als Nutzerstudie oder einer Kombination aus beidem. Denkbar ist auch der Entwurf einer App als Mockup/Prototyp, die bestehende Schwächen von verfügbaren Apps überwindet.
Author: Felix DisselkampSupervisor: Chris Kray
Master
Author: Yevgeniya Litvinova
Supervisor: Christian Kray
With climate change more frequent and more intense forest fires pose a serious threat to the environment and societies. In a collaboration between the Institute of Landscape Ecology and the Institute of Geoinformatics we aim to extend a web-based burn simulator (known as Ember-sim) to simulate the spread of fire across the landscape based on established fire behaviour models. The burn simulator will then be used for educational purposes, research, and training professional fire practitioners, governmental officers and volunteers from the community.
The project can be delivered at the BSc or MSc level and the potential candidate will be in charge of extending Ember-sim originally developed for the Australian continent, for Germany. Project starting date is open until position is filled.
Are you experienced with JavaScript and have interest in climate change-related topics?
Please contact:
Prof. Mana Gharun mana.gharun@uni-muenster.de
Or
Dr Christian Knoth christian.knoth@uni-muenster.de
Author: Ahmed Aly
Supervisor: Mana Gharun, Christian Knoth
This idea behind this comes from Luescher and Weibel (2010) - "we might for example present a different answer to the question ‘shopping opportunities in the city centre?’ to elderly people than to young people (the former avoiding the night club district because they might perceive it unsafe)."
Despite the notion of place being widespread in natural language, it is still difficult to model it in a GIS (which is more concerned with location). The student can identify a suitable site, and attempt to study how the notion of place differs among participants of different age groups (young vs. old), residence (e.g living in the city vs. suburbs) etc. The analysis could offer insights into whether there are differences in the way a place is perceived based on these factors and has potential implications for contextualized location based services.
Supervisor: Angela Schwering
Schematic maps are maps that intentionally distort and misrepresent geometries in order to simplify maps. Oftentimes, schematic maps give a better overview of the environment, because they focus only on important aspects. The displays of mobile devices offer only limited space. This thesis topic aims at the development of an algorithm to schematize maps automatically for mobile devices.
Schematization refers to misrepresentations of shape and size of spatial objects and distortions of distance and direction relations among them. The research starts from findings by Latecki and Lakämper, who developed the discrete curve evolution, an algorithm to schematize topographic maps. Barkowski et al. applied this algorithm to map schematization.
References:
Latecki, L.J. and R. Lakämper (2000). Shape similarity measure based on correspondence of visual parts. IEEE Trans. Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI) 22(10): 1185-1190.
Barkowsky, T., L.J. Latecki, and K.-F. Richter (2000). Schematizing maps: Simplification of geographic shape by discrete curve evolution. Spatial cognition II: Integrating abstract theories, empirical studies, formal methods and practical applications. C. Freksa, et al., Springer: 41–53.
Author: Andreas OhremSupervisor: Angela Schwering
In the WayTo research project, we developed a prototype to visualize global landmarks which are outside the map section displayed on a mobile device by visualizing them at the edge of screen to indicate directions.
An amendment to this design is to incorporate distance into the design of icons. The thesis could explore different techniques (e.g. halo (circles at the edge), wedge (triangle at the edge), or distance-encoding arrows). These methods distinguish only two or three levels (or four maximum) of icons size (that means we only have 4 different sizes of each global landmarks to indicate very close, close, far, and very far) on screen. Although there is hardly any empirical data to support that, drawing from cartographic theories regarding visual variables in animated map making, humans are not able to distinguish changes on map representation at fine levels.
Possible bachelor and master thesis could address:
1. Implementing distance and direction indicating landmarks (DDL) display on mobile phones
2. Investigating the effects of DDL on mobile screens on spatial orientation and spatial knowledge
3. Comparing the variations of DDL design (gradient to true distance vs. categorical distance)
4. Comparing the effects of DDL with Halo and Wedge design
Reference: Li, R.; Korda, A.; Radtke, M.; Schwering, A. (2014): Visualising distant off-screen landmarks on mobile devices to support spatial orientation. https://www.uni-muenster.de/forschungaz/publication/99385?lang=en
Author: xSupervisor: Angela Schwering
Powerful methods in an area called "dynamic geometry" provide a rapid way of solving a wide range of spatial reasoning problems. For example, as a user manipulates some shapes (circles, lines, points) in an "intelligent" sketch, the sketch automatically updates itself to maintain certain spatial constraints (e.g. lines being tangent to circles, lines being parallel to each other, and so on).
In medicine these shapes could represent different types of cells that have been automatically recognised from images of a tissue section, and the task could be to determine whether the cells are cancerous (histopathology). In geographic information systems these shapes could represent streets, buildings, and landmarks recognised from satellite images or directly from a hand-drawn sketch.
In this thesis project you will be:
- extending the spatial language of dynamic geometry to work with common-sense qualitative spatial relations (near, left of, inside, etc.)
- integrating dynamic geometry into a knowledge representation (artificial intelligence) framework
You will then use this enhanced technology for a range of exciting tasks, such as:
- improving computer-based image recognition by automatically correcting errors based on knowledge about objects in the domain
- providing new ways of interacting with complex data using "intelligent" sketches
Through this research project you will develop skills and experience in the application of methods in artificial intelligence (AI). You will be introduced to the necessary tools and existing projects to build on. No prior experience with methods in AI is necessary (you will be given considerable support in this area).
Supervisor: Angela Schwering
Isovist analysis is used to predict how people behave in and 'feel about' the geometry of space. One of the best-documented examples of such relation is provided by Wiener et al. (2007). In this work, the authors controlled the shape of a Virtual Reality environment and measured how people experience individual spaces, depending on its underlying isovist properties.
Recently, 3d isovist analysis became increasingly popular in contexts where its traditional 2d counterpart suffers major limitations. However, it is not clear if the influence of isovists on human experience can be directly extrapolated from the 2d to the 3d analysis. In this thesis, the student will replicate the VR experiment of Wiener and colleagues, taking into account the vertical component of human experience and using a 3-dimensional isovist in the analysis of final results.
Wiener, J. M., Franz, G., Rossmanith, N., Reichelt, A., Mallot, H. A., & Bülthoff, H. H. (2007). Isovist analysis captures properties of space relevant for locomotion and experience. Perception, 36(7), 1066 – 1083. http://doi.org/10.1068/p5587
Krukar, J., Schultz, C., Bhatt, M., (forthcoming). Towards Embodied 3d Isovists: Incorporating cognitively-motivated semantics of `space’ and the architectural environment in 3D visibility analysis
Author: Charu ManivannanSupervisor: Jakub Krukar
"Learning by induction" is the ability to take a number of observations or examples and discover rules that account for the observations - it's the ability to generalise from examples.
Being able to generalise spatial patterns from observations is essential for artificial intelligence systems to perform a variety of tasks in a flexible and robust way. We don't want to tell the computer system exactly how to solve every specific problem it will encounter. Instead, we want to give it some examples and have the system use common sense and background knowledge to figure out ways of solving new problems that have a similar structure.
In this thesis project you will be:
(a) integrating a new powerful "common sense" spatial reasoning method called Enhanced Geometric Constraint Solving within a more general artificial intelligence framework for inductive spatial learning;
(b) evaluating the system in a range of exciting applications in geographic information science, architectural design, cognitive psychology (analogical reasoning), and medicine (histopathology).
Through this project you will develop skills and experience in the application of methods in artificial intelligence (AI). You will be introduced to the necessary tools and existing projects to build on. No prior experience with methods in AI is necessary (you will be given considerable support in this area).
Supervisor: Edzer Pebesma
Blades, M., 1990. The reliability of data collected from sketch maps. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 10(4), pp.327–339.
Supervisor: Angela Schwering
A major task in environmental science is to obtain spatially comprehensive data from limited field samples (e.g. climate stations, soil profiles, vegetation records,...). This is often done using machine learning algorithms that learn the relationships between field data and remotely sensed predictor variables (e.g. from satellites). The developed model is then used to make spatial predictions for the entire area of interest (i.e. create a "map" of the variable of interest).
Such a map is only valuable when the error of the model is known. The error assessment however causes major difficulties for models with spatial dependencies and cause standard validation methods to fail. There is increasing consent in literature that spatial validation is necessary and several strategies have been proposed (e.g. Roberts 2018, Meyer 2018, Valavi 2018, Brenning 2012). However, little research is done on how different strategies compare, which however is important to know for model comparisons and for finding the "right" validation strategy for a dataset.
This project aims at comparing and (as far as possible) evaluating different validation strategies for machine learning based spatial mapping of environmental variables. Usually in most projects the "true" performance is hard to assess due to the fact that the reference data are limited. Therefore we want to adress the problem using reference data that are available in a spatially continuous way hence providing a continuous reference. Such data are rare but a possible research task would be available in the field of rainfall monitoring: The RADOLAN dataset contains high quality rainfall data from a radar network in 1km spatial resolution and serves as an excellent reference set. We then want to model rainfall for Germany using data from the the geostationary satellite sensor MSG SEVIRI and auxiliary predictor variables such as elevation (see Kühnlein 2014 for the idea of mdoelling rainfall based on MSG SEVIRI).
Using the RADOLAN data we simulate different sampling designs (hence we simulate raingauges in different constellations: random, clustered,...) and train machine learning models to predict rainfall from MSG SEVIRI in a spatial way. Different strategies for spatial model evaluation are then compared.
Requirements:
R programming is an advantage, interest in working with machine learning algorithms
References:
Brenning, A. (2012): Spatial cross-validation and bootstrap for the assessment of prediction rules in remote sensing: The R package sperrorest. IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium.
Kühnlein, M., T. Appelhans, B. Thies, and T. Nauss, 2014: Precipitation Estimates from MSG SEVIRI Daytime, Nighttime, and Twilight Data with Random Forests. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, 53 (11), 2457–2480.
Meyer, H., Reudenbach, C., Hengl, T., Katurji, M., Nauss, T. (2018): Improving performance of spatio-temporal machine learning models using forward feature selection and target-oriented validation. Environmental Modelling & Software 101: 1-9.
Roberts, D. R., V. Bahn, S. Ciuti, M. S. Boyce, J. Elith, G. Guillera-Arroita, S. Hauenstein, J. J. Lahoz-Monfort, B. Schröder, W. Thuiller, D. I. Warton, B. A. Wintle, F. Hartig, and C. F. Dormann, 2017: Cross-validation strategies for data with temporal, spatial, hierarchical, or phylogenetic structure. Ecography, doi:10.1111/ecog.02881.
Valavi R, Elith J, Lahoz‐Monfort JJ, Guillera‐Arroita G. blockCV: An r package for generating spatially or environmentally separated folds for k‐fold cross‐validation of species distribution models. Methods Ecol Evol. 2018;00:1–8. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.13107
Supervisor: Hanna Meyer
Nowadays, smartphones are an omnipresent companion in our day-to-day life. With the ability to sense our location, location based services (LBS) have become widely used applications (e.g. for navigation, recommender systems, social networks, games, dating apps or fitness tracking). Hence, service providers collect vast amounts of location data about their users. Based on this collected data, providers or malicious third parties who gain access to this data, can infer a lot of additional information (e.g. home, workplace, shopping habits, religious beliefs, political views etc.) about somebody and thus harm their privacy. Those actions are called inferences or inference attacks.
The aim of this thesis is to research possible inference strategies based on the literature and to implement a selection of those. If the topic is chosen as a MSc thesis, an experimental evaluation of different inference strategies is also required.
Due to the algorithmic nature of this topic, the student should be interested in programming and not afraid of digging into some aspects of spatio-temporal analysis. The student is free to choose their programming language and environment of choice. Ideally, the software would be implemented in Javascript, so the results could be integrated into an existing learning application that is currently under development as part of the SIMPORT project (https://simport.net/). The aim of this learning application is to educate users about the risks and consequences of sharing their location data.
Supervisor: Christian Kray
Data cubes are an efficient representation for spatiotemporal data as from Earth observation satellites. By multidimensional chunking, they allow highly parallel execution of complex analysis such as time series change detection. The aim of the thesis is to create an architecture that allows for scaling such operations in a distributed computing environment using containerized processing (Docker) and tools for container orchestration such as Kubernetes. A prototypical implementation as extension to the gdalcubes library shall be developed and used for a detailed analysis of the scalability of the proposed architecture.
Author: Maria HidalgoSupervisor: Edzer Pebesma
Completed thesis topics
Bachelor
Climate change-driven shifts in streamflow timing have been documented for Western North America and are expected to continue with increased warming. These changes will likely have the greatest implications on already short and overcommitted water supplies in the region. This study investigated changes in Western North American streamflow timing over the 1948 – 2008 period, including the very recent warm decade not previously considered, through a) trends in streamflow timing measures b) two second order linear models applied simultaneously over the region to test for the acceleration of these changes, and c) changes in runoff regimes. Basins were categorized by the percentage of snowmelt derived runoff to enable the comparison of groups of streams with similar runoff characteristics and to quantify shifts in snowmelt-dominated regimes.
Results indicate that streamflow has continued to shift to earlier in the water year, most notably for those basins with the largest snowmelt runoff component. However, an acceleration of these streamflow timing changes for the recent warm decades is not clearly indicated. Most coastal rain-dominated and some interior basins have experienced later timing. The timing changes are connected to area-wide warmer temperatures, especially in March and January, and precipitation shifts that bear sub-regional signatures. Notably, a set of the most vulnerable basins has experienced runoff regime changes, such that basins that were snowmelt dominated at the beginning of the observational period shifted to mostly rain dominated in later years. These most vulnerable regions for regime shifts are in the California Sierra Nevada, eastern Washington, Idaho, and north-eastern New Mexico. Snowmelt regime changes may indicate that the time available for adaptation of water supply systems to climatic changes in vulnerable regions are shorter than previously recognized.
