Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

The teaching of Geography currently has extraordinary conceptual, theoretical, methodological and technological support. Nevertheless, in the context of an increasingly inclusive society, a significant number of students of all levels and ages, as well as visually disabled people, have still been left on the margins of knowing the geography of their country. That knowledge is fundamental in the development of autonomy and safety in the handling and movement of people in space at local and general levels.The Tactile Cartography Center (CECAT) of the Metropolitan Technological University of Chile has been concerned over the past few years with researching and developing proposals for the optimizing tactile cartography, considering that this instrument is still the only way to provide blind people or people with reduced vision, an approach, even a partial one, to knowledge of their local and regional spaces and to the possibility for them to create mental maps of their environment and their country.From the experience gained in the research project "IPGH Nº CART01/GEOG02 2017:"Proposal for the standardization of tactile symbology for Latin America: Application in cartography for tourism", it was agreed to make progress in improving and standardizing the diverse, scattered and numerous symbologies used in tactile maps that are created in the various countries of Latin America. The use of conventional symbols in the topographic and regular cartography of the countries has greatly facilitated the use and good handling of this cartography. Although it is true that tactile cartography is fundamentally thematic, we are sure that an effort towards standardizing the multiplicity of symbols currently used will help the visually disabled to take in and absorb these symbols and thus to facilitate decoding them during the process of tactile handling of the cartographic models.

Today the land parcel map of Uruguay is available as an updated, integrated legacy digital cadastre which planimetric accuracy is not enough to assure geometric interoperability. The creation of a brand new land parcel map is being considered with a procedure yet to be defined but in any case subject to reasonable goals in terms of geometric accuracy. In this paper we have tested a direct procedure in which each parcel is joined to its immediate neighbors until a block is formed. In Uruguay such block will grow until a road, river or similar object is found. The block is manually inserted within the road network, which has absolute coordinates.The rural survey maps (approx. 250 000) are already scanned but they need to be vectorized and edited through scaling, rotation and manual matching to its neighbors. GNSS tracks for roads and highways are available for the whole country, so we could fit the block within them in order to properly register it. The resulting geometric accuracy was evaluated in terms of the relative error in area, which has a normal distribution with a mean 0.10% and a standard deviation 3.51%, leaving 82.0% of the parcels with relative area error less than 5%. The planimetric error, crucial to assure interoperability, was 53.79 m at the 95% confidence level.

This work considers the problems that persons with blindness face on a daily basis in the handling of spatial and time dimensions in the surroundings they live in, and in how, through the use of suitable technical images, they can set up frameworks of orientation and information for them, thus encouraging them to imagine for themselves the space lived in, including that of the landscape, and their possibilities for action in it. Concentrating on geographic space from the landscape viewpoint allows us to look carefully at the nature of human life without light, in order to be able to understand spaces beyond the body’s reach as interpreted by the blind, providing an aesthetic approach to that experience.

The exact identification of Mesoscale Convective Systems (MCS) is not a simple task. In this work, Support Vector Machines (SVM), Decision Trees (DT) and Random Forests (RF) non-parametric machine learning algorithms (ML) were applied to detect MCS, from a series of GOES-13 weather satellite images acquired on April 03, 2013 every half hour from 11:45 to 22:15 hours, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), covering the Colombian territory. The results obtained by these methods were compared with a traditional method referred to as brightness temperature (BT). Accuracy assessment was conducted using STEP (shape, theme, edge, position), a method that evaluates geometric and thematic similarity between objects, using as reference a dataset of high accuracy data extracted from images of precipitation Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM). The aim of this study was to determine whether using information from several spectral channels of weather images, rather than from a single infrared channel (IR) as traditional techniques do, allows accurate detection of MCS. Experimental results show that the Decision Tree (DT) and Random Forest (RF) algorithms performed better than the IR-TB algorithm to detect MCS, while that the results of SVM algorithm, suggest that it use may not be favorable for practical applications. The decision criteria of the classification model yielded by DT could be replicated several times in different dates without performing visual interpretation in each image, being very useful for operational applications under the approach presented here.

