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Geo-Analytic Functions for UN Field Operations – UN Open GIS: Spiral 3 Geo-Analysis

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Geo-Analytic Functions for UN Field Operations – UN Open GIS: Spiral 3 Geo-Analysis
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As the United Nations (UN) is a complex organization carrying out divers tasks in the world, most functions for an enterprise GIS are required. In order to support the requirements from the UN, the UN Open GIS Initiative was founded in 2016 with goals to provide GIS solutions for the UN based on open source software. The working group 3 of the initiative, named Spiral 3, aims to develop and deliver geo-analytic functions to the UN. In particular, a number of geo-analytic functions are developed by Spiral 3 to support field operations such as UN peace keeping operation. In this paper, we present a development use-case of geo-analytic functions for the UN, which is composed of four steps; analysis of requirements and functional specification, definition of development environment and system architecture, system development and test, and documentation of user manual and education materials. First, a comprehensive study on UN operations has been carried out, which covers the following tasks; situational awareness, security operations, military operations, protection of civilians, human rights violation investigation, epidemiological analysis, mission’s support and logistics operations, electoral support, disarmament, demobilizations and reintegration program, and humanitarian response operations. From this study, we derived 26 primitive geo-analytic functions. The users of geo-analytic functions for these tasks include mostly officers at field offices and geo-analysis experts at mission headquarters. Second, the system development environment was determined as Java using GeoTools for the compatibility and portability. The geo-analytic functions were developed as a plug-in of uDig, which is a Java-based open source desktop GIS. It means that the preparation and pre-processing of data for geo-analysis and the visualization of the analysis are supported by uDig. Third, an experiment of the developed system was performed with a scenario of Ebola virus spread. It shows that the system properly supports the field operations of Ebola virus spread. The experiment also shows the strength and weakness of the developed geo-analysis functions in comparison with commercial GIS. As the fourth step of the development, a user-manual is published via web and an education material was also developed under the OSGeo-UN Committee Educational Challenge Program. Through the use-case study presented in the paper, we would like to share the experiences and lessons about the development of geo-analytic functions, which would be used as a reference for other geo-analytic function development.
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
So, three o'clock, we will start the second presentation, and the second one is mine. My name is Hye-kyung Kang from South Korea. I'm working for Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements.
And today, what I will introduce is our experiences on developing geo-analytic functions for UN missions. So, I have three co-authors, and I will introduce my co-authors. Unfortunately, two of my co-authors, so just one, attended today.
And also, he will give a presentation together with me. So, Mr. Timura, would you introduce yourself? Thank you. My name is Timura. I'm in charge of geo-analytics at the United Nations Geospatial Information Section.
So, the contents I will deliver today is, first, I will introduce why we did this kind of activity first, and then we will introduce the requirements from the UN missions, why
they need the geo-analysis functions. And also, I will introduce how we developed so far, what we developed so far, and then I will introduce the user cases. We applied our development to some scenarios, which is very simplified scenarios.
And then I conclude. So, the first background, as you know, geo-analysis is an approach to apply statistical analysis to other analytic techniques to data, which is geographically. So people can recognize the pattern of a space with a very nice visualized map and
processes of spatial data and so on. So, geo-analysis provides many advantages to the users. For instance, the ease of record keeping of geographical changes and so on.
So it's really the same for the United Nations. So the United Nations also uses geographical analysis to improve the efficiency of their situational awareness, safety and security, monitoring crisis during the UN field operations and so on.
So the GIS section in the United Nations, who provide overall support in using the geospatial analysis technology to the UN operations, in 2016, they established the UN Open GIS Initiative led by the UN GIS section under the UN Department of Operations
and the UN Department of Department. So to leverage the free open source service, the geospatial technology in support of UN peace operation. So there are several working groups developing the technology and geo-analysis is a third
working group. So we named Spyro 3 and it aims to provide open source geo-analytic solution for UN operation. So the core of this working group is to develop geo-analytic solution, not only just functions.
So the core of this Spyro 3 is collecting first, collecting the UN requirements and share the knowledge from the field with the developers.
And second, developing the geospatial analysis functions that we did. And third, we integrate all the outcome with the other working groups' outcomes. And also we develop the manual training materials and hosting conferences, et cetera.
We are working on it. So from now on, I will introduce a part of our activities from the requirement part. So mostly this requirement analysis and overall monitoring is conducted by the partner,
co-leader, Tim Oru. So he will introduce about the geo-analysis for UN operation. Thank you. So I stole this slide from my boss, from his main presentation.
So first of all, I want just to mention that JS in the field missions were responsible for mainly for situational awareness monitoring and just simply identifying what's happening in the field. So when we work in the field missions, we can assume that it's not only peacekeeping
missions that operates in the theater, it's also many different agencies. So for example, UNICEF, that's responsible to take care of the children, for educational services for water and sanitation. So OHCHR, for example, responsible for human rights, ITU for telecommunication, UNHCR for
refugees, UNEP for environment and WFP for food security. So you see when you have some crisis in the field missions, it's not only peacekeeping, it's not only UN field missions that are responsible for delivering services and for
taking care of population of concern, it's all these agencies. So which means that when we work with, when we provide JS services to our peacekeeping colleagues, we also need to extend the services to all these agencies, funds and programs that we work with, which also includes geoanalytics.