Author: Holger FritzeSupervisor: Edzer Pebesma
Abstract: This thesis introduces the AgriSenseBox, a Web of Things integrated Sensor Platform for Precision Agriculture. Based upon open hardware, the AgriSenseBox provides a web server containing a RESTful interface. The sensor platform is deployable in the field and makes sensor data processable without caring of differing formats. The AgriSenseBox is encoding its measurements as JSON using the structure proposed by O&M and hands out links to descriptions of the attached sensors. Following the principles of the WoT, sensor data is browseable by using web standards, such as HTTP and URI
Author: Dustin DemuthSupervisor: Arne Bröring
Sensors monitor our environment for a variety of purposes such as tracking natural forces, forecasting the weather or supporting military operations. The value of a sensor data application depends on the number and density of integrated sensing devices as well as on their fitness for the application's purpose. The latter is determined by several factors. A flow forecast application, for instance, might integrate high quality sensors that measure water levels and are located in a certain area on the globe.
Sensor selection requires meaningful and machine-readable descriptions of sensor attributes, such as observed properties, unit of measure, calibration, deployment time, accuracy, and observation area. Although the OGC standard SensorML is well adapted to encode sensor metadata, editing tools that support the creation process of such detailed sensor metadata documents are missing.
The BSc thesis should design and implement a sensor metadata editor that eases creation of SensorML 2.0 documents. These documents should
- be semantically annotated with keywords from well-known ontologies, such as weather phenomenon expressions or unit of measure terms.
- follow the StarFL profile for terrestrial sensing devices.
Contact:
Christian Malewski (c.malewski@uni-muenster.de)
Werner Kuhn (kuhn@uni-muenster.de)
Author: -Supervisor: -
Für den GEO-Neubau soll ein interaktives Gebäudeinformations- und -navigationssystem für den Foyerbereich erstellt werden. Dieses soll Besucher ermöglichen, schnell die Personen oder Institute zu finden, die sie besuchen möchten. Dies kann im Rahmen einer Bachelorarbeit (evtl. auch einer Masterarbeit) geschehen, bei der ein Prototyp (z.B. web-basiert) erstellt wird und anschließend mit Benutzern (vor Ort) evaluiert wird. Eine Einbindung von mobilen Geräten (also den Smartphones von Besuchern) ist eine ebenfalls untersuchenswerte Option.
Interessenten wenden sich bitte an Christian Kray
Supervisor: Chris Kray
Videobasierte Visualisierungsumgebungen zeigen großes Potenzial für die Geovisualisierung. Gestensteuerung eignet sich für die intuitive Interaktion mit solchen Umgebungen. Inhalt dieser Arbeit ist der Vergleich zweier existierender Gestensteuerungsansätze.
Author: Johanna MöllmannSupervisor: Christian Kray
Großbildschirme und öffentliche Bildschirme finden sich immer häufiger in unserer Umgebung. Zumeist dienen sie nur zur Informationsvermittlung, aber manche Systeme lassen auch Nutzerinteraktion zu. Diese Arbeit zielt auf die Implementierung und Evaluation eines neuen Verfahrens zur Interaktion mit großen Bildschirmen ab. Dabei soll ein Mobiltelefon mit eingebauter Kamera sowie eine am Bilschirm befestigte Kamera genutzt werden, um eine rein optische Kommunikation zwischen Bildschirm und Mobilgerät herzustellen (z.B. via QR-Codes und OpenCV/OpenFrameworks). Grundlegende Kenntnisse in der Programmierung einer mobilen Plattform (Android, iOS, etc.) sind Vorraussetzung zur Durchführung dieser Arbeit.
Author: Sven HeitmannSupervisor: Chris Kray
Ziel dieser Arbeit ist die technische Umsetzung eines Lernspiels für den Geographieunterricht, das am Institut für Didaktik der Geographie (IfDG) entwickelt wurde. In diesen sogenannten „Reflectories“ werden User in kurzen Audio-Beiträgen vor komplexe geographische Entscheidungen gestellt, die mithilfe von unterschiedlichen Zusatzmaterialien getroffen werden müssen. Je nach gewählter Entscheidungsoption nimmt die Handlung einen anderen Verlauf, sodass sich die User mit den entsprechenden Konsequenzen ihrer Entscheidungen konfrontiert sehen und aufgefordert sind, über ihr Handeln zu reflektieren.
Aufgabe der Arbeit ist die Umsetzung der erarbeiteten Inhalte (hauptsächlich Audio-Dateien, einige PDF und Bilddateien) in eine systemunabhängige (Web-)App. Dazu gehört u. a. die Erstellung und Evaluation einer für die Zielgruppe geeignete Benutzeroberfläche sowie eine robuste Implementation des Backends.
Die Arbeit ist in Zusammenarbeit mit dem IfDG (Gabriele Schrüfer, Nina Brendel) geplant.
Author: Niklas TrzaskaSupervisor: Christian Kray
In contrast with wayfinding instructions given by machine routing services (e.g. Google Maps, MapQuest, etc.), humans give wayfinding instructions in a different format. Human instructions, however, consist of landmarks at different levels and orientation information. Studies have shown that the use of local landmarks and global landmarks have different patterns across different scales and modes of transportation, when wayfinding instructions are given verbally. In this proposed study, the researcher will be investigating the exclusive roles of scale and mode of transportation on use of both local and global landmarks.
Author: Leon VogelSupervisor: Rui Li
The OpenSeaMap project (http://www.openseamap.org/) is based on the OpenStreetMap technology and aims at providing sea maps. It offers a very broad range of nautical charts and information about features such as beacons, buoys and other navigation aids.
Complementary to static information (e.g. locations of buoys and navigation aids), there is also a need for providing dynamic information such as weather data and water level measurements. Currently a first implementation for integrating dynamic observation data is in place. However, the existing implementation is not based on open standards so that the integration of new data sources is a rather cumbersome task.
Within this thesis, a student shall develop an approach, how the integration of dynamic observation data into the OpenSeaMap platform can be achieved. For this purpose relevant technologies (e.g. OGC Sensor Web Enablement) need to be evaluated. Based on the evaluation results and potentially identified gaps, an according concept shall be developed. In a final step the resulting concept shall be implemented and evaluated.
Author: Axel VirnichSupervisor: Simon Jirka
Map matching is the matching of GPS trajectories to existing road segments. Several algorithms have been proposed and evaluated for this. This thesis will create and document an open source implementation of one of the more successful of these algorithms.
On the bachelor level, a simple implementation in a new or existing R package is required. On the Master level, a comparison of different modelling approaches and implementation forms is additionally required.
Requirement: experience with R and R programming.
Resulting package:
http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/fuzzyMM/index.html
Author: Nikolai GorteSupervisor: Edzer Pebesma
Landmarks are commonly used in human daily communication of wayfinding instructions. Research has suggested the potential of increasing efficiency by using landmarks in wayfinding instructions. Further studies investigated the use of landmarks in wayfinding instructions in terms of their location: Global, local at decision point, and local along a route. While the locations of landmarks have been introduced, their specific effects are not clear yet. This study aims to test wayfinding instructions with landmarks at specific locations: landmarks at decision point or landmarks along route. This study includes two major objectives as follows:
- Constructing wayfinding instructions with landmarks at specific locations in visual or verbal forms;
- Testing the effect of each type of instructions on aspects of wayfinding such as orientation, accuracy, and configuration.
This research contributes to a more comprehensive study on landmarks with respect to their locations on route
Author: Jens BalmertSupervisor: Rui Li
Providing navigation support is not only guiding a wayfinder to reach one or multiple destinations. More importantly, it should support the wayfinder’s spatial orientation to facilitate the wayfinder’s awareness of the environment. Research has suggested approaches to enhance a person’s spatial orientation while using mobile navigation systems. Building on the previous work of visualizing global landmarks on mobile systems, this research further contribute to this development through the following two objectives:
- Selecting and visualizing local landmarks that would combine with the use of visualized global landmarks on mobile screen;
- Integrating the visualized global and local landmarks in instructions.
The outcome of this research is a prototype of mobile navigation service that uses global and local landmarks in both visual and verbal instructions.
Author: Marius RundeSupervisor: Rui Li
Das Ziel ist es, die Tauglichkeit des STRIDE-Threat-Modells für Public Display Systeme anhand einer oder mehrerer Fallstudien zu untersuchen. Mögliche Untersuchungsobjekte sind u.a. das ifgi-Foyer-System, Bankautomaten, Fahrkarten- automaten oder interaktive Bildschirme in Kaufhäusern (z.B. Terminals an denen CDs zur Probe gehört werden können.). Lassen sich "alle" Gefahren für die Privatsphäre der Benutzer (Privacy Threats) durch die Kategorien im STRIDE-Modell beschreiben oder oder gibt es "überflüssige" STRIDE-Kategorien? Wie kann das STRIDE-Modell genutzt werden um Gefahren bzw. Risiken gezielt zu adressieren?
Author: MOSupervisor: Morin Ostkamp
Das Ziel ist es, Befehle zur Steuerung eines Immersive-Video- Environments (IVE) per Spracheingabe zu realiseren. So sollen z.B. Befehle wie "Nach links", "Nach rechts", "Gerade aus" oder "Ich öffne die Tür" in entsprechende Aktionen innerhalb der simulierten Umgebung umgesetzt werden. Dazu sollen APIs und Services wie zum Beispiel Wit.AI genutzt werden. Welche Befehle lassen sich damit realiseren, u.a. hinsichtlich ihrer Länge (z.B. "Ich folge der Straße rechts von mir" vs. "nach rechts") und ihrer Komplexität (z.B. "Ich gehe nach rechts. Dann öffne ich die Tür." vs. "Nachdem ich rechts abgebogen bin, öffne ich die Tür.")? Welche technischen Geräte (z.B. Mikrofon- Arrays) sind mit welchen Eigenschaften (z.B. Abstand zum Sprecher) nötig?
Author: Nicholas SchiestelSupervisor: Morin Ostkamp
Das Ziel ist die Entwicklung und Evaluation ein kartenbasierten Content-Management-System (CMS) für das iPED Toolkit [1]. Dieses CMS soll dazu genutzt werden, Objekte in einer graph- basierten Datenbank zu verwalten. Diese Objekte entsprechen realen Orten, die auf einer Karte verortet werden sollen. Zu jedem Ort sollen zusätzliche Daten (z.B. Fotos oder Videos) abgespeichert werden können. Zur Umsetzung des CMS sollen moderne Technologien wie HTML5, CSS3, AJAX und Responsive Design zum Einsatz kommen. Zur Evaluation der Umsetzung soll in einer kleinen Studie die Task-Completion-Time bzw. Error-Rate der Benutzer ermittelt werden.
[1] Ostkamp, M., Kray, C. Supporting Design, Prototyping, and Evaluation of Public Display Systems. Proc. EICS ’14, ACM (2014), to appear.
Author: Nico SteffensSupervisor: C. Kray
Es gibt verschiedene Möglichkeiten Menschen mit Karten zu Navigieren. Die meisten unterstützen entweder die bestmögliche Routenführung oder das Aneignen von räumlichen Umgebungsinformationen (Münzer, Zimmer, & Baus, 2012).
In der vorliegenden Bachelorarbeit wurde auf Basis der wissenschaftlichen Arbeit von Schmid, Richter, & Peters (2010) eine neuartige Möglichkeit der Navigation, die Route Aware Map, im Hinblick auf die Vermittlung von räumlichen Wissen untersucht. In dieser wird durch Berechnung des Weges und Anzeigen der Karte in der Vogelperspektive mit relevanten Umgebungsinformationen versucht, zum einen eine gute Routenführung zu ermöglichen und gleichzeitig die räumliche Wissensakquise zu fördern.
Author: Clara RendelSupervisor: Angela Schwering
People are often get lost inside buildings. One reason for this circumstance is the situation if space is perceivable, but not reachable. This situation is known as the visibility accessibility problem. This setting could happen if elements like
glass walls or voids surrounded by balustrades were present. Space Syntax is a theoretical framework that allows to investigate relations between space and human. Two buildings of the University of Munster (Germany) were analysed with Space Syntax. Convex and axial maps and their properties were used. The aim of that kind of analysis was to investigate if Space Syntax methods can help us to analyse indoor navigation in case of visible, but not reachable spaces. Both buildings were split in two different spatial layouts, one considering visibility and one in regard to accessibility. Therefore, it was able to see if the visibility accessibility problem affects a building or not. This work leads to the conclusion that Space Syntax can be helpful for analysing indoor navigation if space is observable, but not accessible. This work concentrated on two dimensions. The next step would be to extend it to the third dimension.
Supervisor: Jakub Krukar
- GoPro 360° SITCOM
Supervisor: Holger Fritze
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GIS Software kann häufig sehr komplex sein. Dafür gibt es verschiedene Gründe wie zum Beispiel die Vielzahl der Funktionen, die ein solches System bereit stellt. Dem Benutzer Zugang zu diesen Funktionen zu ermöglichen stellt ein große Herausforderung im Hinblick auf das Design der Benutzerschnittstelle dar. Das Ziel dieser Arbeit ist, anhand existierender GIS Software wie ArcGIS oder PostGIS den aktuellen Stand bzgl. Funktionsumfang von GIS sowie dessen Realisierung auf der Benutzerschnittstellenebene zu erfassen und zu analysieren.
