Covid-19: Effects of spatial propagation and connectivity on the global variability of excess mortality

Suggested by: Christian Neuwirth (Z_GIS – Spatial Simulation)

Source: The Economist

 

Short description:

Covid-19 is the first digitally documented pandemic in history, presenting a unique opportunity to learn how to best deal with similar crises in the future.

The large global variability in cumulative excess mortality indicates that countries were not equally successful in handling covid-19 outbreaks. Empirical investigations showed that predictors like population age, gross domestic product, quality of the healthcare system or availability of vaccination have an impact on national or regional excess mortality. In contrast to those variables, the spatial propagation of the pathogen, network-dependent arrival time as well as patterns of network connectivity were rarely considered.

The aim of this work is to derive global indicators of spatial disease propagation such as arrival time and connectivity as potential predictors of varying excess mortality. The method may by based on network-driven contagion analysis as proposed by Brockmann et al. (2013). The required data is freely available through the Flight Radar API.

References/Suggested reading:

• Brockmann, D., Helbing, D., 2013. The hidden geometry of complex, network-driven contagion phenomena. science 342, 1337–1342.

Start: ASAP


Prerequisites/qualifications: Interest in spatial statistics and/or spatial simulation, basic knowledge of R or Python


Please contact Christian Neuwirth in case of interest: christian.neuwirth@plus.ac.at

Visualizing Places

Suggested by: Franz-Benjamin Mocnik

Keywords: places, cartography, user testing

Objective: Developing and comparing different cartographic means to display places on a map.

Short description: 

When talking about spatial (and sometimes also non-spatial) entities, we refer to places.  Enschede, the ITC, shopping areas, and our homes are examples of such places for which objective descriptions are often hard to find.  In these cases, the spatial boundaries are usually unclear, and people have different understandings of what constitutes these places.  Independent of this fact, we are able to successfully refer to places in our everyday language, and we use them to conceptualize our environment.  It is, however, still unclear how places can be represented by formal means and visually be conveyed.

The proposed thesis topic seeks to explore opportunities of visually conveying places.  Aalbers (2014) has discussed several examples of maps that were influenced by and have influenced existing geographies.  The maps named by him, however, make only use of simple cartographic means.  Mocnik and Fairbairn (2018) have explored further ways of how to adapt maps in order to convey more idiosynchratic content.  As part of the thesis project, characteristics of places need to be discussed, as well as corresponding visual properties.  This includes the spatial extent of places, emotional attachments, place types, the identity of places, and various types of relations between places.  When representing such a characteristics of a place on the map, particular attention shall be paid to correspondences between the places and their visual counterparts in terms of affordances, structural referencing, and further means to create analogies.  The different ways of representing places shall be compared by user testing, including eyetracking, interviews, and screen logging.

Literature references: 

• MB Aalbers: Do Maps Make Geography? Part 1: Redlining, Planned Shrinkage, and the Places of Decline. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 13(4), 2014, 525–556
• FB Mocnik and D Fairbairn: Maps Telling Stories? The Cartographic Journal 55(1), 2018, 36–57

Start: anytime

Maps Telling Stories

Suggested by: Franz-Benjamin Mocnik

Keywords: storytelling, cartography, user testing

Objective: Implementing and testing modifications to existing cartographic means with respect to their ability to tell stories.

Short description:

Stories often convey emotions, and they convey a narrative that make us understand how it would be to be in the position of the protagonist.  By providing a description of an idiosynchratic experience, stories are more than a formal representation of shared conceptualizations of what happens.  This is in contrast to cartographic representations, which in many cases aim to provide an ‘objective’ view of our environment.  If a story shall be convey by a map, other media are usually included.  For instance, multimedia maps can convey stories by adding pictures, videos, and audio recordings.

Mocnik and Fairbairn (2018) have explored novel ways of how to adapt maps in order to make them more text-alike in their structure, thus hoping for being able to convey stories in more engaging and idosynchratic ways.  This thesis project aims at implementing and testing the proposed and similar cartographic means.  For implementing the cartographic means, either the rendering of maps would need to be adapted, or the depiction of prerendered map tiles would be extended by additional elements using Leaflet, D3.js, and similar technologies.  Then, a story would be chosen and visualized by utilizing the implemented cartographic means.  Finally, the produced visualization would be compared to a textual one.  By making use of suitable techniques, inlcuding eyetracking, interviews, and audio recordings, both the implemented visualization and the textual representation will be evaluated in terms of how well they are able to convey emotions and idiosynchratic views.

Literature references: 

•  FB Mocnik and D Fairbairn: Maps Telling Stories? The Cartographic Journal 55(1), 2018, 36–57

Start: anytime

Dimension of Geographical Networks

Suggested by: Franz-Benjamin Mocnik

Keywords: spatial networks, dimension, street network, OpenStreetMap

Objective: Developing and implementing algorithms for detecting subnetworks the local network dimension of which is homogeneous.