So when we started working identifying what exactly, what kind of analysis we need for peacekeeping missions and also for agencies, funds and programs in the field missions, we came up with UN operations as you see here and use of geoanalysis. For example, for situational awareness, it's one of the core components of information
management and intelligence in the missions, it's situational awareness. So we need to, first of all, to conduct geoanalysis related to incident analysis, to destruction analysis, quite often we have quite a lot of destructions happening
to the livelihood of the communities in the areas of operation. Safety and security, it's threat analysis, security threat analysis, military operations and protection of civilians because protection of civilians, it's one of the main components in the field missions towards the communities that they are working with.
So it's intelligence for early detection of threats. So for example, when there is, let's say an ADP camp or a refugee camp, we need to identify first of all what kind of threats can occur and just to be able to analyze and to collect information of those possible threats.
Human rights violations and investigation, it's related to atrocities assessment, mass grave investigation, we quite often use either satellite imagery analysis for this or raster data analysis, we can also call it this way. Epidemiological analysis, it's not only WHO but it's also UN secretariat that works on
different epidemiological crisis, for example, as it was in 2014-15 in West Africa there was a huge Ebola crisis, right? So UN responded to those crisis and for those crisis, Dr. Kahn did prediction model
for Ebola vector, for the Ebola vector distribution. So for UN support, just in general, some sort of logistics support, we need planning
of establishment, management of mission utilities, groundwater exploration, water pipeline monitoring for environmental, we need to make sure that we are compliant with rules and regulations of the host countries and also we are compliant with UN guidelines
and waste management guidelines. So and cross-cutting analysis, it's a threat analysis of road operations because roads are used by all agencies, funds and programs and all partners who work in the field.
So we did a few preliminary sort of work, just first of all to identify how open source can, how open source will be able to respond to our requirements. So we sent our requirements to Dr. Kahn with relation to Ebola predictive model, so that's
the result of the algorithm, probably she will tell a little bit more about it, right? Yeah, so and also analyzed 26 generalitical functions that we had to prioritize and also functions that we wanted to be included in the web platform that we were running in
spiral one or work group one, as we call it now. So this is the list of priority functions that we wanted to be embedded in the web platform.
Also we had six simple requirements. First of all we need to have primitive analytical functions and at the moment spiral three or work group three came up with over 200 different analytical functions. Also another one of the main criteria was to be able to compile those analytical functions
in some sort of model, right? So that some of this analytical, some of the steps can be skipped along the process, right? And the system will provide us the final result without going through each step at once.
So the building blocks and inbuilt analytical model, so this part we are still working on, right? Other analysis, other requirements included, as I mentioned already, analytical functions
should be embedded in web environment and also in desktop environment. For desktop environment there was software, open source software UDIC that was identified that's one of the, that provided us the final solution.
So and research, we also needed research capacity. For example, quite often our colleagues provide us some specific and scientific questions and scientific research. Sometimes we don't know what it is. It can be related to environment, it can be related to something else. So for example, I only learned about chlorophyll analysis after trying to identify whether
there is a wastewater, untreated wastewater was dumped outside of the camp in the mission, right? So but before that I just didn't know and just for me to figure out I had to do some research and one of the requirement was that the spiral three provides the research capacity
for some analysis that we are not really experts in. And also training capacity, right? That's, you know, when functions are developed
and rolled out so that those capacity will be, things will be provided to us. Thank you. So based on that requirement from the United Nations, we developed, you know, spiral three, a geoanalysis solution.
Still we are ongoing. So we, in terms of the developing the primitive geoanalytic functions, we, Timur mentioned more than 200, but in the beginning we started, you know, 140. But you know, the number by considering the requirements from the field, the number became increased.
So developing the functions and running on the different computing environment and assessing that is the three main activity in terms of the developing the geoanalytic functions.
So by comparing other software's, we summarized what kind of geoanalytic function we provide. So in current moment, all the operators working on the disk lab environment
by using the UDIG software. So Windows and Linux, it doesn't matter. If you are using the geo tools, then it can be included in your development environment. And if you are using the geo server, all the development result can be plugged into the geo server.
So you can use, you know, because we implemented all the analytic functions by wrapping WPS standard. So it is available on the internet environment. So if you open, include, plug in our development environment
to the UDIG software, you will see this kind of interfaces on your computer. I will introduce this one later. And also if you include our development to the geo server, you will see all the functions here.
So in terms of the assessment of our development, we mostly compare the tests we are doing. So by comparing two results from produced different software, proprietary and our development,
we compare the results. But you'd see there's some slight differences. However, you know, it depends on the algorithms. So proprietary software, they didn't open their algorithms. However, there is a standard or published,
you know, the paper, we refer that. So in terms of the comparison test, our development team, they conducted assessment and also UN conducted from the client view.
