To begin I made an effort to record what journal articles I read and what I thought of them. Then I began to record my attendence at meetings workshops seminars and conferences. Then I began to record some of my browsing on the world wide web and I will consider blogging more as I find it faster, easier and more useful. Some of the advantages in doing this might not be immediately obvious. One thing that I hope will come out of it will be a more organised web of links in a more detailed exposition of my research interests . So, here follows an incomplete diary/blog/record of these work activities since January 2006. It is incomplete, so please forgive me for that. If you like I can explain the reasons why.
Wrote A definition of e-Social Science: Social Science using Grid Computing. A subset of e-Science. . - e-Social Science is also what I am trying to do albeit from a computational geography angle.
Read and browsed around the following Wikipedia pages: Social Science , Portal .
Browsed around The Institute for Fiscal Studies Web Site and had a close look at The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing - I was pointed to this by my colleague Justin Keen who works with me on The MoSeS Project .
Read and browsed around the following Wikipedia pages: Anarchy , Anarchism , Government , State , Law , Lawlessness . - There are multiple meanings of many terms, but it seems that the terms anarchy and anarchism are well defined and it seems a misusage of the term anarchy when disorganisation, chaos or lawlessness is meant. However it does get used in that way. This was related to a conversation with my colleagues Stuart Hodkinson and Paul Chatterton
Skim read Armstrong M.P., Cowles M.K., Wang S. (2005) Using a Computational Grid for Geographic Information Analysis: A Reconnaissance. Pages 355-375 . In The Professional Geographer Vol. 57 Issue 3 Page 339-494 . - Looks good! Read this in more detail...
Browsed contents of Accident Analysis & Prevention Volume 37, Issue 4, pages 591-806 . - Much here to come back to, but didn't spot any maps!
Skim read Hewson P.J. (2005) Epidemiology of child pedestrian casualty rates: Can we assume spatial independence? Pages 651-659 . In Accident Analysis & Prevention Volume 37, Issue 4, pages 591-806 . - More relevant to Richard Thompson ( David Clarke's PhD student).
Skim read Hewson P.J. (2005) A statistical profile of road accidents during cross-flow turns. Pages 721-730 . In Accident Analysis & Prevention Volume 37, Issue 4, pages 591-806 . - Read this in more detail. Reply to David Clarke's email.
Wrote a definition of humanosphere: The space-time region that humans influence. On Wikipedia:Humanosphere and Wiktionary:Humanosphere . - Not sure if I've ever seen the word before, but think it a useful term!
Read Moss, Scott and Edmonds, Bruce (2005). 'Towards Good Social Science'. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 8(4) - I agree with most of this. Another important aim for scientific simulation is for results to be easily replicable, not merely theoretically replicable. If there is some randomness implicit then this needs explicit capturing in provenance when a simulation is run so that the simulation can be run again to perform exactly the same. There are many benefits of doing this, and it is in some ways more important than making the source code of the program that performed the simulation available although I would argue that this is important too!
Browsed JASSS Volume 8, Issue 4 October, 2005 - Lots here to come back to!
Attended the Biosystems Reading Group - Discussion based on the following papers:
- How can simulation using Agent Based Models be made more scientific?
Attended the Ecology and Global Change Research Cluster meeting. A seminar given by Richard Law on Spatial Patterns and Inferences about Dynamics in Plant Communities - Illustrated an example of torus type distance weighting being useful. Interesting notions of pair and multiple densities. Often it is interesting when things appear in two's! Illustrated the Janzen-Connell hypothesis as described in Hyatt l.A., Rosenberg M.S., Howard T.G., Bole G., Fang W., Anastasia J., Brown K., Grella R., Hinman K., Kurdziel J.P. Gurevitch J., (2003) The distance dependence prediction of the Janzen-Connell hypothesis: a meta-analysis. OIKOS 103: 590-602. Described the use of inhomogenous K-function (as described here and here ) for work on cancer epidemiology by Diggle P.J. and colleagues. - All the talk of kernels, scales and distance was refreshing. To encourage further collaboration I emailed Richard and pointed him to work on GAM/K
Browsed from http://geobloggers.blogspot.com/ - Useful set of links.