Author: Laura MeierkortSupervisor: Christian Kray
The semantic sensor web publishes sensor metadata and observations using linked data technologies, e.g. the Semantic Sensor Network Ontology (SSNO). The GEO label is a visual and interactive metadata summary to make complex standardized metadata (i.e. ISO 19xxx-based) more accessible to users by visualizing the most important aspects of metadata for discovering suitable datasets. Examples for these so called facets are producer information, quality information, and expert reviews.
This thesis will evaluate SSNO and related ontologies to create a mapping between data encoded in linked data documents and the facets of the GEO label. This mapping will be used to implement a partial prototype of the GEO label API that supports the generation of visual GEO labels based on references to sensor (meta-) data encoded in SSNO.
Author: Anika GraupnerSupervisor: Daniel Nüst
- Comparing spatial determinants of urban growth from 1990 to 2014 between three European cities GeoSim
Supervisor: Judith Verstegen
- Vergleich von automatisierten und manuellen Eingabemethoden bei mobilen Crowdsourcing-Verfahren SITCOM
Der Crowdsourcing-Ansatz hat in der jüngsten Vergangenheit stark an Bedeutung gewonnen und wird immer häufiger zur Informationsbeschaffung angewendet. Die vorliegende Bachelorarbeit vergleicht automatische sowie manuelle Eingabemethoden bei mobilem Crowdsourcing. Primär soll herausgefunden werden, welche Methode von den Nutzern bevorzugt verwendet wird und welche Gründe diese Präaferenzen haben können. Weiterhin wird der Einfluss einer Erinnerungsfunktion für Eingaben per Hand untersucht.
Um diese Fragestellungen zu beantworten wurde eine Kombination aus zwei Fragebögen und einer Nutzerstudie angewendet. Für die Nutzerstudie wurde eine Android-App zur Lärmmessung implementiert und über zwei Wochen von einer Gruppe von 16 Personen getestet.
Die Ergebnisse der Studie zeigen, dass eine automatisierte Eingabemethode der manuellen tendenziell vorgezogen wird. Weiterhin wurde festgestellt, dass die Nutzung einer Erinnerungsfunktion die Anzahl der Eingaben auf Kosten eines erhöhten Störfaktors mit sich bringen kann.
Author: Dennis WilhelmSupervisor: Prof. Dr. Christian Kray
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The Global Positioning System (GPS) is widely used and is a major positioning technology for land vehicle navigation. However it is not 100% accurate, which is a problem for any kind of navigation system. There are several factors that contribute to positioning errors, e.g., satellite related errors, propagation related errors, receiver related errors, GPS signal masking or blockage and satellite geometric contribution to position error (Quddus, 2006). This is where map matching comes in.
Map matching is the process of matching GPS trajectories to a digital road network. This is done by map matching algorithms. In Quddus (2006) several of the existing map matching algorithms are discussed and three improved map matching algorithms are introduced. One of the more successful algorithms is the fuzzy logic map matching algorithm, whose implementation is the main part of the bachelor thesis.
The above mentioned map matching algorithm is implemented in R (R Core Team, 2013) and therefore it is open source. The testing of the algorithm is done using _eld data acquired from the enviroCar1 project.
The result of this bachelor thesis is a documentation and an R package providing functions which allow the user to match their GPS trajectories to a digital road network using the fuzzy logic map matching algorithm and also allow the customization of the parameters used in the membership functions in the fuzzi_cation process.
Author: Nikolai GorteSupervisor: Prof. Dr. Edzer Pebesma
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Supervisor: Judith Verstegen
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A few years ago, all computer practicals at the university were taught at university-owned desktop computers. Nowadays, many students prefer to work on their own laptops. The installation of all required software and packages, and the setting of environment variables can be cumbersome.
In this project, you will test a solution for this problem by developing web tutorials in which the programming exercises can implemented, run, and stored, without any installation on the part of the user. The idea is to implement Jupyter Notebooks (http://jupyter.org/index.html) with a server running JupyterHub. For an example on how Jupyter is used in education, see https://developer.rackspace.com/blog/deploying-jupyterhub-for-education/. You can use existing IFGI course material for programming in R and/or PCRaster Python as test data. If successful, your solution will be implemented in the curriculum.
Author: Clemens HackenbergSupervisor: Judith Verstegen
Diese Arbeit gab eine kurze Einführung über UAV und ihre Anwendungsmöglichkeiten. Besonderes Augenmerk wurde dabei auf den Bereich vertikaler Aufnahmen, speziell im colorinfraroten Bereich, gelegt. Mithilfe eines entwickelten Webtools wurde gezeigt, wie die Zeitkomponente der aufgenommenen Videos mit der aktuellen Flughöhe der Drohne verknüpft werden kann. Dadurch wird ein erster Schritt zur vertikalen Darstellung von Farbinfrarotfilmen durch Erstellung eines Höhenprofils dargelegt.
Author: Milan KösterSupervisor: Torsten Prinz
Citizen science and crowdsourced data have been getting the attention of researchers and citizens alike in recent times. A successful citizen science platform that wants to engage its users in a long term participation needs to meet above average standards in usability and functionality for both power and novice users. In this thesis the citizen science platform OpenSenseMap, a generic platform for environmental sensor data, will be improved based on feedback that was gathered in its rst year of use and general principles of web design. A usability test will give indications on how well its users like to interact with it and what still needs to be done.
Author: Chirstoph KisfeldSupervisor: Angela Schwering
Die vorliegende Arbeit zeigt Optimierungsmöglichkeiten für ein webbasiertes Geodatenmanagement hinsichtlich Interoperabilität und Zusammenarbeit im Rahmen studentischer Projektarbeiten auf und setzt einige dieser Möglichkeiten am praktischen Beispiel der Applikation StudMap14 um. StudMap14 ist ein mit Web-Technologien wie JavaScript, PHP, Sencha Ext JS [1] und GeoExt [2] implementiertes Webportal, das ein Teil der Geodateninfrastruktur des Fachbereichs 14 Geowissenschaften der Universität Münster ist [3]. Zudem wird ein GeoServer [4] zur Bereitstellung von Layern des OGC-Standards Web Map Service (WMS) [5] und die Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL) [6] zur Geodatenverarbeitung verwendet. Es geht in dieser Arbeit nicht um die Neuentwicklung eines Systems, sondern um die Verbesserung und Erweiterung einer bestehenden und sich bereits in Verwendung befindlichen Software.
In Kapitel 2 (Anforderungsanalyse) wird zunächst analysiert, welche Anforderungen beziehungsweise Optimierungsmöglichkeiten bestehen und daraufhin festgelegt, welche von diesen umzusetzen sind. Kapitel 3 (Implementierung) beschreibt zuerst die verwendeten Technologien und geht anschließend auf technische Details der Implementierung der neuen Funktionen ein. Die Funktionsfähigkeit und die Benutzerfreundlichkeit dieser Funktionen wird im Rahmen einer Nutzerstudie in Kapitel 4 evaluiert. Eine Zusammenfassung dieser Arbeit und einen Ausblick auf mögliche zukünftige Erweiterungen bietet Kapitel 5. Dieses Einleitungskapitel stellt im Weiteren die Applikation StudMap14 vor und legt die genauere Motivation zur Erweiterung dieses Systems dar.
Author: Andreas OhremSupervisor: Dr. Torsten Prinz
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43 Millionen Personenkraftwagen nehmen am Straßenverkehr in Deutschland teil, wovon 95% auf fossile Brennstoffe angewiesen sind [BMU 2010][KBA 2013]. Das starke Verkehrsaufkommen, vor allem in Städten, hat negative Folgen für die Umwelt und die Gesundheit der dort lebenden Menschen. So hatte im Jahr 2004 allein in Deutschland der Straßenverkehr einen Anteil von 20% am Gesamtvolumen der direkten CO2-Emissionen [BMU 2008]. Im Vergleich zum Jahr 2000 ist der Kraftfahrzeugbestand in Deutschland um 13,2% angestiegen. Während die Verkehrsinfrastruktur im überörtlichen Bereich bei Kreisstraßen und Autobahnen nur geringe Zunahmen, bei Bundesstraßen sogar Verluste erzielt [DeSTATIS 2012a][DeSTATIS 2012b]. Die Verluste bei Bundesstraßen und Zugewinne bei Kreisstraßen sind meist auf regionale Änderungen der Verkehrsinfrastruktur zurückzuführen. So können Bundesstraßen beispielsweise zu Kreisstraßen umstrukturiert werden [DBT 2013]. Innerorts sind größtenteils nur durch die Erschließung neuer Wohn- und Gewerbegebiete Zuwächse der Verkehrsinfrastruktur zu beobachten [ADAC 2008]. Eine zusätzliche Belastung für die Verkehrswege ist die steigende Fahrleistung der Personenkraftfahrzeuge. Diese betrug im Jahr 2011 schätzungsweise 610 Milliarden Kilometer [DIW 2012]. Dies belastet vor allem innerörtliche Verkehrswege, welche Aufgrund der umliegenden Bebauung nicht weiter ausgebaut werden können. Zunehmenden Einfluss erhalten daher Maßnahmen zur Veränderung des Verkehrsverhaltens, beispielsweise durch Einsatz von Umweltzonen oder Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzungen, um den Verkehrsfluss zu optimieren.
Um Prognosen und Verkehrsplanungen durchführen zu können, bedarf es einer zuverlässigen Erhebung von Informationen zum Straßenverkehr in Deutschland. Hierzu gibt das Bundesministerium für Verkehr, Bau und Stadtentwicklung das sogenannte deutsche Mobilitätspanel in Auftrag. Es finden seit 1994 jährlich und in dreijähriger Begleitung, Befragungen von knapp 2000 Personen zu ihrem Verkehrsverhalten statt. Unter anderem werden Informationen über die Länge der Wegstrecken sowie Kosten und Kraftstoffverbrauch, erhoben [DIW 2012]. Anhand dieser Erhebung kann nicht nur die Fahrleistung in Kilometern geschätzt werden, sondern auch der durchschnittliche und gesamte Kraftstoffverbrauch und die Schadstoffemission der Fahrzeuge. Der Gesamtverbrauch an Kraftstoff wird ebenfalls aus dem an den Tankstellen abgesetzten Volumen Kraftstoffe, sowie auf Grundlage von Verbrauchsangaben der Fahrzeughersteller und Automobilzeitschriften geschätzt [DIW 2004].
Gerade der Energie- und Kraftstoffverbrauch ist wichtig für die Berechnung der CO2-Emissionen und bilden eine weitere Informationsgrundlage zur Alltagsmobilität für die Stadt- und Verkehrsplanung. Die langfristigen Ziele in der Umweltpolitik sind daher, eine Senkung der CO2- und Schadstoffemissionen und einen geringeren Ressourcenverbrauch im Personenkraftverkehr zu erreichen. In vielen städtischen Bereichen werden daher Monitoringsysteme zur Überwachung der Luftqualität oder der Verkehrsstärke eingesetzt, um regelmäßig wichtige Umweltinformationen erfassen, die als Grundlage umweltpolitischer Entscheidungen dienen. An diesem Punkt setzt das EnviroCar-Projekt an.
Author: Julius WittkoppSupervisor: Prof. Dr. Edzer Pebesma
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This bachelor thesis deals with an approach for the estimation of population in small areas. The approach was developed by Klaus Steinnocher (Steinnocher et al., 2006, Steinnocher et al., 2011) and relies on the assumption that the population density is proportional to the degree of soil sealing. Population data on the community level is disaggregated to a level of electoral districts for the whole region of Münster. The "EEA Fast Track Service Precursor on Land Monitoring" dataset represents the degree of soil sealing in 20x20m grid cells and is used as data basis for this approach. The CORINE Land Cover (CLC) dataset is used to mask those areas from the EEA dataset that are not used for residential purposes. For the same reason an OpenStreetMap dataset is used to mask the streets from the EEA dataset. The approach from Steinnocher is applied to the remaining areas which represent the living space as good as possible. The calculated population data is compared to the reference population data on a level of electoral districts. Differences and tendencies are discussed. Furthermore the realized approach from Steinnocher (Steinnocher et al., 2006, Steinnocher et al., 2011) is compared to another approach developed by Francisco Javier Gallego (Gallego et al., 2001, Gallego et al., 2010). Differences and characteristics of the two approaches are discussed.
Author: Lars SyfußSupervisor: Prof. Dr. Edzer Pebesma
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Geographische Informationssysteme (GIS) bieten neue Möglichkeiten auch webbasierte Anwendungen zu entwickeln,welche die klassischenAufgaben reiner Desktop-GIS-Software auf das Internet adaptieren.
Im Rahmen dieser Bachelorarbeit soll eine prototypische GIS-Architektur entwickelt werden, welche die Integration von geographischen sowie empirisch erhobenen, medizinischen Felddaten ermöglicht. Als Fallstudie dient das Forschungsprojekt am St. Michael’s Hospital Pramso in Ghana, welches die regionale Ausbreitung der Malaria untersucht. Das implementierte System soll dabei drei Hauptbestandteile bereitstellen, welche den Wissenschaftler vor Ort unterstützen: Visualisierung und Speicherung von Kontext relevanten Daten, grundlegende Analysemöglichkeiten mit der Ausgabe von Informationsprodukten sowie eine GIS gestützte Aufnahme neuer Krankheitsfälle.
