Web-based public participatory GIS

Decision support systems (DSS) have evolved rapidly during the last decade from stand alone or limited networked solutions to online participatory solutions. One of the major enablers of this change is the fastest growing areas of geographical information system (GIS) technology development that relates to the use of the Internet as a means to access, display, and analyze geospatial data remotely. World-wide many federal, state, and particularly local governments are designing to facilitate data sharing using interactive Internet map servers. This new generation DSS or planning support systems (PSS), interactive Internet map server, is the solution for delivering dynamic maps and GIS data and services via the world-wide Web, and providing public participatory GIS (PPGIS) opportunities to a wider community (Carver, 2001; Jankowski & Nyerges, 2001). It provides a highly scalable framework for GIS Web publishing, Web-based public participatory GIS (WPPGIS), which meets the needs of corporate intranets and demands of worldwide Internet access (Craig, 2002). The establishment of WPPGIS provides spatial data access through a support centre or a GIS portal to facilitate efficient access to and sharing of related geospatial data (Yigitcanlar, Baum, & Stimson, 2003). As more and more public and private entities adopt WPPGIS technology, the importance and complexity of facilitating geospatial data sharing is growing rapidly (Carver, 2003). Therefore, this article focuses on the online public participation dimension of the GIS technology. The article provides an overview of recent literature on GIS and WPPGIS, and includes a discussion on the potential use of these technologies in providing a democratic platform for the public in decision-making.

Students’ perceptions of a blended web-based learning environment

The enhanced accessibility, affordability and capability of the Internet has created enormous possibilities in terms of designing, developing and implementing innovative teaching methods in the classroom. As existing pedagogies are revamped and new ones are added, there is a need to assess the effectiveness of these approaches from the students’ perspective. For more than three decades, proven qualitative and quantitative research methods associated with learning environments research have yielded productive results for educators. This article presents the findings of a study in which Getsmart, a teacher-designed website, was blended into science and physics lessons at an Australian high school. Students’ perceptions of this environment were investigated, together with differences in the perceptions of students in junior and senior years of schooling. The article also explores the impact of teachers in such an environment. The investigation undertaken in this study also gave an indication of how effective Getsmart was as a teaching model in such environments.

The potential for a web based intervention to improve young adult passenger safety

Young drivers aged 17-24 are consistently overrepresented in motor vehicle crashes. Research has shown that a young driver’s crash risk increases when carrying similarly aged passengers, with fatal crash risk increasing two to three fold with two or more passengers. Recent growth in access to and use of the internet has led to a corresponding increase in the number of web based behaviour change interventions. An increasing body of literature describes the evaluation of web based programs targeting risk behaviours and health issues. Evaluations have shown promise for such strategies with evidence for positive changes in knowledge, attitudes and behaviour. The growing popularity of web based programs is due in part to their wide accessibility, ability for personalised tailoring of intervention messages, and self-direction and pacing of online content. Young people are also highly receptive to the internet and the interactive elements of online programs are particularly attractive. The current study was designed to assess the feasibility for a web based intervention to increase the use of personal and peer protective strategies among young adult passengers. An extensive review was conducted on the development and evaluation of web based programs. Year 12 students were also surveyed about their use of the internet in general and for health and road safety information. All students reported internet access at home or at school, and 74% had searched for road safety information. Additional findings have shown promise for the development of a web based passenger safety program for young adults. Design and methodological issues will be discussed.

Web-based and traditional public participation in comprehensive planning : a comparative study

The present paper examines whether the potential advantages of the expanding practice of web-based public participation only complement the benefits of the traditional techniques, or are empowering enough to replace them. The question is examined in a real-world case of neighbourhood revitalization, in which both techniques were practiced simultaneously. Comparisons are made at four major planning junctions, in order to study the contributions of each technique to the qualities of involvement, trust, and empowerment. The results show that web-based participants not only differ from the participants of traditional practices, but they also differ from each other on the basis of their type of web participation. The results indicate that web-based participation is an effective and affective complementary means of public participation, but it cannot replace the traditional unmediated techniques.

Improved power sharing among distributed generators using web based communication

This paper investigates the possibility of power sharing improvements amongst distributed generators with low cost, low bandwidth communications. Decentralized power sharing or power management can be improved significantly with low bandwidth communication. Utility intranet or a dedicated web based communication can serve the purpose. The effect of network parameter such line impedance, R/X ratio on decentralized power sharing can be compensated with correction in the decentralized control reference quantities through the low bandwidth communication. In this paper, the possible improvement is demonstrated in weak system condition, where the micro sources and the loads are not symmetrical along the rural microgrid with high R/X ratio line, creates challenge for decentralized control. In those cases the web based low bandwidth communication is economic and justified than costly advance high bandwidth communication.

