I completely forgot to publish the result of my in-depth project which I worked on (fairly extensive?) the autumn 2008. I remembered to put it out on our “student blog“, however it slipped my mind to put it here, until Atle “remembered me” by publishing his. In the spirit of sharing the work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (CC-BY) – and I really, really hope that someone will exploit this license and build upon my work – the topic needs sorely derivative work! My master thesis is a based on the ideas in the work from this project, although shifting the perspective somewhat.

Disclaimer; In retrospect I find that the project have some lacks, especially missing a comprehensive background section and in general the language isn’t that good. However I do believe the general idea has potential! (the grade is still to be decided but will be made available) The grade was finally decided after I complained – and stayed at a B (standard ECTS).

The digital version of my project is available here; MAPQUAL: Understanding Quality in Cartographic Maps . If not – mail me!

Abstract
The science of cartography is currently undergoing a change with the
demand for more ubiquitous, context sensitive and dynamic maps. As well
as an increase in the number of cartographic application in the society is
recognized – mostly due to the rapid technological development. Combined,
this pose for a need to understand the quality of maps. Preferably motivated
by the science and not developed as a response to technological development.
In a response to this we approach cartographic maps as conceptual mod-
els and investigates the adaptation of a framework for understanding quality
in conceptual models, SEQUAL (Krogstie and Sølvberg 2003, Lillehagen and
Krogstie 2008), into a cartographic context. SEQUAL is based on semiotic
theory and takes a set theoretic approach to investigating quality facets
of conceptual models. We follow the same structure of SEQUAL in the
investigation and adaptation.
During the investigation we find that many of the foundational principles
of conceptual modeling are relevant and applicable in cartography. Some
principles are already existing in cartography. However these currently lack
structure and are often proposed in isolation. We survey the main principles
of understanding quality in cartography and adapt them to the structure of
the framework.
The result of the investigation is a proposal of a framework for under-
standing quality of maps, named MAPQUAL. We find that this approach
is requiring a shift of notion in cartography. Especially we propose that the
language the map is composed in is seperated from the map itself, enabling
for better understanding of maps.
An illustrative evaluation of the framework is performed and discussed
at the end of the paper. Mainly to illustrate main benefits and principles
of the framework but also to briefly investigate if the framework captures
current cartographic understanding of quality.
The framework proposed is an initial step into understanding quality of
maps and is thus not considered to be complete. We mention throughout
the article elements that need further work and sum up what we believe is
the most important aspects of further work at the end of the paper.

It came to my attention that Amnesty International Norway (a bit contradictory name..) have a freedom of speech day, namely today. Several of the blogs that I frequently read have posted some thoughts on the topic – so I thought I would set of and both think and write some on the topic.

Freedom of speech is probably one of the foundational human rights that we have, at least in the western world. The internet as we know it is based on this – everyone can say whatever they want and reach out to everyone else. However that is somewhat misleading. Cencoring of the internet is sadly an increasing trend. Governments, ISPs and even small scale businesses cencor pages. Although most of us agree that some pages on the web should be taken away it is not that easy to decide who should take this decision – is it the majority, the elected government, the unelected government – or is it someone else.

The Pirate bay (spec)trial is raging in the news – everyone has an opinion, and everyone should be entitled to one – but are they? Are everyone entitled to externalize and publish their thoughts? Well, the plain answer is, sadly, no. Why? Well, fear is probably the most common reason, secondly greed. Fear that someone may get information that you hold secret. Secondly a desire to have at least what you have, or preferably even more of what you have.

A bit on the philosophical lane there – anyway. I support strongly the freedom of speech – but also the freedom to choose! If someone utter something I don not want to hear, then I would like to have the freedom of choosing not to hear them – however I would like to have the possibility.

End up in having the feeling that I haven’t covered anything in this post, but probably some of my thoughts on freedom of speech is captured here:)

In my master thesis, one important attribute is the temporal nearness of concepts in the domain, such as moving persons and equipment. Special concerns for the case is that the geography is indoors in potentially complex buildings, such as large hospitals. The geography is considered to be known to the actors – assuming that the persons know where they are, where they are headed to and how to get there. This may argue that a floor map depicting where you are, your target and fastest route there is unnecessary – and I agree. However what may be of interest is to get information on how far away you are from your interest points and how far your interest points are from each other. For instance if you are 15 minutes away from your office, you have planned to meet your colleague there at 15 minutes, but your colleague is 20 minutes away. Provided by this information is 5 minutes that you can finish what you are doing, walk to your office, and still meet your colleague in time! (pretty lame example I know – working on my exemplifying skills:). Anyhow, the driving information is thus the temporal nearness. This is highly dependant on the geography in the context and it’s navigational abilities. Building generally has rooms with doors and corridors which in turns comprise and constrains the ability to move in that space (i.e. walking). My attempt at finding the temporal nearness comprise a spatial model of such a geography, a data structure for navigational abilities, implementation of this model in a spatial database (PostGIS) and calculation of the temporal nearness based on this. This blog post tries to explain just this. I plan to post a separate post on how to manage the data for this model - so watch out:)

Spatial model and data structure for indoor temporal nearness

Figure1: Spatial model and data structure