GIScience News Blog
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openrouteservice: key statistics and insights for 2024
HeiGIT has released the 2024 key statistics and numbers of openrouteservice. It demonstrates a significant increase in new users compared to the previous year. Specifically, there has been an increase of approximately 39% in new users since 2023, with a particularly notable rise in collaborative users. The number has increased by around 270%, compared to…
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Silver Ways: Enhancing Walkability for Older Adults in 15-Minute Cities
The 15-minute city concept is gaining traction in urban planning, aiming to ensure that essential services are within a short walk or bike ride. As the older population grows, walking remains a key factor in their well-being, yet their mobility is highly dependent on the built environment. A new research project, Silver Ways, is tackling…
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In their words: voices of women in science
Today, on February 11th, together with the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, we are celebrating women and girls in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Established by the United Nations, this day underscores the need for gender equality in scientific fields and recognizes the contributions of women scientists around the world. Despite…
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New Paper “Geosocial Media’s Early Warning Capabilities Across US County-Level Political Clusters: Observational Study”
The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) generated significant health concerns worldwide, leading policymakers and health care experts to implement nonpharmaceutical public health interventions to mitigate the spread of the virus. While these interventions played a crucial role in controlling transmission, they also resulted in substantial economic and societal costs, necessitating strategic deployment, particularly during periods of…
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Ohsome Quality API enhancements for the attribute completeness indicator
Fig. 1: New feature: combining attributes We recently added the attribute completeness indicator to the Ohsome Dashboard, and we’re now happy to introduce major upgrades to its functionalities. The ohsome quality API (OQAPI) and the ohsome dashboard The ohsome quality API was built to provide data quality estimations for OpenStreetMap data. There are currently four…
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New paper “STVAE: Skip connection driven two-stream property Fusion Variational AutoEncoder for cross-region wastewater treatment plant semantic segmentation”
Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) play a crucial role in maintaining ecological balance and public health and are essential for advancing social sustainable development goals. However, the diverse architectural styles, scales, and environmental contexts of WWTPs—shaped by climate, topography, and regional economic conditions—pose significant challenges for generalizing segmentation algorithms. To address this, integrating knowledge from different…
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High-resolution maps of carbon dioxide emissions
Road traffic and residential heating are the two main sources of CO₂ emissions in many cities. HeiGIT´s new emission inventories map these emissions and can simulate the effects of new policies and interventions. We calculated how emissions would change in Heidelberg, Germany, if we introduced a 30 km/h road speed limit and replaced oil and…
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OSM Completeness with Overture maps data
Free and open-source map data has become a keystone for research across diverse fields. The extensive coverage of OpenStreetMap (OSM) data allows scientists to conduct independent studies without relying on corporate collaborations or investing heavily in proprietary datasets. However, OSM data coverage completeness varies significantly by location. Moreover, the latest data updates cannot always be…
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New paper “Leveraging geospatial data to evaluate women’s employment opportunities in the renewable energy sector”
The renewable energy (RE) sector is a cornerstone of global climate action, yet its workforce remains marked by gender inequality. Women are significantly underrepresented, often relegated to lower-paid, non-technical roles. Traditional analyses of this disparity frequently ignore the spatial dimensions that influence women’s employment opportunities—factors like public transportation access, safety, and neighborhood walkability. Addressing these…
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New Paper “Evaluation of accessibility disparities in urban areas during disruptive events based on transit real data”
Studies have long assessed people’s accessibility to amenities through public transportation, typically using General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) data. GTFS reflects planned transportation schedules, detailing the intended services and routes of transit systems. However, this approach raises an important question: are we missing critical insights by not incorporating real-time information? A recent study led by…
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ohsome-py 4.0.0
The ohsome-py Python package is a client for the ohsome API, designed to facilitate the extraction and analysis of historical OpenStreetMap (OSM) data. The package simplifies handling API requests and responses by converting them into pandas or GeoPandas data frames, making data analysis and visualization easier. With ohsome-py, you gain all the functionalities of the…
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Acting Before the Disaster Happens: QGIS Training and Risk Assessment for Riverine Floods in Pakistan
In the field of humanitarian aid, Anticipatory Action (AA) is emerging as an important strategy to mitigate the impacts of natural disasters. At HeiGIT, we have been actively working with this approach to support local communities in building resilience. Unlike traditional reactive responses, AA aims to initiate predefined actions based on weather forecasts and risk…
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