Edited http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_flush - Adding links for hydrology and runoff.
Read Reitsma F., Albrecht J. (2005) Implementing a new data model for simulating process. International Journal of Geographical Informaiton Science Vol. 19, No. 10, November, pages 1073-1090. - Focuses on storing system state at each time step of a dynamic model. The method is prototyped with a watershed runoff simulation. Emailed the reference to The Multi Agent Systems and Simulation Research Interest Group and Brian Irvine .
Read Rushton G. (2004) Book Review of Spatial Epidemiology: Methods and Applications (2001) Edited by P. Elliot, J. Wakefield, N. Best, and D. Briggs (Oxford: Oxford University Press) ISBN 0-19-851532-4. International Journal of Geographical Informaiton Science Vol. 18, No. 6, September, pages 627-629. . - Elaboration the need for provenance data without actually calling it that. This is a useful reference for MoSeS work.
Read Albani M., Klinkenberg B., Andison D.W., Kimmins J.P. (2004) The choice of window size in approximating topographic surfaces from Digital Elevation Models. International Journal of Geographical Informaiton Science Vol. 18, No. 6, September, pages 577-593. DOI: 10.1080/13658810410001701987 - "Presents a general analytical method to estimate the propagation of elevation errors to the principal derived topographic variables (slope, aspect and surface curvatures) as calculated with the quadratic approximation method with variable evaluation window size of Wood (1996). It expands the work of Florinsky (1998b) to incorporate evaluation windows of sizes larger than 3x3, and considers spatially correlated elevation error." (Taken form the conclusion) Like the paper a lot! It has an excellent conclusion and is well referenced. Much of the referenced work should be looked at for GEOG5060 and Geomorphometrics work. Paper should be on the reading list for the GEOG5060 students. As should: Wood, J. D. (1996) The geomorphological characterisation of Digital Elevation Models. PhD thesis, University of Leicester.
Read Shortridge A.M. (2004) Geometric variability of raster cell class assignment. In International Journal of Geographical Information Science Vol. 18, No. 6, September, pages 539-558. DOI: 10.1080/13658810410001702012 - Reports a set of experiments concerning square celled rasterisation of vector data and variability of changing cell resolution and origin. The focus is on classified area data. I liked this paper! The rasterisations being considered were square celled, but the paper did not discuss rasters with a triangular/hexagonal cell structure. In relation to this, there was no discussion of rotational variance and the alignment of the cells on axes. It was especially pleasing to see the work of Steve Carver and Chris Brunsden referenced.
Browsed The CeLSIUS Website - That of the support team for academic users of the Office for National Statistics' Longitudinal Study The LS is something we are looking to use for MoSeS.
Read Rogerson, P. A. (2001) Monitoring point patterns for the development of space-time clusters. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (A), 164, pp. 87 - 96. - Adaption of cumulative sum methods for use with Knox's space-time statistic and application to Burkitt's lymphoma in Uganda. Contains a useful description and equations for a local version of the Knox test for space-time interactions. From the description this method is similar to that of GAMK-T of Stan Openshaw et al , which should have been referenced. It may be worth contacting the author and using this method in your PhD.
Browsed Applied Geography Volume 26, Issue 1 (January 2006) and Volume 25 (2005).
Skim read Atkinson D.M., Deadman P., Dudycha D., Traynor S (2005) Multi-criteria evaluation and least cost path analysis for an arctic all-weather road. - Looks good and has no reference to my colleague Steve Carver's work, so I pointed him to it.
Skim read Rocchini D., Di Rita A. (2005) Relief effects on aerial photos geometric correction. - Looks good and related to some work my colleague Erling Dalen is doing, so I pointed him to it.