Author: Dominik SchlarmannSupervisor: Dr. Torsten Prinz
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Fotoalben im Internet stellen eine beliebte Anwendung des Web 2.0 dar, bei der eine Vielzahl digitaler Fotos veröffentlicht wird. Zusätzlich zu den Bildern werden Metadaten wie Schlagwörter oder Freitextbeschreibungen gespeichert. Diese ermöglichen, Fotos zu kategorisieren und für textbasierte Suchmaschinen zu indizieren. Aus den Metadaten können ebenfalls Einträge für geographische Namenslexika gewonnen werden. In diesem Fall spricht man auch von sogenannten Bottom-Up Gazetteers (vgl. Keßler et al. 2009b). Zum Beispiel können die räumlichen Koordinaten aller Fotos mit der Bezeichnung „Münster“ zu einer Punktwolke zusammengefasst werden. Anschließend lassen sich daraus Aussagen über die geometrische Form und die geographi-sche Lage des Ortes ableiten.
Die vorliegende Arbeit betrachtet die zeitliche Dimension von Fotos. Es wird dabei untersucht, ob sich mithilfe der Aufnahmedaten die Dauer von Ereignissen ermitteln lässt. Hierbei werden Veranstaltungen (engl. Events) als eine bestimmte Ausprägung eines Ereignisses fokussiert. Deren Analyse erfolgt mit einem Clustering-Algorithmus, einer gängigen Klassifikationsmethode in der Geoinformatik. Das Verfahren wird anhand fünf ausgewählter Beispiele für Events und vergleichend mit drei Beispielen für Orte getestet.
Zur Visualisierung des Datenmaterials wurde eine graphische Benutzerschnittstelle in Form einer interaktiven Karte implementiert. Diese kann nun mit existierenden Gazetteers verbunden werden. Die Anwendung wurde speziell für Smartphones entwickelt, die sich in den letzten Jahren zunehmender Popularität erfreuen. Aufbauend auf den Ergebnissen der Analyse und der Implementierung werden mögliche Einsatzgebiete und Erweiterungen in Aussicht gestellt.
In dem ersten Kapitel werden zunächst alle für die weiteren Abschnitte notwendigen Grundlagen eingeführt.
Author: Raimund SchnürerSupervisor: Prof. Dr. Werner Kuhn
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Snowmelt derived water is of great importance for most streams across Western North America. A changing climate affects streamflow and changes its intraannual contribution. Shifts of the center of timing (CT) and the start of snowmelt pulse towards earlier in the year have already been detected for the 1948-2000 period. While the trends for CT have increased for the 1948-2008 period, the ones for the snowmelt pulse did not appear to have accelerated. In contrast the number of snowmelt pulses decreased within the same period and indicated that more winter precipitation came as rain rather than snow. Based on the ratio of years with and without snowmelt pulses this study has developed a measure of snowmelt domination and classified the streams into four categories. These categories were used to compare groups of streams with similar runoff characteristics and to quantify shifts in snowmelt domination regimes. Furthermore the data and measures were interactively visualized on a virtual globe using Nasa World Wind Java.
Author: Holger FritzeSupervisor: Prof. Dr. Edzer Pebesma
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Umgebungslärm ist eine der umfassendsten Umweltbelastungen, da der Mensch ihr über seinem gesamten Tagesablauf hinweg ungeschützt ausgesetzt ist. Der Einfluss geht dabei über eine einfache Belästigung des Menschen hinaus und umfasst beispielsweise das Auslö-sen von Schlafstörungen, die Förderung kognitiver Beeinträchtigung sowie die Hervorbrin-gung von Herz-Kreislauf-Erkrankungen, weshalb Lärm inzwischen auch als entscheidende Krankheitsbelastung gewertet wird (vgl. World Health Organization 2011).
Mit dem Aufkommen des nutzerzentrierten „Web 2.0“ und mobiler Computer, sowie der Zukunft des ubiquitären Computings stehen gleichsam immer mehr Möglichkeiten zur Ver-fügung, diesen Umwelteinfluss direkt an seinem Immissionsort durch den Menschen einzu-schätzen und diese Daten anderen Nutzern zur Verfügung zu stellen.
Author: Holger HopmannSupervisor: Dr. Theodor Foerster
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The emergence of new hardware in the Veld of human-computer interaction has led to many possible applications for gesture control. One possible application for such a gesture control is a virtual globe as it is widely used and an easy way to display spatial data among other data. Also virtual globes are easy accessible. This bachelor thesis aims to combine a virtual globe with gesture control for spatial and temporal aspects. For this, a set of gestures were implemented. These gestures were tested at a science fair where an user study Mwas carried out. Furthermore the general approach of implementing the gestures are described. The results and Vndings of the user study will be discussed in this thesis.
Author: Gerald PapeSupervisor: Prof. Dr. Christian Kray
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Providing cognitively effective wayfinding instructions is an ongoing research objective. In addition to providing instructions that are efficient to reach a target location, research has also addressed developing instructions in a verbal format that could potentially facilitate spatial orientation and cognitive mapping. In this study, a type of verbal instructions is used that consists of not only essential information for a person to change the direction at decision points, but also additional orientation information along a route that is considered crucial for maintaining spatial orientation and getting an internal representation of the spatial layout. This type of verbal route descriptions is compared with machine-generated as well as skeletal descriptions for the same route. Thirty participants were randomly assigned to familiarize with one of three different types of wayfinding instructions, which described a specific route participants were unfamiliar with. Thus, they were intended to mentally walk along this route. The different types of instructions include: 1) machine-generated instructions, 2) orientationbased instructions, and 3) skeletal instructions. Results indicate that participants using the orientation instructions made least errors in their performance of spatial orientation. Results concerning their drawn sketch maps, however, revealed least accurate results in both landmark placement and route segment analysis among the three types of instructions. Regarding their good performance in orientation estimation, sketch map accuracy is suggested to be secondary concerning performance in spatial orientation and cognitive mapping. Additionally, using the orientation-based instructions type is not found beneficial regarding distance estimation accuracy. The machine-generated instructions with included distance information, however, are not found to lead to a good estimation of distance along the route. This study supports the validity of designing wayfinding instructions in the suggested way. It further implies the necessity to conduct a more comprehensive study on the effects of different types of instructions on various aspects of wayfinding behavior.
Author: Stefan FuestSupervisor: Dr. Rui Li
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Große multi-touch Benutzerschnittstellen ermöglichen die simultane Interaktion mehrerer Benutzer. Hierfür muss bei vielen multi-touch Anwendungen eine Eingabe einem bestimmten Benutzer zugewiesen werden. In dieser Arbeit wird eine Methode vorgestellt, mit der eine Person mit Hilfe eines üblichen Mobiltelefons für eine Subregion der multi-touch Oberfläche authentifiziert werden kann. Dies erfolgt über Farbsignale, die die Kamera des mobilen Gerätes erfasst. Zuerst wird durch Anzeige von Binärbäumen in Form von zweifarbigen Rechtecken die exakte Position der Kamera bestimmt, dann wird genau an dieser Position ein nur für die Kamera sichtbares Signal, bestehend aus einer Sequenz von unterschiedlichen Farben, übertragen. Wenn dieses korrekt aufgenommen wurde, ist der Benutzer an dieser Stelle authentifiziert.
Author: Klaus DrerupSupervisor: Prof. Dr. Antonio Krüger
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An increasing number of geographical searches is performed from mobile devices, out in the world. Many of them consider places located at relatively close proximity, within the spatial context of the searcher. In such situations, presenting the user with the entire map of his/her surrounding is rarely justified and presents an unjustified cognitive processing challenge. In addition, the sole action of looking at a map (not to mention its processing) can be considered superfluous e.g. when the aim of the user is merely to reach the nearest open pub as soon as possible. And yet, in mobile-based navigation, the only substantial progress in relation to desktop-based (or traditional paper-based) maps is the presence of a ‘You-Are-Here’ indicator and a turn-by-turn set of instructions. For all situations when the user does not need (or want) to learn the map of the environment, the currently available navigational systems demand too much attention - they force us to look at the screen and mentally process its content. This project will explore the possibility of developing a ‘calm’ navigational system. Using Weiser and Brown’s definition, ‘calm’ technology is one that allows the user to stay in control of the situation but does not demand constant attention. Students can explore the possibilities arising with wearable technologies (augmented reality glass, vibrating watch, audio-systems, etc.) to answer the question: How can a navigational system guide us from A to B without even being noticed by its user.
Bachelor students will develop a proof of concept / prototype.
Master students will develop a proof of concept and conduct user studies.
Quick Reading: only one great paper written in 1997(!) and still relevant today.
Weiser, M., & Brown, J. S. (1997). The coming age of calm technology. In Beyond calculation (pp. 75–85). Springer.
Author: Boris StöckerSupervisor: Jakub Krukar
Current Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR) systems are very capable at modelling our everyday world, but their ability to deal with spatial data in a qualitative manner is limited. By integrating existing ontologies and applying techniques from Declarative Spatial Reasoning and Computer Vision to example cases from histopathology, a possible approach on adding semantics to image data is presented. The prototype has the goal of supporting the identification of inconsistencies between image data and the underlying knowledge base, as well as hypothesising and inferring improvements of the image classification. The ability to create artificial instances from the knowledge base alone and to represent their geometries dynamically is pursued as well.
Author: Gereon DuesmannSupervisor: Carl Schultz
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Supervisor: Jakub Krukar
- Monitoring Violent Conflicts: Web-mapping platform to combine automatic and manual image analysis STML
Deutsch:
Die große Zahl gewaltsamer Konflikte weltweit und das Ausmaß, zu dem Menschenrechte hierbei verletzt werden, machen eine genaue Überwachung und Dokumentation von Konflikten unabdingbar. Da eine ausführliche bodengebundene Überwachung des Kriegsverlaufes und seiner Auswirkungen jedoch -insbesondere in abgelegenen Regionen- häufig kaum möglich ist, werden Fernerkundungsmethoden und GI-Technologien immer häufiger dazu eingesetzt, Kampfhandlungen in Kriegsgebieten zu dokumentieren. Satellitenbilder können zum Beispiel visuellen Zugang zu schwer erreichbaren Regionen ermöglichen und lokale Berichte über Gewalt und Zerstörung bestätigen. Die meisten praktischen Anwendungen verlassen sich dabei bisher vor allem auf die manuelle Bildanalyse und Identifikation von verdächtigen Objekten (z.B. zerstörte Gebäude). Der Zeit- und Kostenaufwand solcher Analysen ist jedoch erheblich. Eine Möglichkeit, mit dem immensen Aufwand umzugehen, ist die Verteilung der Arbeit auf verschiedene Analysten in sogenannten crowd-sourcing Netzwerken (mit Hilfe von micro-tasking Anwendungen, siehe z. B. http://www.tomnod.com/). Hierbei werden die Fernerkundungsdaten in kleinere Ausschnitte eingeteilt und individuell von Freiwilligen auf z.B. zerstörte Gebäude untersucht. Eine andere Strategie ist die Verwendung (semi-) automatischer Bildanalyse- und Klassifikationsmethoden zur Identifikation von Zerstörungen, um den manuellen Aufwand zu verringern. Momentan konzentrieren sich die verschiedenen Ansätze entweder auf die web-mapping/crowd-sourcing Ansätze oder die Methoden zur automatischen Bildanalyse.
Ziel der Bachelorarbeit ist es, ein prototypisches web-mapping/crowd-sourcing Werkzeug zu entwickeln, dass beide genannten Strategien verbindet. Hierbei sollen bereits vorhandene Ergebnisse aus automatischen Bildanalysen integriert werden, indem sie als Basis für die Erstellung und Priorisierung der Bildausschnitte für die manuelle Analyse dienen. Bildausschnitte mit hoher Wahrscheinlichkeit/Dichte von Zerstörungen (gemäß der Ergebnisse der automatischen Methoden) sollen automatisch höhere Priorität im folgenden manuellen Analyseprozess bekommen. Die zu verarbeitenden Eingabedaten können dabei in unterschiedlichem Detaillierungsgrad vorliegen, z.B. Polygone mit unterschiedlichen Wahrscheinlichkeiten/Dichten von Zerstörung oder einzelne Punkte, die die Position von zerstörten Gebäuden anzeigen. Das zu entwickelnde Werkzeug sollte eine Methode enthalten, um mit Hilfe dieser Daten sinnvoll kleinere Ausschnitte aus den vorliegenden Fernerkundungsbildern zu erstellen und diese zu priorisieren. Zusätzlich sollten Werkzeuge bereitstehen, um Nutzer/innen eine sinnvolle Visualisierung bi-temporaler Daten (vor und nach angeblicher Attacken) und das Markieren von Zerstörungen zu ermöglichen. Optional können natürlich weitere Methoden oder Schnittstellen für die Kombination automatischer und manueller Analyse erdacht und entwickelt werden.
English:
The high number of violent conflicts worldwide and the extent to which human rights are abused during acts of war stress the need for close monitoring and documentation of conflict areas to strengthen public international law. As a comprehensive ground‐level documentation of combat impacts is often hardly possible in conflict areas, satellite imagery and geospatial technology are increasingly being used to document and communicate human rights issues. Satellite images can for example provide visual access to remote or insecure areas as well as visual evidence to corroborate on-the-ground reports on human rights violations. Most of the practical applications rely on the manual image interpretation and identification of objects of interest. However, the time consumption of such analyses is substantial. One strategy to cope with the immense workload is to make use of a decentralized approach and distribute the work among several analysts e.g. within crowd-sourcing networks (by use of micro tasking tools, see e.g. http://www.tomnod.com/). Here the images are divided into subsets and individually investigated by volunteers. Another strategy is to use computer assisted methods for (semi-) automatic information extraction to reduce the analysis workload. Current approaches focus on either web-mapping for collaborative monitoring of violence or on image analysis and classification methods for automatically detecting structural damage in conflict areas.