Short description:

Networks occur virtually everywhere. The World-Wide Web, metabolic networks, and communciation networks are typical examples.  Also in Geography, such networks occur.  Mocnik (2018a) has examined the degree of influence space has on such networks.  He showed, for instance, that transport and road networks, as well as social networks to a lesser degree, are influenced by space.  Further more, the dimension of the space has a strong impact on the topological structure of such a network, which is why a dimension can be assigned to a network.  Besides exposing very similar qualities, street networks in cities are very similar with respect to their dimensionality (Mocnik 2018b).  In order to model such networks, Mocnik (2015a, 2015b) has proposed a spatial network model.

This thesis aims to develop strategies in order to identify subnetworks that expose a similar dimension in every neighbourhood.  That is, a network that is homogeneous and is thus similar to the spatial network model proposed.  Such networks naturally arise as has been discussed at the example of street networks in cities (Mocnik 2018b), and at the example of road networks as multi-layered networks (Mocnik 2018a).  The thesis will pay particular attention to the example of street networks, which can be extracted from the OpenStreetMap dataset, an open and freely available dataset.  As a result of this thesis, it will be tested whether such homogeneous subnetworks have a geographical relevance and can/should be considered to be geographical entities?  Would such an algorithm, for instance, be able to identify cities by their network dimension?

Literature references: 

• FB Mocnik (2018a): The Polynomial Volume Law of Complex Networks in the Context of Local and Global Optimization. Scientific Reports 8(11274), 2018
• FB Mocnik (2018b): Dimension as an Invariant of Street Networks. Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Complex Networks and Their Applications, 2018, 455–457
• FB Mocnik (2015a): A Scale-Invariant Spatial Graph Model. PhD Thesis. Vienna University of Technology, 2015
• FB Mocnik, AU Frank (2015b): Modelling Spatial Structures. Proceedings of the 12th Conference on Spatial Information Theory (COSIT), 2015, 44–64
  

Start: anytime

Prerequisites / qualifications: This topic requires some previous knowledge in network science and a good understanding of algorithms.

Trajectory analysis

suggested by: Gudrun Wallentin

Background 

This spatial data science project works with a large GPS dataset of >60,000 cattle locations that were collected over four years on a pasture close to Salzburg. The data is modelled in a postgres database. However, before it can be used for analysis it needs to be pre-processed, checked for validity, and complemented with further relevant variables.

Short description

This thesis aims to analyse social movement of cattle on a pasture by means of the MovingPandas python library, developed by Anita Graser. The main analytical focus is to evaluate, how separate trajectories related to each other. Beyond the analysis of interaction, the cattle's location shall be correlated with potential predictors like time of the day, elevation, land cover, weather, vegetation intensity, proximity to water, or the seasonal state.

 

Suggested reading

MovingPandas repository: https://anitagraser.github.io/movingpandas/ 

Start

anytime

Prerequsites/qualification
Interest in the topic. On-site involvement in the revitalisation activities isn't necessary, but possible and highly welcome.

Spatial ABMs

 suggested by: Gudrun Wallentin 

Background
Although agent-based modelling per definition is spatially explicit, the inherent potential of spatial concepts has not been fully exploited. Usually the modelled system is represented by individual agents that are related by circular buffers, rather than by more realistic spatial representations of interaction areas like vision cones or viewsheds in heterogeneous environments.

Short description

This rather conceptual thesis takes a systematic look into the question how spatial configuration structures a system. It analyses whether and how the explicit consideration of space impacts typical emergent phenomena like flocking of social animals or oscillations in populations.

Suggested reading

Manson, S., An, L., Clarke, K. C., Heppenstall, A., Koch, J., Krzyzanowski, B., ... & Tesfatsion, L. (2020). Methodological issues of spatial agent-based models. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 23(1).

Wallentin, G. (2024) Spatial Simulation eBook, Lessons 7 "Agent-based Modelling" and 8 "Movement"

Start

anytime

Prerequsites/qualification
Interest in the topic. Successful completion of the course "Spatial Simulation" is recommended.

Virtual pasture ABM

suggested by: Gudrun Wallentin

Background 

This research accompanies the revitalisation of a traditional alpine cattle pasture “Vierkaseralm” on Untersberg near Salzburg City. The study area was abandoned by the last farmer in 1958, since then shrubs (mainly Pinus mugo) have encroached the former grasslands. In summer 2021 the pasture was revived, the cattle got GPS devices and the area was scanned with a UAV. The data that have been collected in the past four years provide a unique opportunity for scientific monitoring of pasture revitalisation.

Short description

This thesis aims to apply an existing agent-based model of cattle-grassland interaction to the Vierkaseralm. The model will be calibrated with the existing GPS data of the cattle and other available datasets in a pattern-oriented modelling approach, using data-driven optimisation paradigms such as genetic algorithms. The 2024 data will be used for model validation and to evaluate the approach.

 

Suggested reading

Wallentin (2024) "Spatial Simulation" eBook

Start

anytime

Prerequsites/qualification
Interest in the topic. On-site involvement in the revitalisation activities is possible and highly welcome.