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Thomas J. Lampoltshammer is a trained technician in the field of information and communication technologies. He received his diploma degree in Engineering from the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences as well as his MSc in Embedded and Intelligent Systems from Halmstad University in 2011. At the moment he is a PhD student at the Doctoral College GIScience, at the Department of Geoinformatics - Z_GIS, at the Paris-Lodron-University Salzburg. He is also currently working as a research associate at the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences (SUAS), where he received his diploma degree. He has a strong background in adaptive software systems, e-health and cloud technologies. In addition to that, he is well experienced in embedded systems and sensor networks. His main research activities regarding his PhD topic are in the field of the natural language control of data mining in geospatially referenced information. He is also involved in teaching at SUAS regarding undergraduate classes and tutorials in Software Engineering as well as supervising Bachelor and Master R&D projects.

Research Cluster: Spatialization, Media and Society

PhD Thesis Topic: Natural language control of geospatially referenced information for GIS

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Geoinformation systems (GIS) and geoinformation science (GI Science) are topics, which   have increasingly gained attention – not only in terms of emerging technologies, but also concerning research and education (BLASCHKE et al. 2011). As stated in the position paper by Craglia et al. (CRAGLIA 2008), the vision of Al Gore's Digital Earth is currently evolving towards new challenging research questions. At the particular time when Al Gore stated his vision, deep concerns were expressed considering the practicability of the vision due to limitations regarding, for instance, interoperability of systems.

Today, many of these former limitations have been overcome and various aspects of the Digital Earth are used by millions of users on a daily basis. In addition to that, the expectations of non-expert users regarding system capabilities are ever increasing and as a consequence, scientists have to provide even more sophisticated concepts and technologies for allocating reliable and openly accessible data. 

When dealing with the formulation of queries for databases or large knowledge bases, natural language-based queries are preferred by most users (POLLOCK&HOCKLEY 1997). As a consequence, natural language processing has become a key factor in many aspects of search interfaces, ranging from bio-surveillance for outbreak detection algorithms (CHAPMAN et al. 2010) to rule definition languages for data privacy (KURZ et al. 2012). Thus it has become possible to directly provide the flexibility and expressiveness of natural language to the end-users (HEARST 2011). This holds also true for the operating personnel of geoinformation systems, which play a key role as regards the processing of data in a GI system as defined by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS 2007). If the data is not a common GIS dataset, which can be processed by the system without the need of pre-processing – but embedded in textual descriptions – natural language processing techniques are required. 

Therefore, current research trends towards the use of natural language processing in geoinformation systems are prone to be explored and driven forward. 

References

• BLASCHKE, T.; Strobl, J.; Donert, K. (2011): Geographic Information Science: Building a Doctoral Programme Integrating Interdisciplinary Concepts and Methods. In: Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences (21), p. 139–146.

• CHAPMAN, W.W.; Gundlapalli, A.V.; South, B.R.; Dowling J.N. (2010): Natural Language Processing for Bio–surveillance. In: Castillo–Chavez, C.; Chen, H.; Lober, W.B.; Thurmond, M.; Zeng, D. (edts.), Infectious Disease Informatics and Biosurveillance, volume 27 of Integrated Series in Information Systems, p. 279–310. US:Springer.

• CRAGLIA, M.; Goodchild, M.F; Annoni, A.; Camara, G. (2008): Next–Generation Digital Earth. A position paper from the Vespucci Initiative for the Advancement of Geographic Information Science. In: International Journal of Spatial Data Infrastructures Research (3), p. 146–167.

• HEARST, M. A. (2011): ‘Natural’ search user interfaces. Communications of the ACM, 54(11): 60–67

• KURZ, T.; Rücker, C.; Lampoltshammer, T.J.; Heistracher, T. (2012): Privacy Rule Definition Language – A Multistakeholder Approach to ENDORSE Privacy. In Atkinson, K.M. (edt), Legal Knowledge and Information Systems, volume 235, p. 135–139. Ios Pr Inc.

• POLLOCK, A.; Hockley, A. (1997): What's wrong with Internet Searching. Available online: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march97/bt/03pollock.html, last access (27.03.2012).

• USGS Eastern Region PSC 4 (2007): Geographic Information Systems, Available online: http://egsc.usgs.gov/isb/pubs/gis_poster/, last access (27.03.2012).

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