Category: VGI Group

Kick off of the 25 Mapathon project

We are proud to announce the successful Kickoff of the 25 Mapathons project. On June, 22th a joint team of HeiGIT and the German Red Cross (GRC) carried out the first mapathon of the 25 Mapathons series. The mapathon was conducted with the local GRC groups from Witten and Lünen, which is part of the…

2020-07-06
A Multi-Sensor Fusion Framework Based on Coupled Residual Convolutional Neural Networks

Multi-sensor remote sensing image classification has been considerably improved by deep learning feature extraction and classification networks. In this recent paper, we propose a novel multi-sensor fusion framework (CResNet-AUX) for the fusion of diverse remote sensing data sources. The novelty of this paper is grounded in three important design innovations: A unique adaptation of the…

2020-06-30
Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team has been selected by the Audacious Project

The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) has announced major financial support from the Audacious Project, which will be provided over the next five years. HOT aims to use this funding to grow OpenStreetMap (OSM) communities in 94 countries. By engaging one million volunteers the goal is to map an area home to one billion people living…

2020-06-25
Exploring OSM for healthcare access analysis in Sub-Saharan Africa

[tl;dr] Using hospital locations and the ORS Isochrone service, we have created a method for comparing physical access to healthcare in Sub-Saharan Africa. Hospital locations were derived from OpenStreetMap and compared against another free available dataset. Results indicate strong similarity in both hospital datasets, however the uncertainty of our method requires further evaluation. Figure 1…

2020-06-23
Going green with MeinGrün – Today App launch in Heidelberg and Dresden

Today the time has come: The “meinGrün” web app for Dresden and Heidelberg is officially launched. With the mobile application you can (re-)discover known and unknown green spaces and find a pleasant route to those. Users can learn about the functions of the app via virtual scavenger hunt. The app is the result of the…

2020-06-19
Exploration of OpenStreetMap Missing Built-up Areas using Twitter Hierarchical Clustering and Deep Learning in Mozambique

Accurate and detailed geographical information digitizing human activity patterns plays an essential role in response to natural disasters. Volunteered geographical information, in particular OpenStreetMap (OSM), shows great potential in providing the knowledge of human settlements to support humanitarian aid, while often the availability and quality of OSM remains a major concern. The majority of existing…

2020-06-08
Cartographic Vandalism in the Era of Location-Based Games—The Case of OpenStreetMap and Pokémon

User-generated map data is increasingly used by the technology industry for background mapping, navigation and beyond. An example is the integration of OpenStreetMap (OSM) data in widely-used smartphone and web applications, such as Pokémon GO (PGO), a popular augmented reality smartphone game. As a result of OSM’s increased popularity, the worldwide audience that uses OSM…

2020-03-28
ISPRS IJGI highlights our work on deep learning of Street Art from VGI and Street View Images

We are pleased to share that because of the response to our work, ISPRS IJGI selected our paper on Detecting Graffiti with Street View Images and Deep Learning to be highlighted as a title story through some graphics on the journals main page. Novack T, Vorbeck L, Lorei H, Zipf A. (2020): Towards Detecting Building Facades…

2020-03-11
Volunteered Geographic Information research in the first decade: a narrative review of selected journal articles in GIScience

More than 10 years have passed since the coining of the term volunteered geographic information (VGI) in 2007. A recently published article presents the results of a review of the literature concerning VGI. A total of 346 articles published in 24 international refereed journals in GIScience between 2007 and 2017 have been reviewed. The review has…

2020-02-27
New project: LOKI – Airborne Observation of Critical Infrastructures

On Feb 12, 2020, the kick-off meeting for the newly funded BMBF project LOKI – Airborne Observation of Critical Infrastructures (Luftgestützte Observation Kritischer Infrastrukturen) was hosted by the GIScience and 3DGeo research groups of Heidelberg University. The aim of the LOKI project is to develop an interdisciplinary system that enables fast and reliable airborne situation…

2020-02-20
Detecting OSM Building Facades with Graffiti Artwork Based on Street View Images and Social Media using Deep Learning

As a recognized type of art, graffiti is a cultural asset and an important aspect of a city’s aesthetics. As such, graffiti is associated with social and commercial vibrancy and is known to attract tourists. However, positional uncertainty and incompleteness are current issues of open geo-datasets containing graffiti data. In a newly published paper, we…

2020-02-05
GIScience Contributions to the 2019 State of the Map Academic Track proceedings

Recently the SOTM 2019 Heidelberg Academic Track Proceedings have been published. GIScience Research Group Heidelberg and HeiGIT contributed several talks and posters. Below you can find an overview. Contact us if you are interested in further details on ongoing research. Klonner, Hartmann, Djami, Zipf, A. (2019). “Ohsome” OpenStreetMap Data Evaluation: Fitness of Field Papers for…

2020-02-03