An interoperability perspective towards the process and visualization of real-time geographic information

Abstract

The rapid growth of sensor and IoT technology brings revolutionary improvements to the quality of humans’ daily lives As a tremendous volume of sensed data is continuously collected and distributed via mobile networks we enjoy the luxury of using real-time data to develop innovated applications e g cross-domain applications in smart cities However the availability of data does not necessarily mean the data can automatically fit together Especially for applications demanding the fusion of real-time data from different sources for making prompt decisions the comprehensive understanding about the data being used is extremely important As current applications rarely address the “real time” issue in an appropriate manner this research intends to develop an interoperable solution to examine the real-time properties hidden in the distributed datasets With the consideration of different aspects in spatial temporal thematic and quality information we propose a conceptual model specifically for modelling the various aspects of the real-time properties of the GIS data The design aims to provide necessary real-time considerations for both observations and alert information to ensure all the data acquired from different domain providers can be processed together in a standardized and interoperability way The conceptual model includes 4 major parts: common information for observation and sensor direct observation derived observation and alert information By following the conceptual model users no longer need to create all kind of connectors to access different types of data We demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach by successfully mapping the real-time open data to the conceptual model Based on the designed elements in the standardized schema we further propose six different working modes for real-time applications namely latest available information mode valid information mode ideal information mode next update information mode historical information mode and alert information mode As every mode is designed according to the considerations of real-time data type and quality it can be directly used for smartly and automatically presenting only the datasets that are reliable and helpful for users’ decision making Following the defined modes we further propose a status-aware interface for visually presenting the various aspects of differences among the selected datasets The interface design is augmented with cartographic knowledge to enable users to visually distinguish data with different real-time properties and avoid wrong decision making In addition to the map interface analyzed outcomes are also presented with textual or widgets to provide additional guidance Map symbols are designed for showing data without calibration time differences to the current time observation values different data source and observation value From the perspective of showing the additional information for real-time data different visual aids are included: mode selection and filter time sequence diagram warning message box time statistic gauge indicator and map legend As real-time GIS applications often operate under extremely high time pressure the proposed standardized approach proves to be able to provide a feasible solution to improve the interoperability of sensor observations in real-time GIS applications Only after ensuring the necessary information for all the observations is available can we successfully take the best advantages of the abundant volume and a variety of domain observations in the internet-based exchange environment

Date of Award	2019
Original language	English
Supervisor	Jung-Hong Hong (Supervisor)