IR: Knowledge Creation, Knowledge Management and Knowledge Dissemination

Open access iiiovemerit and open source software movement plays an important role in creation of knowledge, knowledge management and knowledge dissemination. Scholarly communication and publishing are increasingly taking place in the electronic environment. With a growing proportion of the scholarly record now existing only in digital format, serious issues regarding access and preservation are being raised that are central to future scholarship. Institutional Repositories provide access to past. present and future scholarly literature and research documentation; ensures its preservation; assists users in discovery and use; and offers educational programs to enable users to develop lifelong literacy. This paper explores these aspects on how IR of Cochin University of Science & Technology supports scientific community for knowledge creation. knowledge Management, and knowledge dissemination.

Assessing the users’ need for a spatial decision support system of smallholder farming in Kenya

Accurate data of the natural conditions and agricultural systems with a good spatial resolution are a key factor to tackle food insecurity in developing countries. A broad variety of approaches exists to achieve precise data and information about agriculture. One system, especially developed for smallholder agriculture in East Africa, is the Farm Management Handbook of Kenya. It was first published in 1982/83 and fully revised in 2012, now containing 7 volumes. The handbooks contain detailed information on climate, soils, suitable crops and soil care based on scientific research results of the last 30 years. The density of facts leads to time consuming extraction of all necessary information. In this study we analyse the user needs and necessary components of a system for decision support for smallholder farming in Kenya based on a geographical information system (GIS). Required data sources were identified, as well as essential functions of the system. We analysed the results of our survey conducted in 2012 and early 2013 among agricultural officers. The monitoring of user needs and the problem of non-adaptability of an agricultural information system on the level of extension officers in Kenya are the central objectives. The outcomes of the survey suggest the establishment of a decision support tool based on already available open source GIS components. The system should include functionalities to show general information for a specific location and should provide precise recommendations about suitable crops and management options to support agricultural guidance on farm level.

Interface issues in the ESCHER visual database editor

Presentation at the 1997 Dagstuhl Seminar "Evaluation of Multimedia Information Retrieval", Norbert Fuhr, Keith van Rijsbergen, Alan F. Smeaton (eds.), Dagstuhl Seminar Report 175, 14.04. - 18.04.97 (9716). - Abstract: This presentation will introduce ESCHER, a database editor which supports visualization in non-standard applications in engineering, science, tourism and the entertainment industry. It was originally based on the extended nested relational data model and is currently extended to include object-relational properties like inheritance, object types, integrity constraints and methods. It serves as a research platform into areas such as multimedia and visual information systems, QBE-like queries, computer-supported concurrent work (CSCW) and novel storage techniques. In its role as a Visual Information System, a database editor must support browsing and navigation. ESCHER provides this access to data by means of so called fingers. They generalize the cursor paradigm in graphical and text editors. On the graphical display, a finger is reflected by a colored area which corresponds to the object a finger is currently pointing at. In a table more than one finger may point to objects, one of which is the active finger and is used for navigating through the table. The talk will mostly concentrate on giving examples for this type of navigation and will discuss some of the architectural needs for fast object traversal and display. ESCHER is available as public domain software from our ftp site in Kassel. The portable C source can be easily compiled for any machine running UNIX and OSF/Motif, in particular our working environments IBM RS/6000 and Intel-based LINUX systems. A porting to Tcl/Tk is under way.

Using Analogy to Acquire Commonsense Knowledge from Human Contributors

The goal of the work reported here is to capture the commonsense knowledge of non-expert human contributors. Achieving this goal will enable more intelligent human-computer interfaces and pave the way for computers to reason about our world. In the domain of natural language processing, it will provide the world knowledge much needed for semantic processing of natural language. To acquire knowledge from contributors not trained in knowledge engineering, I take the following four steps: (i) develop a knowledge representation (KR) model for simple assertions in natural language, (ii) introduce cumulative analogy, a class of nearest-neighbor based analogical reasoning algorithms over this representation, (iii) argue that cumulative analogy is well suited for knowledge acquisition (KA) based on a theoretical analysis of effectiveness of KA with this approach, and (iv) test the KR model and the effectiveness of the cumulative analogy algorithms empirically. To investigate effectiveness of cumulative analogy for KA empirically, Learner, an open source system for KA by cumulative analogy has been implemented, deployed, and evaluated. (The site "1001 Questions," is available at http://teach-computers.org/learner.html). Learner acquires assertion-level knowledge by constructing shallow semantic analogies between a KA topic and its nearest neighbors and posing these analogies as natural language questions to human contributors. Suppose, for example, that based on the knowledge about "newspapers" already present in the knowledge base, Learner judges "newspaper" to be similar to "book" and "magazine." Further suppose that assertions "books contain information" and "magazines contain information" are also already in the knowledge base. Then Learner will use cumulative analogy from the similar topics to ask humans whether "newspapers contain information." Because similarity between topics is computed based on what is already known about them, Learner exhibits bootstrapping behavior --- the quality of its questions improves as it gathers more knowledge. By summing evidence for and against posing any given question, Learner also exhibits noise tolerance, limiting the effect of incorrect similarities. The KA power of shallow semantic analogy from nearest neighbors is one of the main findings of this thesis. I perform an analysis of commonsense knowledge collected by another research effort that did not rely on analogical reasoning and demonstrate that indeed there is sufficient amount of correlation in the knowledge base to motivate using cumulative analogy from nearest neighbors as a KA method. Empirically, evaluating the percentages of questions answered affirmatively, negatively and judged to be nonsensical in the cumulative analogy case compares favorably with the baseline, no-similarity case that relies on random objects rather than nearest neighbors. Of the questions generated by cumulative analogy, contributors answered 45% affirmatively, 28% negatively and marked 13% as nonsensical; in the control, no-similarity case 8% of questions were answered affirmatively, 60% negatively and 26% were marked as nonsensical.