The aim of this thesis is to develop a prototypical web-mapping and micro-tasking tool for collaborative conflict monitoring which combines both abovementioned fields. It should integrate existing results from automatic classification methods by using them as a basis for the automatic creation and prioritization of areas of interest. Areas with a high probability/density of destruction get a higher priority for the subsequent manual analysis by volunteers. The input data can be in different levels of detail, e.g. polygons of areas with different probabilities of destruction or even point data indicating the location of destructed buildings. The web application should include a method to create and prioritize image subsets based on this input data and contain tools for a meaningful visualization of bi-temporal image data (pre- and post-conflict image) as well as for manually tagging destructed buildings. Optionally, further methods and interfaces combining automatic and manual image analysis can be developed.
Author: Sofian SlimaniSupervisor: Christian Knoth
The amount of citizen science initiatives and their corresponding data platforms is ever increasing. Within these citizen science platforms one “can identify a specific subtype of activities that can be termed ‘Geographical Citizen Science’[...]Geographical citizen science includes projects where the collection of location information is an integral part of the activity.” To visualize the spatiotemporal data of such initiatives WebMaps are being used (e. g. https://smartcitizen.me/, http://airqualityegg.com/, http://opensensemap.org/ ).
These platforms aim to give their users a quick way to upload and view their own and others data. To do further analysis and get more out of these citizen data, it is often needed to download the data. This process removes possible analysis results from such platforms and restrict citizen scientists to the role of a sensor. Simple tools to interpret this data are nearly always missing. The citizen scientists are though only used to “Crowdsource” the data (see “Levels of Citizen Scientists”).
This thesis aims to add functionalities for geostatistical analysis to OpenSenseMap(OSeM) and in doing so, the platform could be used for basic interpretation. In a first step this thesis will focus on the addition of a time-slider to enable the view upon the temporal aspect of OSeM data so that interpolation methods can be applied. In a next step it will add different ways for web based interpolation methods. In particular it will focus upon opencpu as a way to use R for this task.
For future work or if time allows it, it could be researched if the addition of such an interpretation tool helps to increase the attractiveness of OSeM as a citizen scientists platform.
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Edzer Pebesma
Ziel dieser Arbeit ist, am Beispiel von Hamburg mit einer Usability-Studie Probleme aufzudecken, die Nutzer auch mit bereits veröentlichten Anwendungen noch haben. Dabei werden die mobileWebseite und die Applikation untersucht und eventuelle Probleme in der Bedienung sowie markante Unterschiede zwischen beiden Anwendungen ermittelt, ohne dabei den Anspruch einer statistischen Auswertung zu haben.
Zunächst wird genauer auf die Thematiken der mobilen Fahrplananwendungen und dem Usability-Testing eingegangen und das Beispiel Hamburg kurz vorgestellt. Anschließend wird die Herangehensweise an einen Usability-Test geschildert und dessen Durchführung und Ergebnisse zusammengefasst. Abschließend wird ein kurzes Fazit aus den Ergebnissen des Tests gezogen. Das erste Kapitel erklärt die Usability und das Usability-Testing, führt in die Thematik mobiler Fahrplananwendungen bei Verkehrsbetrieben ein und stellt das hier untersuchte Beispiel des Hamburger Verkehrsverbundes vor. Im zweiten Kapitel werden die Erkenntnisse genutzt, um einen Usability-Tests zu entwickeln, durchzuführen und die Ergebnisse zu beschreiben. Abschließend gibt es noch eine Deutung dieser Ergebnisse.
Author: Anja SchlaphorstSupervisor: Thomas Bartoschek
Forced migrants (e.g. internally displaced people, refugees, asylum seekers) continuing arriving in cities all around the world. Forced migration is not a one-time phenomenon but a common and recurrent phenomenon in history. The recent European and African immigration crises are examples of this. As cities continue growing also does the information that is produced. The complexity of this information and the way of communicating it can present many challenges to newcomers, particularly, to those arriving in conditions of vulnerability as forced migrants (e.g. refugees and asylum seekers). This complexity can be addressed through different ways of visualizing information and interacting with it.
The Bachelor/Master student will work on one of the following two possible lines of research:
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“Geovisualization of existent curated data to support refugees in their resettlement process.”
The Starthilfe platform has been created for a group of civil volunteers with information relevant to forced migrants about several topics (mobility, education, jobs, health, among others). This information is currently mainly text-based, and it is just accessible through the web platform, meaning it can just be accessed while being online.
The text-based data has geospatial descriptions however it has not being geolocated and then geo-visualized. Some of the specifics tasks to address during this bachelor/master thesis are:
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Retrieval of data from the Starthilfe website.
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Creation of spatial datasets based on the retrieved data.
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Geo-visualizing data and classifying it using the categories defined on the Starthilfe website (creation of layers, easy or common icons).
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Test the geo-visualization adaptation with refugees and asylum seekers
Supervisor: Auriol Degbelo
Supervisor: Judith Verstegen
Bioenergy is renewable energy derived from biological sources, such as crops. One type of bioenergy is ethanol made from sugar cane, used as a biofuel for cars. Although ethanol is renewable for sure, there have been concerns whether it is also sustainable, because of the potential impacts of the sugar cane plantations, for example on deforestation, socio-economic conditions of the workers and water use.
One way to assess the latter impact is the water footprint. The water footprint is an indicator of freshwater use for making a certain product or delivering a service (Hoekstra et al. 2011). The vast expansion of sugar cane in Brazil in the last decades, mainly for ethanol production, was an incentive for Rodriguez et al. (2016) to assess the water footprint of the suitable expansion areas in Brazil. Yet, the fact that an area is suitable for sugar cane expansion does not mean that expansion will take place, because expansion is also driven by market demand.
The aim of this BSc thesis is to use a set of existing sugar cane expansion scenarios for 2030 from a demand-driven land use change model (Verstegen et al., 2016, van der Hilst et al., in review) to re-assess the future water footprint of sugar cane for ethanol in Brazil. This will be done using the methodology from Rodriguez et al. (2016) and the high-resolution maps of water-related variables developed by Xavier et al. (2016).
References:
Van der Hilst, F., Verstegen, J.A., Woltjer, G., Smeets, E., Faaij, A.P.C. (in review). Mapping direct and indirect land use changes resulting from biofuel production and the effect of LUC mitigation measures. In review at Global Change Biology Bioenergy.
Hoekstra, A. Y., Chapagain, A. K., Aldaya, M. M. & Mekonnen, M. M. (2011). Water Footprint Assessment Manual: Setting the Global Standard. http://waterfootprint.org/en/resources/publications/water-footprint-assessment-manual-global-standard/
Rodriguez, R., Scanlon, B.R. and King, C.W. (2016). Sugarcane water footprint in the suitable areas for crop in Brazil. CLIMA Policy Brief #1, Centro Clima/COPPE/UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro, 6 p. http://testsite1.hospedagemdesites.ws/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/CLIMA-PolBrief-1-Water-footprint-cane.pdf
Verstegen, J.A., van der Hilst, F., Woltjer, G., Karssenberg, D., de Jong, S.M., Faaij, A.P.C. (2016). What can and can't we say about indirect land-use change in Brazil using an integrated economic – land-use change model? Global Change Biology Bioenergy 8(3), 561-578.
Xavier, A. C., King, C. W. & Scanlon, B. R. (2015) Daily gridded meteorological variables in Brazil (1980–2013). Int. J. Climatol. 36, p. 2644-2659. doi:10.1002/joc.4518
Author: Yannick PaulsenSupervisor: Judith Verstegen, Moritz Hildemann
Supervisor: Judith Verstegen, Angela Schwering
Supervisor: Marius Appel
- openEO Hub STML
openEO develops an open API to connect R, Python and Javascript clients to big earth observation cloud back-ends in a simple and unified way. Back-ends process user-defined algorithms on remote sensing data sets within their cloud infrastructure. Although the communication between clients and back-ends is standardized by the openEO API, each back-end will implement the API to a different extent and will differ with regards to available processes and data sets. Therefore users should be able to search on a central platform for back-ends that fully support the users requirements. This includes the ability to search for back-ends by
- data sets, e.g. temporal extent, spatial extent, platform, sensor, bands or name,
- processes, e.g. by a process graph provided by the user,
- other back-end related metadata, e.g. API version, capabilities or costs.
Additionally, it could be useful for users to publish and share their algorithms as process graphs or user-defined functions (UDFs) on this central platform.
This thesis should explore, implement and evaluate one or multiple of these aspects. The scope of the thesis is designed to fit the requirements of a bachelor thesis. More information can be found in the openEO Hub GitHub repository.
Contact
- Edzer Pebesma - edzer.pebesma@uni-muenster.de
- Matthias Mohr - m.mohr@uni-muenster.de
Supervisor: Edzer Pebesma
Mobility infrastructure has a great impact on the sustainable development of cities. An efficient non-motorized infrastructure can help Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by promoting public health (SDG 3.4), contributing to better air, water, and soil quality (SDG 3.9), increasing accessibility and affordability of public transportation (SDG 11.2), reducing the environmental impact in cities (SDG 11.6.), helping to climate control (SDG 13.2). German Sustainable Building Council (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Nachhaltiges Bauen- DGNB) provides comprehensive tools to assess the sustainability of buildings and neighborhoods in Germany since 2007. The tools are developed and updated regularly according to the SDGs and local sustainability strategies. Non-motorized traffic is covered by DGNB Quartier in 2020 with the aim of efficient use of resources, increased affordability, and increased user comfort which provides better experience and accessibility especially for people with reduced mobility.
BSc - In the scope of the BSc thesis, the focus will be given to the assessment of cycling infrastructure in Münster. The data collection and analysis will be based on the indicators defined by the German Sustainable Building Council (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Nachhaltiges Bauen- DGNB), Neighbourhood certification (DGNB Quartier) (sub section Technische Qualität - TEC 3.2). Data collection and analysis will include the assessment of quantity and quality of city’s existing cycling infrastructure such as integration of the cycling network to other transportation modes and land uses, the quantity and quality of bicycle parking spaces, and signalisation. The student will automate the assessment of indicators through an algorithm developed in SQL or Python, visualise the results on the preferred system, and recommend a roadmap for future applications to achieve maximum score (30 points) stated in the DGNB Quartier sustainability certification system.
MSc - The MSc thesis aims to create an interactive City Dashboard for Münster focusing on cycling infrastructure in the city centre. Complementary to the data collection and analysis processes described in the BSc thesis, the student is expected to develop a web-based, interactive dashboard that enables users of the city to monitor the status quo of the cycling infrastructure and investigate the impact of possible interventions (e.g. increasing the amount of the cycling paths or bicycle parking spaces) on the overall quality of non-motorised mobility infrastructure.
References:
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Nachhaltiges Bauen (2020), DGNB Quartiere Kriterienkatalog, https://static.dgnb.de/fileadmin/dgnb-system/de/quartiere/kriterien/DGNB-Kriterienkatalog-Quartiere-Kommentierungsversion-2020.pdf
Author: Fabian Fermazin (BSc), Lorenz Beck (MSc)Supervisor: Simge Özdal Oktay
Master
Dynamic, personalised signage - public displays that show navigational instructions and wayfinding information - can be very useful to help people to successfully reach their destination in complex indoor environments. However, outfitting a large building with a dense infrastructure of public displays would be costly and resource-intensive. One way to overcome is the idea to use virtual displays that can only be seen using a person's mobile device. This thesis will investigate this idea, and test it using a prototypical implementation.
Author: Jakob AltensteinSupervisor: Chris Kray
- Football Stadium Manager SITCOM
Football games attract large numbers of visitors that need to perform various activities in games; this thesis could look into how to support those activities with dynamic situated signage, i.e. how to optimise evacuation in case of an emergency
Author: Norman LangerSupervisor: Chris Kray
openEO develops an open API to connect R, Python, and Javascript clients to big earth observation cloud back-ends in a simple and unified way. Back-ends process user-defined algorithms on remote sensing data sets within their cloud infrastructure. This thesis will evaluate and implement ways to run openEO user-defined algorithms in a Browser environment, e.g. through JavaScript, so that an algorithm can be fully executed on the client-side for an AOI selected by a user through a map. The required steps to achieve this are as follows:
- A map is shown in the browser and the user navigates to an AOI
- A user can select and load a cloud-native dataset for the AOI, e.g. stored as cloud-optimized GeoTiffs
- An algorithm can be specified through openEO processes and the processing runs in the browser. A set of openEO processes for a use case has to be implemented by the student.
- Finally, the data is visualized using a mapping/visualization library
This thesis should explore, implement, and evaluate one or multiple of these aspects. The scope of the thesis is designed to fit the requirements of a master thesis, but it can probably be split into multiple bachelor thesis, too. More information can be found in the openEO Browser Backend GitHub repository.
Contact
- Edzer Pebesma - edzer.pebesma@uni-muenster.de
- Matthias Mohr - m.mohr@uni-muenster.de
Supervisor: Edzer Pebesma
The goal of the work (jointly conducted with the ‘Institut für Epidemiologie und Sozialmedizin’ (IES) at the University of Münster) is to develop a spatial recommender system which assists in exploring cause-effect relationships of significant incidence elevations of selected cancer types in a predefined geographic region. The system should draw on Linked Data techniques to answer two types of queries:
- Q1: given a significant elevation of the cancer risk (parameterized through the standardized incidence ratio) for a certain tumour and at a certain spatial unit (e.g. community level), what are possible (spatial) cancer causes and cancer risk factors?
- Q2: given an elevated cancer cause/risk factor in a geographic region, what are types of cancer likely to occur?
The tasks of the student include both a modelling component and an implementation component. The modelling aspect involves:
- The specification of a use case (together with the IES);
- Identify useful taxonomies for cancer research as well as known causes and risk factors for selected cancer types in the monographies of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).
