SPECIAL FEATURE: The power of location

1. Overview

We rely on spatial information in our everyday lives to move, make decisions, manage undertakings, respond to events and improve our world. Hence it is fitting to bring together stakeholders involved with spatial information to celebrate the progress and build the vision for improving our world. The Locate conference, held annually, is the premier national spatial information conference and exhibition in Australia and New Zealand. The Locate series is a central meeting point of industry, government and academia to share knowledge and plan the future of one of the fastest-growing industries in Australia and New Zealand. The Research@Locate events are integrated in the Locate conferences and provide a forum to disseminate, share, discuss and build the research agenda and directions for spatial information. Selected researchers who presented at the Research@Locate event held in March 2015 in Brisbane were invited to extend their work for submission in this special feature of the Journal of Spatial Sciences (RL15 2015). The papers in this issue are the results of that process.

Location and movement are crucial to a wide range of decision-making situations across many applications. Not just knowing where one is located, but also how to get to another location becomes extremely important in, for example, a disaster situation when fleeing from rising flood waters. A diverse array of information and analysis of that data is necessary to make good decisions. For example, a vulnerable resident needs to know which shelter to go to in order to flee rising flood waters, and how best to get there. Information on roads and congestion becomes crucial, requiring high-quality road information in 3D. Even exploring the characteristics of driving behaviour, it can be argued, affects the times required to navigate the roads, which naturally will influence evacuation times in disaster scenarios. Further, understanding the effects of potential flood events on infrastructure such as buildings is important, not just at the point of time of disaster events, but also in preventative measures involving the approvals, designs and maintenance of buildings and other infrastructure. Given that some of the papers in this special feature apply in disaster event scenarios, this application is used as the focus to introduce the research.

2. The value of location information in the context of spatial events

Both timely and accurate information must be shared among different stakeholders in any event that takes place (Seppanen & Verrantaus 2015). This information, including location data, must be linked and integrated with other information in proximity of that location, in order to gain knowledge about events in the region, understand the situation and make decisions. In other words, much data and information linked together provides knowledge and intelligence for decision making (Veenendaal & West 2011). In the case of emergency events, situational awareness requires information for both those affected, as well those needing to respond to events in a timely manner. Such awareness makes it possible to make informed decisions when moving from location to location. In a disaster such as flooding, road networks and the navigation times along roads are important. The papers in this special feature address a range of aspects around roads and built infrastructure with applications that may include disaster management. The focus of these papers is on extracting accurate road information, navigating the road network to determine where to evacuate and better understanding driver behaviour as they circumvent the road network. A further paper considers building infrastructure and their potential susceptibility to a flood disaster event.

Events at a geographic location require the integration of much information about that location. This becomes especially apparent in events such as disasters where information is essential to response and recovery. Amirebrahimi et al. (2016) present a new data model that addresses the integration of building information models (BIM) with geographic information systems (GIS) to support the assessment of flood damage to buildings. In essence, the BIM provides information about a building, and the GIS determines the risk and extent of flooding; the information combined is used to assess and visualise the extent of damage to buildings. The value of having detailed information on a building combined with flood parameters assists decision-makers in assessing impacts on existing buildings or those proposed for construction.

With the immense volumes of image information being produced on a daily basis comes also the increasing need to extract important information and features from that imagery in order to make it useable and useful. Liu L. and Lim (2016) present a framework to extract road centrelines from airborne lidar data and aerial imagery. They utilise a range of clustering, refinement and curve-fitting techniques to extract 3D roads. They were able to successfully extract road centrelines with acceptable accuracy and completeness, not only in rural environments but also in the more challenging urban environments where roads have more complex shape and connection characteristics and may be overshadowed by trees and buildings.

When a disaster event occurs, it is important that residents in the disaster zone who are directly affected or potentially affected are evacuated to safety shelters promptly and efficiently. Issues arise as to the location of these shelters in proximity to residents, potential for congestion and evacuation times. Liu X. and Lim (2016) developed an evacuation simulation for the 2011 Brisbane flood event using spatial network analysis and an agent-based methodology. Their results identified a specific shelter and detailed a navigational route that minimised congestion for each vulnerable household. Their simulation showed that not all of the 3600 evacuees could reach the six existing shelters within 30 to 50 minutes, identifying the need for additional shelters and extending the modelling in further research.

Intelligent transport systems (ITS) are a good example of the diverse application domains that rely on the outcomes of spatial information research. Sun et al. (2016) presented a system to evaluate driver behaviour as a component of improving safety. This research defined a technical framework that integrated eye movement tracking, global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) and GIS. A prototype developed and based on this framework was shown to enable greater insight into behaviour assessment. The on-road driving test in this study also demonstrated a discriminant and ecologically valid approach in driving-behaviour assessment, which can be used in further studies.

3. Summary and some future directions

The research outlined in this special feature touches on a range of problems that are significant and which will lead to improved applications, better decision-making and more research. When considering events such as disaster management, the research efforts around improved accuracy of roads data, understanding navigation routing and behaviour, and linking to infrastructure information will all lead to better decision-making around preparedness and response.

However, this is only part of the bigger picture. Situational awareness in crisis situations goes beyond, considering all stakeholders, how they communicate and interact, the extent of influence of the event on other people and property, the trust in information and persons, and how all information, knowledge and semantics are captured in a collaborative and useable environment (Li et al. 2013; Seppanen et al. 2013). Without doubt, spatial science research will continue to be a valuable contribution to improving the world in which we live.

Bert Veenendaal
Department of Spatial Sciences, Curtin University, Perth, Australia
[email protected]
Allison Kealy
Department of Infrastructure Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Australia

Acknowledgements

The editors very much appreciate the efforts and patience of authors in preparing their manuscripts and responding to reviewer recommendations. As editors, we also thank the reviewers who put forward their time and effort to provide constructive feedback and recommendations to enhance the quality of the papers. The continuing support of ASIERA towards the Research@Locate conference series is gratefully acknowledged.