Introducción al software libre en general y a los SIG libres en particular

En este documento se analizan los conceptos clave relacionados con el software libre: ¿qué es el software libre? ¿qué es el software propietario? ¿qué es el software gratuito? ¿qué es una licencia copyleft? A continuación se muestra cómo las aplicaciones horizontales libres se desarrollan de forma distinta a las verticales libres, entre las que se encuentran los SIG. Seguidamente se detallan las características de los sistemas SIG, centrándose en los SIG libres. El hecho de ser una aplicación vertical condiciona y explica buena parte de las particularidades de los SIG libres. Estas particularidades se analizan a partir de impresiones de profesionales de los SIG. Todo ello lleva a la conclusión que los SIG libres no pueden depender sólo de una comunidad de desarrolladores y necesitan un respaldo económico importante

gvSIG: la aplicación integral para el manejo de información geográfica

gvSIG es probablemente el proyecto relacionado con la información geográfica que más ha dado que hablar desde su aparición, en el año 2004, habiéndose convertido en un referente dentro de los SIG, tanto libres como propietarios, y alcanzando una gran difusión en diversos países. gvSIG es un proyecto que persigue convertirse en una aplicación integradora, unificando mundos como el del CAD y el SIG, el SIG vectorial y el SIG raster, integrando el trabajo en el local con las Intraestructuras de Datos Espaciales, las dos dimensiones con el 3D y el 4D, ... y en definitiva construyendo una herramienta que pueda dar servicio al amplio abanico de usuarios de la información geográfica

gvSIG: Sistema de Información Geográfica en Software Libre de la Generalitat Valenciana

Presentació del projecte gvSIG, el sistema d'informació geogràfica en software lliure aplicat a la Generalitat Valenciana

Software libre y sistemas de información geográfica: conceptos, definiciones y aspectos legales

This article covers some of the principal legal aspects of free and open software applied to Geographic Information Systems. Starting out form basic concepts in FOSS licensing, it aims to deal with questions such as "who is responsible for FOSS projects'", "how are they developed?", "who is the owner of the software?" and discusses the legal issues and problems that may arise during the course of creating, distributing or deploying a FOSS-based GIS

SIGUA: SIG libre para la gestión del suelo de la Universidad de Alicante

In 1997 beginning a project (SIGUA) to know and to manage the patrimony of the University of Alicante (UA). It required to know the use the space and its occupation. In his almost 10 years on watch, SIGUA has happened to be a SIG designed with commercial tools to an Integral System of Management of the Space, totally customized, graft and integrated of natural form in the functional structure of the UA. (...)

Wikiloc: software libre y APIs de Google Maps para visualizar y compartir rutas GPS

Wikiloc es un servicio web gratuito para visualizar y compartir rutas y puntos de interés GPS. Utilizando software libre y la API de Google Maps, Wikiloc hace la función de base de datos personal de localizaciones GPS. Desde cualquier acceso a Internet un usuario de GPS puede cargar sus datos GPS y al momento visualizar la ruta y waypoints con distinta cartografía de fondo, incluidos servidores de mapas externos WMS (Web Map Service) o descargarlo a Google Earth para ver en 3D. Paralelamente se muestra el perfil de altura, distancia, desniveles acumulados y las fotos o comentarios que el usuario quiera añadir

Las Herramientas SIG Libre en la investigación histórica

On last years we have seen an increase on the use of GIS technologies as analysis tools on the field of historical research. The study of landscape, and how it has influenced the development of History is a focal point of research fields like archaeology and battlefield analysis, and we are seeing nowadays how its use is spreading. (...)

Migración a SIG libre del catálogo de caminos rurales y pistas forestales de Extremadura

Según establece la Ley 12/20001 de 15 de noviembre, de Caminos Públicos de Extremadura, se establece que los titulares de los caminos públicos de Extremadura deben tener un catálogo de caminos y demás bienes inmuebles que integran el dominio público viario. En el año 2002 se adjudica a FOMEX la ejecución de la asistencia para la creación del catálogo. (...)

LiDAR data filtering with GRASS GIS for the determination of digital terrain models

In the last years, the use of every type of Digital Elevation Models has iimproved. The LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) technology, based on the scansion of the territory b airborne laser telemeters, allows the construction of digital Surface Models (DSM), in an easy way by a simple data interpolation

Desarrollo de una herramienta de código abierto para la gestión de espacios en la universidad

Este trabajo es consecuencia directa de la constante preocupación del Laboratorio del Territorio por alcanzar un planteamiento racional en la utilización de estructuras y servicios en grandes organizaciones, como demuestran otros trabajos enmarcados dentro de sus líneas de trabajo básicas de ordencación del territorio y desarrollo rural

wxGRASS: una interfaz gráfica de usuario para la integración de diversos programas libres para SIG

This paper presents a Graphical User Interface, developed with python and the graphic library wxpython, to GRASS GIS. This GUI allows to access several modules with a graphic interface written in Spanish. Its main purpouse is to be a teaching tool, that is the reason way it only allows to access several basic put crucial moludes. It also allows user to organize the elements presented to stress the aspects to be resalted in a particular working sesion with the program