This work aimed to evaluate the use of tactile thematic maps with pictorial symbology, to be used based on the Universal Design for Learning (DUA). Thus, it is possible to use the teaching material by all children, promoting the inclusion of visually impaired students to social experience and communication with visionaries. For that, two maps were made with patterns of distinct symbologies: pictorial and abstract. The maps were modeled in 3D software and printed using Rapid Prototyping technology. Perception tests of these symbologies were performed with visually impaired and visually impaired students in a school in Curitiba, Paraná. From the first results obtained in this research, it is suggested that pictorial symbology be indicated to be used for the representation of punctual features in tactile mapping, as it was more attractive to all participants and stimulated students with visual impairment to social interaction and to use beyond touch, language, which contains the principles of Universal Design. However, as with the use of pictorial symbols for seers, some symbols are apprehended as they are observed and used in everyday life, making them subject to standardization and being used universally. The design of these symbols from 3D printing proved effective because it allows the modeling of complex geometries, which allows the combination of visual and tactile resources to generate maps from the perspective of Universal Design, as well as producing durable and easily reproduced materials.

This paper presents part of the results of a master's research on elaboration of tactile symbols for indoor map made with 3D printer from the rapid prototyping method. The study area confers to the ground floor of the Glauber Rocha Classroom Hall of the Federal University of Bahia located in the city of Salvador-Brazil. From the method “Think Aloud” the tactile map was evaluate with the participation of eight blind people, it was verified that the map was efficient to communicate spatial information of the study area and that the tactile cartography can evaluate in the development of symbols in maps to aid in indoor mobility, that is, in the choice of routes for movement within the buildings.

Unfortunately, inclusive cartography does not have a history and tradition as rich in Hungary as in other countries. Beginning our article, the most important cartographic works created for blind and visually impaired people in the country are presented briefly. In recent years, the Department of Cartography and Geoinformatics has decided to make its contribution to the development of this important branch of cartography and special education in Hungary, promoting research projects whose essence lies in finding their own solutions based on international experiences. Two projects are described by the authors: the first one stimulated the renewal of cartographic principles to make maps and atlases of inclusive cartography in Hungary, while the aim of the second project (not concluded yet) is to experiment with these solutions in the autonomous region of Kurdistan in Iraq, beginning the study of the options on the use of the most modern techniques and solutions in the Kurdish special education.

This article presents a risN estimation in buildings by landslides triggered by earth- quaNes and rainfall in the city of Medellin using a Geographic Information System (GIS). For this, a computer model that considers topographic, geological, geotech- nical and hydrological characteristics of the study area was implemented to deter- mine landslide hazard by evaluating the stability of slopes using pseudo static NewmarN Method, including a probabilistic approach technique based on the first order and second moment —FOSM. The approach for the assessment of physical vulnerability of buildings in the study area was conducted through structural fragili- ty indexes that consider the definition of the level of damage to buildings through event trees using a cadastral inventory data of the municipality of Medellin. The routine calculates the probability of a landslide to occur given that an earthquaNe produces a horizontal ground acceleration (Ah), considering the uncertainty of the geotechnical parameters and the conditions of soil saturation for the effect of previ- ous rainfall in the area, then multiply such values with the structural fragility index- es values in order to estimate the damage indices of buildings, which are associated with the risN when considering the relevant economic variable to the replacement value of such structures from assessed values.

The management of the country ́s territory is closely related to the Geographical Information (GI) available and its accessibility. These would be the fundamental principles of a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) supported by a consolidated legal frameworN. In Ecuador, the National Geospatial Information Policy, established in 2010 by the National Council of Geoinformatics (CONAGE) is the legal frameworN that all institutions must comply with in the generation, update, use, distribution, delivery, exchange and sale of the country's geoinformation. With this bacNground, two questions arise: (a) What has been the degree of implementation of that legislation in state institutions? and (b) How has it influenced the implementation of institutional SDI? This article aims to respond to these concerns through a methodology of qualitative and quantitative analysis, established from the results of a diagnosis survey. The survey was applied to 20 public institutions responsible for the official GI generation. The results show the degree of compliance with those policies and major problems or deficiencies found in the application process over the last six years (2010-2016). 

To obtain precise coordinates in Satellite Geodesy, relative positioning and precise point positioning (PPP) techniques are used. In this worN a preliminary analysis of the impacts on Dilution of Precision (DOP) and positioning accuracy caused by tracNing several GNSS, using single and double frequency receivers, considering two- and 24-hour sessions in two time periods of the year, and, as such, subject to different ionospheric conditions, is presented. These analyses have been performed based on data available from the Brazilian NetworN for Continuous Monitoring of GNSS (RBMC) and the Multi-GNSS Experiment (MGEX) of the International GNSS Service (IGS). The processing results have been obtained using the GNSS Planning Online, IBGE-PPP and RTKLIB software/services, which have confirmed the accuracy improvement in relative and PPP positioning when using more GNSS observations. Another factor which contributes to this improvement is a more favourable satellite constellation used in the solutions. The solar activity, time of year and tracNing period of the day also directly impact the quality of positioning.