Trust and reputation management in web-based social network

know personally. They also communicate with other members of the network who are the friends of their friends and may be friends of their friend’s network. They share their experiences and opinions within the social network about an item which may be a product or service. The user faces the problem of evaluating trust in a service or service provider before making a choice. Opinions, reputations and ecommendations will influence users' choice and usage of online resources. Recommendations may be received through a chain of friends of friends, so the problem for the user is to be able to evaluate various types of trust recommendations and reputations. This opinion or ecommendation has a great influence to choose to use or enjoy the item by the other user of the community. Users share information on the level of trust they explicitly assign to other users. This trust can be used to determine while taking decision based on any recommendation. In case of the absence of direct connection of the recommender user, propagated trust could be useful.

Measuring transit service reliability using data from web-based transit user survey : a case study at Brisbane, Australia

This paper reports an empirical study on measuring transit service reliability using the data from a Web-based passenger survey on a major transit corridor in Brisbane, Australia. After an introduction of transit service reliability measures, the paper presents the results from the case study including study area, data collection, and reliability measures obtained. This includes data exploration of boarding/arrival lateness, in-vehicle time variation, waiting time variation, and headway adherence. Impacts of peak-period effects and separate operation on service reliability are examined. Relationships between transit service characteristics and passenger waiting time are also discussed. A summary of key findings and an agenda of future research are offered in conclusions.

GPFlow: an intuitive environment for web-based scientific workflow

Increasingly scientists are using collections of software tools in their research. These tools are typically used in concert, often necessitating laborious and error-prone manual data reformatting and transfer. We present an intuitive workflow environment to support scientists with their research. The workflow, GPFlow, wraps legacy tools, presenting a high level, interactive web-based front end to scientists. The workflow backend is realized by a commercial grade workflow engine (Windows Workflow Foundation). The workflow model is inspired by spreadsheets and is novel in its support for an intuitive method of interaction enabling experimentation as required by many scientists, e.g. bioinformaticians. We apply GPFlow to two bioinformatics experiments and demonstrate its flexibility and simplicity.

Approximate Membership Localization within a Web-Based Join Framework

In this paper, we propose a search-based approach to join two tables in the absence of clean join attributes. Non-structured documents from the web are used to express the correlations between a given query and a reference list. To implement this approach, a major challenge we meet is how to efficiently determine the number of times and the locations of each clean reference from the reference list that is approximately mentioned in the retrieved documents. We formalize the Approximate Membership Localization (AML) problem and propose an efficient partial pruning algorithm to solve it. A study using real-word data sets demonstrates the effectiveness of our search-based approach, and the efficiency of our AML algorithm.

Re-thinking physics teaching with web-based learning

There is extensive uptake of ICT in the teaching of science but more evidence is needed on how ICT impacts on the learning practice and the learning outcomes at the classroom level. In this study, a physics website (Getsmart) was developed using the cognitive apprenticeship framework for students at a high school in Australia. This website was designed to enhance students’ knowledge of concepts in physics. Reflexive pedagogies were used in the delivery learning materials in a blended learning environment. The students in the treatment group accessed the website over a 10 week period. Pre and post-test results of the treatment (N= 48) and comparison group (N=32) were compared. The MANCOVA analysis showed that the web-based learning experience benefited the students in the treatment group. It not only impacted on the learning outcomes, but qualitative data from the students suggested that it had a positive impact on their attitudes towards studying physics in a blended environment.

Investigating higher education and secondary school web-based learning environments using the WEBLEI

Classroom learning environments are rapidly changing as new digital technologies become more education-friendly. What are students’ perceptions of their technology-rich learning environments? This question is critical as it may have an impact on the effectiveness of the new technologies in classrooms. There are numerous reliable and valid learning environment instruments which have been used to ascertain students’ perceptions of their learning environments. This chapter focuses on one of these instruments, the Web-based Learning Environment Instrument (WEBLEI) (Chang & Fisher, 2003). Since its initial development, this instrument has been used to study a range of learning environments and this chapter presents the findings of two example case-studies that involve such environments.

The internal validity of web-based studies

Honing and Ladinig (2008) make the assertion that while the internal validity of web-based studies may be reduced, this is offset by an increase in external validity possible when experimenters can sample a wider range of participants and experimental settings. In this paper, the issue of internal validity is more closely examined, and it is agued that there is no necessary reason why internal validity of a web-based study should be worse than that of a lab-based one. Errors of measurement or inconsistencies of manipulation will typically balance across conditions of the experiment, and thus need not necessarily threaten the validity of a study’s findings.