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

At present, the Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) have made available to all, through the Geoportals, a large amount of geographic information (GI), which until some years ago was very difficult to access. On the other hand, the technological revolution with which the children of the last decades have grown, have prepared them to learn in a different way and thus to take advantage of the resources in the Network that are available; However, the adequacy of the information found cannot always be guaranteed. With these premises in mind and aware of the importance of official geographic information, in the educational field, the Military Geographic Institute (IGM) of Ecuador launched a project called GEOEDUCA, which shows the experience of its development, implementation and use. This is dedicated to school students, as well as for teachers and parents providing access to the GI of the country. GEOEDUCA, named for its purpose of creation, is a sample of the various users that can have geoportals. 

After many years of joint work, the regions of Extremadura (Spain), Alentejo (Portugal) and later Centro (Portugal), in search of a few principles as inspiring as the relevance of environmental value and the economic and social development, show the peculiarities of the territory through the OTALEX C Geoportal. In this there are publications made in the different joint projects and cartographic and thematic information displayed from different data viewers, which put in hands of the user the necessary tools to discover and interpret correctly the territory. 

With an increase in mobile data collection through GPS and other location-based services, there have been a number of attempts to apply geomasking techniques to published route data in order to protect trajectory privacy. Yet, the utility of masked trajectory data and its value to transportation research remain in question. This study examines how the inferred route changes when origin and destination data are masked to protect privacy, as well as calculates the anonymity of each route traveled by a sample of New York City taxi cabs. It is determined that the routes between locations masked by random perturbation are significantly different from the original routes and that a network-based data product suppressing unique routes is a viable solution to release both accurate route statistics and protect confidentiality

Level heights of the national vertical networks (NVR), is the base for the establishment of the fundamental vertical reference datum of each country. When these heights are not associated to observations of terrestrial gravity field (purely geometric characteristics), they lose usefulness in solving problems related to regional and global physical phenomena generated due to the dynamic of the Earth System. In addition, different Local Vertical Datums (LVD) does not materialize the same reference, because the determination of mean sea level (MSL) in each LVD generates discrepancies in relation to a Global Vertical Reference System (GVRS). Geometrical heights from satellite-based positioning (GNSS), could be used for the determination of physical heights whether the relationship between the reference ellipsoid (reference surface for the determination of geometrical heights) and the reference surface based on terrestrial gravity field exists. One approximation to that relation is obtained from the difference between the ellipsoidal and level heights (hHn). The present study shows that the Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) are a suitable alternative for the prediction of geometrical heights based on this approximation. The multilayer ANN training was performed from the basic information come from records of the Ecuadorian NVR (NVRE) associated with GPS observa tions (GPS/Levelling). The results show that the prediction of heights has a maximum error of 7 cm

Land use/cover change practices in the Brazilian Amazon, such as cattle ranching, logging, agriculture, mining, and urbanization are the major contributors to deforestation and have major impacts on ecosystems and environmental processes at local, regional and global scales. A simulation of future landscape in the Kayabi Indigenous Territory in the Brazilian Amazon was carried out using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Remote Sensing and the IDRISI’s Land Change Modeler. The model was able to successfully simulate deforestation expansion in the region and identify the main landscape attributes driving anthropogenic disturbance expansion in the studied area. Distance from roads and distance from existing disturbance were found as the key factors driving deforestation in the Kayabi area.

The national mapping of Mexico employs three map projections: the Universal Transverse Mercator, for large-scale and medium-scale topographic maps; the Lambert Conformal Conic, for mapping the country in small-scale maps; and the Mercator projection used for nautical charts. The usual employment of these projections has been recognized by the scientific community so they are normally used; however, in Mexico the cartographic research related to this subject has not been produced, and has not sought the application of other map projections in an effort to achieve a better representation of the results of the various spatial research topics. This paper aims to show the use of the Albers Equal-Area Conic projection and its parameters. In this sense, it shows the formulations that allows the projection of the coordinates, the analysis of the distortions and the conception of national mapping in a 1:500,000 scale maps; thus, the article intends to encourage the reflection about the non-conformal characteristic for Mexican mapping.

Positional accuracy constitutes a primordial aspect of geographic information quality in any geomatics application and a key element to get interoperability. The aim of this publication is identify the methods of positional accuracy assessment that are using in Hispano-American countries and within them, some that worked in the project: “Diagnosis of current situation of methodologies and procedures applied in geographic information quality evaluation”, funded by the Pan American Institute for Geography and History. The standards that are been applied are linked with American standards such as: EMAS, NMAS, NSSDA, PSADG. The most of these standards assume normality, but there are new trends such that opened by UNE 48002:2016, this Spanish standard opens a new framework. Finally, results of a survey about national maturity levels related with positional accuracy assessment conclude that positional-accuracy-assessment methods being applied in analyzed countries are in an initial level, with the exception of Spain and Brazil

Free software of Geographic Information Systems have been well evaluated worldwide and therefore their use for teaching in higher education can be a good opportunity, due to the quality and savings they provide. Accordingly, the aim of this study was to analyze the students’ and professor perception and experience using Quantum GIS (QGIS)  for learning and teaching Geoprocessing. A survey and a statistical analysis were performed and it was found that: 91% of the students were unaware of the QGIS; 87% used it for the first time, and that it was well evaluated by 89% of the students and by the professor. Thus, it was concluded that the QGIS was an excellent choice.

This article presents the problems encountered by the geographer Juan de la Cruz Cano, during the process of elaboration and delivery to the Secretariat of State of the Map of South America concluded in 1775. The difficulties with which they collided, both the author and his work, were due to the existing division within the Spanish Court. The different groups of power that gathered around the king had different and opposing views on what was to be represented in the map. Both groups also differed with respect to the administration of South America.

We are immersed in the Big Data era, where there is a large amount of heterogeneous data, both in time and spatial scales. This data starts to be streamed in real time from different devices and sensors, well illustrated by the new concept of Smart Cities. Conflation processes play an important role in this scenario, defined as the procedure for the combination and integration of different data sources, improving the level of information of the result. It also allows to update geographical databases (GDB), conflating different kind of sources where one of them is more accurate or updated than the other. Regarding geometric conflation, the procedure involves transforming features from one data source to another, minimizing the geometric discrepancies between them. Accuracy has to be taken into account in these processes, and the results need to be measured and evaluated in order to have a better understanding of product quality. In this paper, conflation evaluation process is described along with the different metrics and approaches to assess its accuracy.