The implementation aspect includes:
- The encoding of data from the use case using Linked Data techniques;
- The development of a Web Interface.
The successful candidate is expected to write the Master’s thesis in the Summer Semester 2014. S/he should have epidemiological background knowledge about cancer etiologies or willingness to learn about them. Programming knowledge (HTML, CSS, PHP, Javascript) as well as knowledge of Semantic Web Technologies such as RDF, SPARQL is desirable but not mandatory.
Author: Friedrich MüllerSupervisor: Auriol Degbelo
We are looking for a highly motivated Master’s student to develop an campus navigation tool for the University of Muenster.
The aim of the thesis is to develop a tool (mobile/web) that will enable navigation through the buildings of the University of Muenster, based on a linked open data graph. One idea is to select a building of the university (e.g. the library) and create an indoor navigation graph that accommodates the navigation abilities of different people. The tool should automatically suggest possible navigation paths to a person, based on his or her navigation abilities encoded as Linked Open Data. It is developed within the ongoing LIFE (Linked Data for eScience Services) project at the Institute for Geoinformatics.
The LIFE project publishes resources as Linked Open Data, addressing all kinds of resources ranging from raw data to articles and books through maps. The goal of the project is to improve interdisciplinary collaboration in science and education through the sharing of research data. LIFE is funded by the German Research Foundation, and is jointly carried out by the Muenster Semantic Interoperability Lab (MUSIL) at Institute for Geoinformatics (http://ifgi.uni-muenster.de) and the University Library at University of Muenster.
The student is expected to start soon and finish the thesis in the SS 2014. Programming experience (desktop, mobile or web) is desirable. Familiarity with Semantic Web Technologies (RDF and SPARQL) is not mandatory.
Interested? Please get in touch with us per e-mail at simonscheider@web.de or degbelo@uni-muenster.de .
Author: Nemanja KosticSupervisor: Simon Scheider
- Fire men sketch site plans of affected building complexes on prepared sheets
- Symbols (tactical signs) are placed around the map with lines drawn from each symbol to each location of interestin the sketch where the feature represented by the symbol is located.
- capturing of handdrawn sketch (camera)
- georeferencing of tactical sign
- no full extraction of sketch required, but a rough georeferencing
- assessment of existing sketched site plans
Author: Christian Kruse
Supervisor: Angela Schwering
Supervisor: Prof. Chris Kray
Supervisor: Edzer Pebesma
When giving directions, we often use gestures to communicate changes in orientation. We rotate our bodies, wave our hands, and shift our heads. Seeing these gestures helps the person receiving the instruction to keep his/her orientation in the newly constructed mental map of the environment. They are intuitively given and intuitively understood. Many, even across distinct cultures. Navigational systems could potentially build on these gestures to represent changes in direction, or point to an important landmark lying along the route.
Bachelor students will run user studies to pick an interesting gesture potentially helpful during navigation. They will propose a modification to the existing navigational systems which utilises the gesture to support the navigation.
Master students will first run user studies to explore and classify the variety of relevant gestures used during direction-giving. Based on this classification, students will develop a concept of a navigational system which utilises some of those gestures.
Some reading:
Hirtle, Stephen C. "The use of maps, images and “gestures” for navigation." Spatial Cognition II. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2000. 31-40.
Author: Shankarlingam SundaresanSupervisor: Jakub Krukar
- Coupling of land-use change models GLOBIOM-Brazil and PLUC and comparison of their projections GeoSim
Supervisor: Judith Verstegen, Gilberto Câmara
Thanks to open web mapping libraries (e.g., Leaflet, Mapbox), creating Web Maps has become easier. The purpose of this thesis is to explore some of the factors (i.e., design steps) which lead to an easier re-use of Web Maps once they have been created. In particular, the thesis should explore design steps which lead to:
- Easy plugging of new spatial datasets to existing Web Maps
- Easy plugging of new temporal datasets to existing Web Maps
The evaluation of the ideas is expected to take place with one or more re-use scenarios of open geodata for cities (e.g., re-use of Web Maps for referendum data).
Supervisor: Auriol Degbelo
Supervisor: Edzer Pebesma
This thesis analyses the technical means that are necessary to integrate geospatial data services into e-Government applications. To do so, experts from both, the geospatial domain and the e-Government domain were interviewed to find use-cases which emerge from this integration. The examination of these use-cases showed, that an integration is only possible when basic requirements addressing the secure, traceable, and legally binding transport of messages are met. In e-Government infrastructures standardised transport technologies like OSCI were developed to meet these requirements. In order to satisfy the identified requirements and to enable legally binding, secure and traceable information exchange between services of SDIs and e-Government applications, thiswork applies the techniques of the transport protocol OSCI to a geospatial data service. The developed prototypical application is on the one hand capable of providing the necessary security, on the other hand it preserves the standards which are used in SDIs. This work shows that an integration of geospatial services into standardised e-Government applications is feasible, when all requirements are met.
Author: Dustin DemuthSupervisor: Prof. Dr. Albert Remke
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Public deliberation conducted by citizen initiatives is an important part of the democratic foundation of our society. Lists on Internet pages, meetings and newspaper advertisements are used as medium for informing the public. A more profound deliberation can be achieved through giving citizens the opportunity to actively participate. Although research of spatial discussion platforms exists, only few investigate the use of dialogs or even spatially enhanced dialogs. This thesis explores the support of public deliberation performed by citizen initiatives through spatially enhanced dialogs. In order to enable citizen initiatives to engage in dialogs, a prototypical spatial discussion platform was developed. Semi-structured and expert interviews, as well as a focus group, helped to evaluate how spatially enhanced dialogs support deliberation performed by citizen initiatives. In this context, the concept of spatially enhanced dialogs and the developed prototype were tested. The results show general understanding of the respondents for the concept. However, the conveyance of projects’ spatial characteristics appear to have a higher level of importance for evaluation participants.
Author: Gerald PapeSupervisor: Prof. Dr. Christian Kray
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Interoperability is the main challenge on the way to efficiently find and access spatial data on the web. Significant contributions regarding interoperability have been made by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), where web service standards to publish and download spatial data have been established. The OGCs GeoSPARQL specification targets spatial data on the Web as Linked Open Data (LOD) by providing a comprehensive vocabulary for annotation and querying. While OGC web service standards are widely implemented in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and offer a seamless service infrastructure, the LOD approach offers structured techniques to interlink and semantically describe spatial information. It is currently not possible to use LOD as a data source for OGC web services. In this paper we make a suggestion for technically linking OGC web services and LOD as a data source, and we explore and discuss its benefits. We describe and test an adapter that enables access to geographic LOD datasets from within OGC Web Feature Service (WFS), enabling most current GIS to access the Web of Data. We discuss performance tests by comparing the proposed adapter to a reference WFS implementation.
Author: Jim JonesSupervisor: Prof. Dr. Werner Kuhn
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Virtual globes are an effective tool for visualisation and exploration. This thesis investigates whether a virtual globe is suited for the discovery of environmental sensors. Different kinds of sensor representations are discussed and - taking the increasing number of mobile sensors into account - also how to visualise sensor movements. Cartographic generalisation algorithms are applied to reduce the sensor density on the globe. Spatial, thematic and temporal filters narrow down the sensor search.
The concepts are implemented in a web-based virtual globe application. The application shall help citizen scientists finding sensors of other providers to calibrate their own sensors. For testing, metadata and real-time measurements of weather stations and smartphones are inserted into two Sensor Observation Services, which are harvested by a Sensor Instance Registry. A usability study evaluates the application. Based on the participants’ feedback, suggestions for improvement and for future research are outlined.
Author: Raimund SchnürerSupervisor: Dipl.-Geoinf. Simon Jirka
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Due to the non-applicability of GPS devices and the higher need for accuracy, collecting indoor spatial data presents different challenges than mapping outdoor environments. Considering usability or technical requirements, existing approaches for data capture indoors are poorly suited for non-professional collaborators of volunteered geographic information (VGI) communities, such as OpenStreetMap (OSM). This work investigates an alternative to measuring what has been measured already. The idea is to extract map data from public escape plans by means of computer vision. An approach to automatically interpreting photos of escape plans on mobile devices is developed and evaluated.
Author: Georg TschornSupervisor: Prof. Dr. Christian Kray
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The usage of Micro Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (MUAV) as mobile sensor platforms is constantly increasing in the scientific, as well as in the civilian sector. A variety of requirements evolve from upcoming mission tasks like documentation, surveying and inspection in agriculture and geography, as well as in the industry. Many applications, such as the creation of orthoimages or the inspection of industrial plants need accurate position information in real-time, both for safety-in-flight reasons and for enriching sensor data by the provision of location.
As current MUAVs make use of common Global Positioning System receivers and, therefore, do not guarantee reliable high-precision positioning, this work examines the demands on an improved Differential Global Navigation Satellite System (DGNSS) positioning system for its integration into an existing MUAV platform. It proposes a flexible system architecture and presents a modular prototype that offers the possibility to exchange discrete components for making use of more sophisticated technologies like Precise DGNSS. The described prototype already guarantees horizontal positioning accuracy of 35 cm in real-time, which can be considered as sufficient for the majority of applications.
Consequently, this work focuses on the integration of position and additional navigation data into an existing Sensor Platform Framework software, which is able to synchronize sensor and navigation information on-the-fly. It introduces a MUAV platform-specific Input-Plugin for decoding the telemetry data stream and for the communication with the framework. As the framework is able to forward the processed geodata in a standardized way according to the guidelines of the Open Geospatial Consortium Inc., the data can be exploited by any kind of Sensor Web Service in near real-time.
Author: Jakob GeipelSupervisor: Prof. Dr. Edzer Pebesma
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Geo-spatial applications, for instance, geographic information systems (GIS) are increasingly realized as online platforms. Browser-based approaches facilitate broad accessibility and thus allow collaborative work. Regarding map based editors, collaboration is in most cases done asynchronous and does not support real-time concurrent editing. Many workflows, such as gathering data in case of a disaster could however benefit from allowing multiple users to simultaneously work together on the same dataset. A browser-based map editor, called Ethermap, was developed facilitating this kind of real-time interaction supported by means for increasing user awareness, an interactive version control, a well as explicit communication about geo-objects. This work reports on implications and limitations from several evaluation methods (focus group, user study, interviews, technical evaluation) indicating the importance of facilitating user awareness, as well as an increased efficiency, which can arise through real-time collaborative map editing.
Author: Dennis WilhelmSupervisor: Prof. Dr. Christian Kray
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The proliferation of location-based services in recent years has highlighted the need to consider location privacy. This has led to the development of methods enhancing location privacy, and to the investigation of reasons for sharing location information. While computational attacks on location privacy and their prevention have attracted a lot of research, attacks based on human strategies and tactics have generally been considered implicitly. This work addresses this knowledge gap by reporting on a user study which was conducted in the context of a location-based game. Participants had to identify other players over the course of several weeks. The results show that human strategies for deanonymization and reidentication can be highly successful and thus pose a threat to location privacy comparable to computational attacks. By incorporating real-world knowledge that is not easily available in automated attacks, human players were able to eciently re-identify other people in the game.
Keywords: re-identication, deanonymization, location privacy.
Author: Thore FechnerSupervisor: Prof. Dr. Christian Kray
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This master thesis describes the evaluation of different image recognition algorithms. The aim is to find an appropriate technique to provide real time indoor Augmented Reality applications. Therefore, the promising approach of using existing infrastructure in the form of images or shop logos instead of markers is verified. Furthermore, the most appropriate algorithm in detection accuracy and time, SIFT, is tested for its real time abilities. Several techniques of how to improve the not sufficient calculation latency are tested and discussed. With the gained information a prototypical Augmented Reality that is based on image recognition is developed.
Author: Philipp WeißSupervisor: Prof. Dr. Christian Kray
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People live in a world where space and time are two fundamental variables. Everything
people do is related to space and time. During their daily life people build up a cognitive map and rely on it in several wayfinding and navigation tasks. However conveying spatial information to other people is not obvious. Apart from referring to a map or absolute reference systems like coordinates, people use two main modalities for conveying spatial information: the textual mode and the graphical mode. The textual mode means both, conveying spatial information orally or written. Both modalities are used to externalise parts of peoples cognitive map by describing either textually or by sketching. Besides technical devices are used to support peoples spatial behaviour. This devices rely on the textual and graphical modalities in conveying spatial information as well.
Supervisor: Angela Schwering
- Developing and Testing different Visualizations of Off-Screen Landmarks for Car Navigation Systems SIL
Along with the increasing proliferation and power of mobile devices, mobile maps (e.g. in pedestrian navigation systems) become both feasible and popular [Allen, 2000]. In contrast to the navigation mode in car navigation systems, pedestrians prefer route instructions based on salient objects [Kluge and Asche, 2012]. Although it is easy for users to get guided to a location, research suggests that the effects are negative. Moreover, users become device-focused and develop a reduced understanding of the environment [Munzer et al., 2006]. Accordingly, users might get lost in cases of inaccurate instructions or failures of the system as they only focus on the given route and turning-point instructions. Consequently, studies suggest that wayfinding and learning of the environment can be influenced through visual presentation modes with mobile applications [Munzer et al., 2012]. One type of information that are mostly not considered in mobile navigation solutions are landmarks. However, it has shown that landmarks are an important supportive element in wayfinding tasks [Golledge, 1999]. One of the key strengths of a map is that it can visualize features and their spatial relationships of a large area. Though, the limited space of mobile devices leads to a visualization of only a discrete view of an area. As consequence, the acquisition of spatial knowledge is impacted
with respect to accuracy and response time [Dillemuth, 2009]. Since the space of
the display is limited, landmarks are often outside of the displayed area. Accordingly, they have to be mapped on-screen to overcome this limitation. Research has already shown that displaying distant landmarks on-screen holds positive effects on supporting persons acquisition of directional knowledge that benefits spatial orientation [Li et al., 2014]. For the reason that the chosen visualization does not convey information about distance from the user’s position to the distant object a better visualization has to be provided. Research already provides several approaches to display distant objects on small displays (e.g. [Baudisch and Rosenholtz, 2003], [Gustafson et al., 2008], [Bertel et al., 2014]). However, given approaches are mainly focused on guiding a user to a distant
location. Therefore, this thesis will aim at adapting common approaches of research to display off-screen landmarks in order to investigate in what extent spatial orientation is supported while navigating through traffic.