So this slide shows comparison test conducted by the UN HQ. So this slide shows comparison test for one operation which is a kernel density. So for the kernel density, proprietary software, they provide just one algorithm.
However, our development provides 11 algorithms. So for the kernel density, there are many algorithms. For instance, a quadratic, a different quadratic
and other triangular based analysis. So like this way, we have different algorithm with the same operators. And also you can see, you know, the comparison result from here. So the value is slightly different.
However, you know, there is no right analysis result. Just you can provide your alternatives. So decision is from the experts. So if you can see many alternatives and you can decide one, the best one,
then I think that is the best way geoanalysis tools can do. So this is another example, the test data. And we finally we tested, you know, proprietary software, how it can display well.
So if you look at, the outcome looks very similar too. However, we had to use two softwares, QGIS and UDIG. For using the analytic functions, we used UDIG. And to display, we had to use QGIS because they have better function provided.
So for the Ebola use cases, so we applied this development result to the Ebola scenario. So the data set we used are listed on here. So district, airport, and community care center,
et cetera, we used. So displayed on UDIG software. And for the predictive model, we received, you know, actually this model from the experts in that domain. So, and then this is for,
designed for the appropriators of two wares. So we converted it to, for UDIG version. So it looks like this. The district, point in polygon operation with a district airport, and we generate the result.
Very similarly, we proceed the operators. So I will explain each steps. So first the analytic process is point in polygon. So here, if we,
so the first step is to calculate how many airports located in district. Because airport is the potential value to regress Ebola spread. So first step is point in polygon.
It was used. And second, third and fourth step is very similar to use the point in polygon as well. And the fifth step is using the line density. So if we are using the line density operator,
we have, and if we insert the parameters, then we will get the result like this. And the sixth step is using the zonal statistics. Also the zonal statistics is providing by the analytic functions. So if we're using the zonal statistics, we will get the result like this.
And final step was using the ordinary list square operators. So we inserted the parameters, and then we cut the result like that. So we cut the numbers, you know,
applying these OLS operator. So after we cut all the numbers, so what we did is we compared the numbers, and analyzed numbers with the proprietary softwares. And also XF provided OLS function as well. So we compared all the result.
And depending on the algorithm, sometimes our result, if we use the same algorithm with Excel, then the numbers was the same with Excel. Anyway, so if we visit this YouTube site,
you can see all the process through this web YouTube. So from the installation of a unique software, you can start together with this video clip
if you'd like to test or follow the use cases. So like this here, dataset is introduced. And all the operations, you can watch through the web.
So if you visit YouTube, and if you insert the keyword, envelope predictive model, or Spyder 3, or U.N. Open GIS, you can see all the video clips there.
So conclusion. So so far, I tried to introduce the part of activity of U.N. Open GIS working group three, geoanalysis in terms of requirement and development, and the use cases.
What we learned from the activity is there is no right or wrong answer for the density analysis, not only density analysis. For the older analysis functions, there is no one answer. Many candidates we have. And second one is what we learned is
YouTube provide the challenge of a cartographic visualization. It means it's inconvenient. So if any experts from the YouTube community here, I wish they will develop many more convenient user interfaces. So in current moment, we are using QGIS
after we produce the analysis functions. And conclusion. Through the use case of envelope predictive model, we found the advantage of our geoanalysis function in terms of user convenience. For instance, where there's many inconveniences part.
However, we also have a nice part for user convenience. For instance, line density function automatically execute the clip operation by parameterizing in its process. So in compare to other software, proprietary software,
we have to use a clip operation in separately. However, if you are using line density algorithm here, then we, it's included, you know. So we can reduce our process. And so it reduce the number of analysis functions
to be executed and consequently becomes to improve user convenience. So this kind of advantage our development has. Still our work is going on. So in terms of integrating our development with other technologies, for instance,
for geo potters and other, you know, development. So if you have any interest on participating in this activity, we always welcome you can contact us. So I try to explain much more about our activity. However, you know, not sure it was enough or not.
So is there any questions about my presentation? Yeah, thank you. It seems like it's an interactive predictive model. Could it be completely automated or is it like,
is there a, the predictive model seems to be like an interactive analysis part? Could it have been completely automated or is there like a very good reason that this will never happen?
So interactive model or what? Or did I misunderstand? There's a number of steps that you do in the client interface compared to just sending a request and you have an automated model that completes all the steps and you get the results back. Well actually that is one of our ongoing,
would you want to answer? Yeah, he knows very well. Over there. So we're also working on developing a model builder or some alternative. So just a model builder there'll be some steps can be semi-automated or completely automated.
Right, okay. I'm interested because I come from the Norwegian Meteorological Institute and we do some work with UNICEF like Chris Fabian today. Nice. In current model we have a better function but it's not enough for interactive or model builder
so we are still on developing the model builder so if you have any outcome or knowledge about that then we can share. Not me personally but. Yeah, please contact. Is there any questions?
No, okay, I see none. So it's 3.27, we will start the third presentation on 30. Thank you very much.