Supervisor: Angela Schwering
The usage of do-it-yourself (DIY) sensor stations based on open-source hardware for participatory sensing as a basis for large-scale sensor networks is a novel approach in the field of citizen science. In that context, DIY sensors can build a basis for large-scale sensor network applications. Since the installation is performed by non-professionals, extensive user support has to be provided in order to achieve satisfactory results.
The SenseBox is an open-source toolkit for participatory sensing, which offers well-documented tutorials for sensor applications based on Arduino microcontrollers. This system has been applied in scientific workshops with secondary school students to teach them programming in a playful and simple way. All data that is being collected with the SenseBox construction kits is published on OpenSenseMap, a platform for sharing open sensor data. There was an increasing demand of the DIY toolkits after the project was publicly promoted and the OpenSenseMap was officially launched. Consequently this approach was adopted to a standalone DIY sensor station for participatory sensing. A second version of the SenseBox was developed, which is more focusing on long-term deployments of local environments than on an educational approach.
After an initial test phase where citizens were equipped with SenseBox construction kits for continuous measurements, it was discovered that most of the stations were disconnected after a short time period. Subsequently a user study was performed to reveal possible error sources during the wiring process, software installation and integration into the sensor network. It turned out that missing general computer skills, like the installation of application software, led to larger problems than wiring of hardware parts.
This Thesis focuses on usability enhancements for the SenseBox and OpenSenseMap to enable citizen driven long-term deployments of DIY sensor stations in outdoor environments.
The research fields of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Usability Engineering (UE) provide well described guidelines and frameworks for designing intuitive user interfaces. These concepts can be adapted to the open hardware approach of SenseBox, the sensor registration on OpenSenseMap and the documentation material. Intermediate results of an ongoing test run are demonstrating that the usability of the project can be enhanced with the methods provided by the heuristics of UE.
Author: Jan WirwahnSupervisor: Prof. Dr. Angela Schwering
Mobile devices have become increasingly popular in supporting people to find their ways in our daily lives. Providing navigation support is not only guiding a wayfinder to reach one or multiple destinations. More importantly, it should support the wayfinder’s spatial orientation to improve the wayfinder’s awareness of the environment. Research has suggested approaches to enhance a person’s spatial orientation while using maps on mobile devices by visualizing distant off-screen landmarks with landmark-indicating icons at the edge of the screen to indicate directions (LI, KORDA, RADTKE, SCHWERING 2014). An amendment to this design is to incorporate distance into the design and placement of landmark-indicating icons. Research explored various methods to visualize distant off-screen locations which are focusing of indicating distance and direction such as Halo (circles at the edge), Wedge (triangles at the edge) and Stretched (arrows at the edge) (BERTEL, KOHLBERG, LUTTER, SPENSBERGER 2014; BOLL, HENZE, 2011), but these methods are distinguishing the locations from each other just by using different colors. In context of categorized points of interest, it is useful to visualize different categories of points at the same time in different colors (such as automatic teller machines in a one and restaurants in another color). But global landmarks are unique and specifiable from each other and thus, it is not useful to create a category containing multiple global landmarks. Hence, using only different colors in combination with Halo, Wedge, and Stretched will not help users to identify distant off-screen landmarks. A new approach of visualizing identifiable landmark-indicating icons enhanced with distance information to those off-screen landmarks is subject of investigation.
Author: Maruin RadkeSupervisor: Angela Schwering
Im Arbeitsfeld der reproduzierbaren Forschung werden wissenschaftliche Artikel gemeinsam mit Daten und Programmcode in Form von Kompendien organisiert. Ziel solcher Kompendien ist es, die Daten oder die Analysen austauschbar zu gestalten, sowie den Zugang zu Daten und Software langfristig zu sicherzustellen. Für ein gutes Benutzererlebnis sollte der Austausch von Daten und Analysen zwischen Kompendien einfach und stabil sein, die einen Daten also kompatibel mit dem anderen Code.
Suchdatenbanken, wie zum Beispiel Elasticsearch, spielen beim Auffinden von Dokumenten im Web eine zentrale Rolle. Eine typische Funktion einer Suche ist das Vorschlagen ähnlicher Dokumente auf Basis hochperformanter invertierter Indizes.
Einen ersten Schritt hin zur Kompabilitätanalyse stellen direkte und mittelbare Metadaten dar die in Suchdatenbanken gesammelt werden. Diese Metadaten werden heute meist vom Autor erstellt (abstract, keywords) und nicht umfassend. Auf der Basis von Kompendien können diese und weitere Informationen aus den Sekundärdateien (Daten, Quellcode) abgeleitet werden. Zum Beispiel könnten ähnliche genutzte Softwarekomponenten oder Datenausschnitte einen Hinweis darauf geben, dass zwei gegebene Kompendien so weit kompatibel sind, dass die Daten des einen mit der Analyse des anderen kombiniert werden können.
Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es, die möglichen Quellen von Metadaten wissenschaftlicher Publikationen zu sichten und mit den Anforderungen des Anwendungsfalls zusammen zu führen. Es sollen neue Wege zur Erweiterung, Integration und Vergleich der Metadatensätze entworfen und mittels einer prototypischen Implementierung evaluiert werden.
Die Arbeit kann auf Deutsch oder Englisch verfasst werden.
Author: Lukas Lohoff
Supervisor: Edzer Pebesma
Geosimulation models can help to better understand animal behavior, such as their movement patterns. Although some geosimulation models of animal (e.g. ant, deer, bird) movement have been developed, they have remained rather conceptual: applications of these models to real-world case studies are rare. Such applications were mainly hindered by data availability.
In a recent presentation in the GI forum, Benjamin Risse has shown his state-of-the-art methods derive animal tracks from camera images. One of his main current problems are ‘gaps’ in the tracks, which exist because the animal disappears from the camera image through obstruction by another object (tree, leaf, man-made structure, etc.).
This thesis aims to use (part of) Risse’s data for constructing an agent-based model of animal movement and (the other part) to compare how well this model can reproduce the animal tracks. Which particular animal is studied can be decided by the student in consultation with the supervisors. Depending on the attained model accuracies in this thesis, the developed model might be used to fill in the gaps in the animal track data at a later stage. The challenges in this thesis include:
- To translate the animal track data, built up form a moving camera, to the (static) spatial scale of the agent-based model;
- To derive the required agent-based-model inputs, especially the landscape, from the camera data;
- The model development itself; and
- To compare the stochastic output of the agent-based model with the deterministic track data.
This thesis will be supervised by Judith Verstegen and Benjamin Risse (Computer Science Department, Münster). This topic is only for students who followed Geosimulation Modelling or a similar course.
Author: Anna FormaniukSupervisor: Judith Verstegen, Benjamin Risse
This master thesis will continue previous research done by Dr. Judith Verstegen and her colleague, Dr. Floor Van der Hilst. I plan to evaluate the uncertainties that exist in an integrated economic-land use change model (MAGNET + PLUC models) and in which degree they might affect the greenhouse gas emission estimations in Brazil up to 2030 considering distinct land use change scenarios (e.g considering future biofuel demand and application of environmental mitigation policies). Since land use change indicators guide carbon stock aims in legislation, we ultimately plan to identify and access if adding uncertainties to the projected scenarios are significant when interpreting the indicators.
Author: Renan BarrosoSupervisor: Judith Verstegen, Floor van der Hilst
Self-driving cars are a highly debated topic in the media, in research, and in industry. As it is much cheaper to test technologies for such cars in simulations before testing them in the real world, it is very important to create suitable environments for these simulations. The real world road network can change rapidly. These changes have to be reflected in the simulations, preferably in an automated way. This master thesis will try to answer the question to which extent it is possible to automate the updating of road networks for driving simulations and how this (partial or full) automation can be achieved.
Author: Marius RundeSupervisor: Judith Verstegen, Michael Scholz
Computational research introduces challenges when it comes to reproducibility, i.e. re-doing an analysis with the same data and code. A current research project at ifgi developed a new approach called Executable Research Compendia (ERC, see https://doi.org/10.1045/january2017-nuest) to solve some of these challenges. ERC contain everything needed to run an analysis: data, code, and runtime environment. So they can be executed “offline” in a sandbox environment. An open challenge is the one of big datasets and reducing data duplication. While the idea of putting “everything” into the ERC is useful in many cases, once the dataset becomes very large it is not feasible to replicate it completely for the sake of reproducibility/transparency and to some extent for archival.
This thesis will create a concept for allowing ERC to communicate with specific data repositories (e.g. PANGAEA, GFZ Data Services) extending on previous work (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1478542). The new approach should let ERCs “break out” of their sandbox environments in a controlled and transparent fashion, while at the same time more explicitly configuring the allowed actions by a container (e.g. using AppArmor).
Since trust is highly important in research applications, the communication with remote services must be exposed to users in a useful and understandable fashion. Users who evaluate other scientists ERC must know which third party repositories are used and how. The concept must be (i) implemented in a prototype using Docker containerization technology and discussed from viewpoints of security, scalability, and transparency, and (ii) demonstrated with ERC based on different geoscience data repositories, e.g. Sentinel Hub, and processing infrastructure, e.g. openEO or WPS, including an approach for authentication. Furthermore it could be evaluated to define the sandbox more explicitly, and if the communication between ERC and remote service can be captured and then cached for an additional backup, so that future execution may re-use that backup.
Prior experience with Docker is useful but not a strict requirement.
Contact: Daniel Nüst
Supervisor: Daniel Nüst
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Supervisor: Judith Verstegen, Markus Neteler
Münster has the plan to reduce the maximum speed of traffic in several streets in town from 50 km/h to 30 km/h. It is claimed that this reduces emissions and is safer for the bikers. Car owners, on the other hand, are concerned about the effects of the maximum speed reductions on their travel times. Both sides of the debate lack quantitative support for their claims.
Geosimulation models can help to better understand and predict traffic from the local interactions and feedbacks between different road users, the spatial configuration of the city, and the spatio-temporal configuration of limited speed zones and traffic lights. The idea of this thesis is to construct an agent-based model of (part of) the Münster traffic system, and to calibrate this model with EnviroCar data (https://envirocar.org). Next, the model can be used to simulate the impacts of different future scenarios, such as the planned maximum speed reductions. The results of these scenarios are expected to support the abovementioned debate.
Author: Zhihao LiuSupervisor: Judith Verstegen, Albert Remke
Montello, D. R. (1998). A new framework for understanding the acquisition of spatial knowledge in large-scale environments. In M. J. Egenhofer (Ed.), Spatial and Temporal Reasoning in Geographic Information Systems (pp. 143–154). New York: Oxford University Press.
Montello, D. R., Richardson, A. E., Hegarty, M., & Provenza, M. (1999). A comparison of methods for estimating directions in egocentric space. Perception, 28(8), 981–1000. http://doi.org/10.1068/p2940
Author: Sarah Abdelkader
Supervisor: Jakub Krukar
- Detecting direct systemic changes in an agent based model with a rolling calibration methodology GeoSim
Models are simplified representations of real-world systems developed to better understand complex systems and to project their future system states under different scenarios. Ideally, after programming a model, its parameters are calibrated with respect to a set of observational data. Most calibration methods use a set of fixed parameters for the whole model runtime. This presumes stationarity of the processes in studied system, while this may not be the case in reality. Non-stationarity, also called systemic change, can cause large errors in the future projections modelled with fixed parameters. Therefore, it is important to at least assess if model parameters have been stable with respect to historic observations of the system. Developing a method for systemic change detection can best be done in a closed, fully understandable and controllable system, as this eases performance assessment of the method. Hereto, this thesis evaluates a method to detect systemic changes using an agent-based model and real observation data of a simple, closed system in which systemic changes are induced manually.
Author: Clara RendelSupervisor: Judith Verstegen
Various open data portals are currently emerging as catalogs for data being made open by public institutions. Enabling an efficient access to, and searching of these open datasets is still not fully understood. [1] proposed semantic APIs as a way of improving access to open data. The purpose of this thesis is to design and implement functionalities to enable spatial search through this API.
The thesis will involve two basic tasks:
- addition of curated spatial datasets to the Open City Toolkit
- development of an intuitive interface for the spatial query of these spatial datasets
The intuitiveness of the Spatial Query Interface could be tested, for example, through (sample) usability tests.
[1] Degbelo, A., Trilles, S., Kray, C., Bhattacharya, D., Schiestel, N., Wissing, J. and Granell, C. (2016) ‘Designing semantic APIs for open government data’, JeDEM - eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government, 8(2), pp. 21–58.
Supervisor: Auriol Degbelo
The Open City Toolkit has been suggested in [1,2] as a way of improving data re-use in the city context. This thesis will develop and test a module which suggests
relevant datasets for a new Open City Toolkit app. The development may follow user-centered design principles.
The thesis will involve two basic tasks
- modelling of (spatial) datasets and apps in the context of the Open City Toolkit
- specification of an annotation strategy of both apps and datasets, based on open data formats (e.g., RDF, JSON, JSON-LD)
- design and implementation of recommendation functionalities (i.e., which datasets could be re-used in which apps)
The feasibility of the ideas suggested is expected to be demonstrated through a prototypical implementation.
[1] Degbelo, A., Granell, C., Trilles, S., Bhattacharya, D., Casteleyn, S. and Kray, C. (2016) ‘Opening up smart cities: citizen-centric challenges and opportunities from GIScience’, ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, 5(2), p. 16. doi: 10.3390/ijgi5020016.
[2] Degbelo, A., Trilles, S., Kray, C., Bhattacharya, D., Schiestel, N., Wissing, J. and Granell, C. (2016) ‘Designing semantic APIs for open government data’, JeDEM - eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government, 8(2), pp. 21–58.
Supervisor: Auriol Degbelo
Supervisor: Judith Verstegen, Carina van der Laan
Supervisor: Judith Verstegen, Sebastian Völker
Predicting energy consumption for customers has many benefits. This prediction can help companies know what consumption future connections would have and it can help them decide whether to setup a grid in a community. This prediction is also important for solar mini-grid companies as it can help them setup mini-grids in new villages where they just have the data on the prospective customer houses. This prediction would be done based on the spatial characteristics of the houses and the consumption data of the already connected customers. These characteristics of customer houses are termed factors in this research. The aim of the project is to identify how these geospatial factors indicate and can help predict customer electricity consumption. E. ON Off Grid Solutions (EOGS) operates solar mini-grids in 8 villages in Tanzania. For this research, two villages namely Komolo and Temeke would be used as the case study areas. A regression model would be developed where the customer consumption would be predicted by the factors such as roof type, size, material etc. Here the consumption would act as the dependent variable and the factors would be the predictors. The performance of the model would be checked by comparing it with real customer consumption data. Once the quality is validated this model would be extended to other villages operated by EOGS as well.
Author: Shahzeib Tariq JaswalSupervisor: Judith Verstegen
Supervisor: Judith Verstegen
Insurance companies that provide flood insurance often need real time information about flood events to verify insurance claims and to react accordingly. The current extend of a flood can be extracted from Sentinel-1 satellite images. The problem with this approach is that the images are only available every few days. Aim of this thesis will be to predict the future spatial development of the identified flooded areas by modeling the hydrological processes on the level of small catchments. A special focus will be on the data published by the German weather service on its open data portal. Both measurements of past weather conditions and the outputs of the short-term prognosis model COSMO-DE will be considered. The expected result is a workflow that allows predicting the development of the detected waterbodies over the next days.
Author: Jan van ZadelhoffSupervisor: Judith Verstegen
Supervisor: Judith Verstegen
3D flight route optimization for air-taxis in urban areas with Genetic Algorithms
Author: Moritz HildemannSupervisor: Judith Verstegen
A dataset of railway tracks of good positional accuracy would be an important asset to railway companies and researchers. Railway track data is provided for free by some sources, namely the OpenRailwayMap, INSPIRE railway network and the Deutsche Bahn. However, the geometry of the track is not well-defined in several portions and they also lack positional accuracy and completeness. The Institute of Transportation Systems, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) has developed a measurement vehicle called the ‘RailDriVE’ that has several sensors, including several high quality Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers, an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) and a Laser Scanner.
The goal of the current work is to compare three different approaches to create a track of good quality from the measurements made by these sensors. The performance of these approaches in different environmental conditions (for example, open areas, forests) will also be assessed. In the first approach, the GNSS data points will be filtered based on their quality and then fused with IMU data using advanced sensor fusion algorithms. The center line of the track will be derived from the GNSS-IMU fused data. For the second approach, the point cloud obtained from the laser scanner data will be georeferenced using GNSS data and the center line of the track will be derived from the georeferenced point cloud. In the third approach, the GNSS-IMU fused points from the first approach will be used to georeference the laser scanner data and the center line will be derived from the georeferenced point cloud similar to the second approach. The accuracy of the result of each approach will be evaluated using aerial images provided by the GeoDataPortal of Sachsen as the reference data. Finally, the best result obtained would be submitted to OpenRailwayMap so that it is beneficial to the community.
Author: Sangeetha ShankarSupervisor: Judith Verstegen, Lucas Schubert
openEO develops an open API to connect R, Python and Javascript clients to big Earth observation cloud back-ends in a simple and unified way. Back-ends process user-defined algorithms on remote sensing data sets - usually image-based - within their cloud infrastructure. An important aspect is to facilitate users to switch between back-ends easily while still getting consistent and comparable processing results. Back-ends use different IT infrastructure and software to process data although they share the same specification for processes and for communication between clients and back-ends: the openEO API. It is still necessary to ensure that processes comply to the specification. As a consequence, the results from back-ends are often not comparable by default and need to be checked for compliance with the specification. One way to ensure compliance is by processing a certain standardized, reference data sets and validating the results. The openEO project still has to select such data sets. Additionally, the differences in infrastructure and software may eventually lead to at least small differences in the processing results, either due to rounding in floating point arithmetic or implementation details. Therefore there needs to be a certain threshold that the results are allowed to differ. This thesis aims to solve the issues raised by
- defining which aspects an image-based data set need to fulfil for our validation purposes,
- selecting suitable image data sets for validation purposes,
- defining the concrete rules and a workflow for validation,
- and implementing a prototype for the specified workflow.
The scope of the thesis can be adapted to to fit the requirements of either a bachelor thesis or a master thesis. Some more information can be found in the corresponding openEO API GitHub issue.
Contact
- Edzer Pebesma - edzer.pebesma@uni-muenster.de
- Matthias Mohr - m.mohr@uni-muenster.de
Supervisor: Edzer Pebesma
- What R-spatial packages be installed in alternative R implementations?
- What are the main obstacles to a comprehensive geospatial toolset in alternative R implementations?
- What is the role system libraries play in the R-spatial ecosystem from the perspective of alternative R implementations?
- How can containers support transparent benchmarking across R versions and implementations?
Author: Ismail Sunni
Supervisor: Edzer Pebesma
Supervisor: Judith Verstegen, Brian Dermody
Parameterbasierte Identifikation von Realdaten-Streckenabschnitten im OpenDRIVE-Format
Author: Peter KonopatzkySupervisor: Judith Verstegen
The purpose of this work is to introduce the concept of the Pattern-Oriented Modelling strategy into the calibration an urban growth based on the cellular automaton modelling paradigm. The approach will be tested on the three selected European cities, representing different types of urban sprawl.
Author: Katarzyna GochSupervisor: Judith Verstegen
Supervisor: Judith Verstegen, Philip Minderhoud
Text elements in maps (eg. title, legend, axes labels or other ancillary text) are integral components of geographical maps. If these change or disappear, this can affect the meaning and functionality of the map in several ways, from being difficult to use to providing misleading information.
In the context of reproducibility, the comparison of results is a task that we frequently have to elaborate. In order to assist the visual comparison of results as complex as maps, we need to develop tools that make use of the latest technological advancements, in this case from the field of Computer Vision.
Optical Character Recongition (OCR) is a Computer Vision task that addresses the process of converting printed text into a digital format with image processing.
For the needs of this thesis, a prototype that extracts and parses text elements of maps using OCR will be developed and evaluated. As the implications of this topic are many, the details can be adjusted to the student's interest.
Suggested reads:
Chiang, YY., Knoblock, C.A. Recognizing text in raster maps. Geoinformatica 19, 1–27 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10707-014-0203-9
Supervisor: Christian Kray
Mobility infrastructure has a great impact on the sustainable development of cities. An efficient non-motorized infrastructure can help Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by promoting public health (SDG 3.4), contributing to better air, water, and soil quality (SDG 3.9), increasing accessibility and affordability of public transportation (SDG 11.2), reducing the environmental impact in cities (SDG 11.6.), helping to climate control (SDG 13.2). German Sustainable Building Council (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Nachhaltiges Bauen- DGNB) provides comprehensive tools to assess the sustainability of buildings and neighborhoods in Germany since 2007. The tools are developed and updated regularly according to the SDGs and local sustainability strategies. Non-motorized traffic is covered by DGNB Quartier in 2020 with the aim of efficient use of resources, increased affordability, and increased user comfort which provides better experience and accessibility especially for people with reduced mobility.
BSc - In the scope of the BSc thesis, the focus will be given to the assessment of cycling infrastructure in Münster. The data collection and analysis will be based on the indicators defined by the German Sustainable Building Council (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Nachhaltiges Bauen- DGNB), Neighbourhood certification (DGNB Quartier) (sub section Technische Qualität - TEC 3.2). Data collection and analysis will include the assessment of quantity and quality of city’s existing cycling infrastructure such as integration of the cycling network to other transportation modes and land uses, the quantity and quality of bicycle parking spaces, and signalisation. The student will automate the assessment of indicators through an algorithm developed in SQL or Python, visualise the results on the preferred system, and recommend a roadmap for future applications to achieve maximum score (30 points) stated in the DGNB Quartier sustainability certification system.
MSc - The MSc thesis aims to create an interactive City Dashboard for Münster focusing on cycling infrastructure in the city centre. Complementary to the data collection and analysis processes described in the BSc thesis, the student is expected to develop a web-based, interactive dashboard that enables users of the city to monitor the status quo of the cycling infrastructure and investigate the impact of possible interventions (e.g. increasing the amount of the cycling paths or bicycle parking spaces) on the overall quality of non-motorised mobility infrastructure.
References:
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Nachhaltiges Bauen (2020), DGNB Quartiere Kriterienkatalog, https://static.dgnb.de/fileadmin/dgnb-system/de/quartiere/kriterien/DGNB-Kriterienkatalog-Quartiere-Kommentierungsversion-2020.pdf
Author: Fabian Fermazin (BSc), Lorenz Beck (MSc)Supervisor: Simge Özdal Oktay
User experience of geospatial products is increasingly studied (see e.g. [1, 2]), but models describing the results of these studies for further reuse are still lacking. The aim of this thesis is to provide an approach to systematically build such models. Building these models is key to realize intelligent geovisualizations [3]. Tasks include:
Task1: Development of a prototype to collect data about the user experience of different types of map-based applications. This prototype can be mobile or not, and could investigate, for instance, the impact of color palettes, mean spacing between elements (e.g. menu items), size of the elements (e.g. icons, labels), visual hierarchy and the cross-device validity of the findings.
Task2: Conduct user studies to collect data about the user experience of a geospatial application under different conditions.
Task3: Model-fitting (i.e. find the mathematical function that describes the model most adequately).
References
[1] Degbelo, A. and Somaskantharajan, S. (2020) ‘Speech-based interaction for map editing on mobile devices: a scenario-based study’, in Alt, F., Schneegass, S., and Hornecker, E. (eds) Mensch und Computer 2020. Magdeburg, Germany: ACM, pp. 343–347. doi: 10.1145/3404983.3409996.
[2] Einfeldt, L. and Degbelo, A. (2021) ‘User interface factors of mobile UX: A study with an incident reporting application’, in Paljic, A., Peck, T., Braz, J., and Bouatouch, K. (eds) Proceedings of the 16th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications (VISIGRAPP 2021) - Volume 2: HUCAPP. Online: SCITEPRESS - Science and Technology Publications, pp. 245–254. doi: 10.5220/0010325302450254.
[3] Degbelo, A. and Kray, C. (2018) ‘Intelligent geovisualizations for open government data (vision paper)’, in Banaei-Kashani, F., Hoel, E. G., Güting, R. H., Tamassia, R., and Xiong, L. (eds) 26th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems. Seattle, Washington, USA: ACM Press, pp. 77–80. doi: 10.1145/3274895.3274940.
Reading
Miniukovich, A. and Marchese, M. (2020) ‘Relationship between visual complexity and aesthetics of webpages’, in Bernhaupt, R. et al. (eds) Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Honolulu, Hawaii, USA: ACM, pp. 1–13. doi: 10.1145/3313831.3376602.
Supervisor: Auriol Degbelo
Visualizations of spatial data on large displays could be very useful during the exploration of large spatial datasets. A key issue in this context is the design of natural interaction (e.g. interaction with freehand gestures and/or speech-based interaction) to support exploratory data analysis tasks (e.g. panning, zooming, selection, aggregation, annotation). This thesis aims to explore strategies to facilitate the interaction with spatial data on large displays using freehand gestures. Tasks include:
Task 1: implementation of a software module to reliably map the position of users’ hands to the screen’s positions.
Task 2: implementation of a software module that enables panning and zooming with maps via freehand gestures on a large display.
Task 3: evaluation of the software modules (e.g. performance, usability, usefulness).
The immersive video environment will serve as a prototypical large display during the study. Programming skills (C++, C# or VB.NET) will be an advantage.
Contact
Auriol Degbelo (auriol.degbelo@uni-muenster.de)
Samuel Navas Medrano (s.navas@uni-muenster.de)
Readings
Bartoschek, T., Pape, G., Kray, C., Jones, J. and Kauppinen, T. (2014) ‘Gestural interaction with spatiotemporal linked open data’, OSGeo Journal, 13(1), pp. 60–67.
Nancel, M., Wagner, J., Pietriga, E., Chapuis, O. and Mackay, W. (2011) ‘Mid-air pan-and-zoom on wall-sized displays’, in Tan, D. S., Amershi, S., Begole, B., Kellogg, W. A., and Tungare, M. (eds) Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference on Human factors in computing systems - CHI ’11. Vancouver, Canada: ACM Press, pp. 177–186. doi: 10.1145/1978942.1978969.
Author: Jonas HurstSupervisor: Auriol degbelo