Faculty for Social Wellbeing
Research, Publications and Scholarship Committee
Visualising Social-Wellbeing: Spatio-Temporal Approaches to the Mapping of Social Research
by Prof. Saviour Formosa
Abstract
The acquisition of a concept of space entails a new mode of data visualisation, visual perspectives and context integration. Knowledge of space and place posit a hard-to-acquire concept for the non-technological person. Within a domain where the techno-centric aspect is "alien" to social investigation, the need to understand available technologies and their interpretation, takes front stage. Initial activity would have come from the geographically-equipped disciplines, with eventual porting to the civil-protection-related disciplines and eventually to the social sciences and the arts. The resultant knowledge gain is yet to be fully established, as technology has outshone the actual transition, with most disciplines still struggling to understand the shift. This paper reviews the issue of knowledge of spaces, the social interactivities that occur within these spaces, the resultant analytical frameworks and the outputs displayed as interactive visual outputs such as maps and imagery. The paper highlights the initial work carried out to create an information system that depicts datasets hosting both CRISOLA layers and 3D environments where social interactionism can occur. The DIKA model is employed through its Data acquisition of real space, it being given a meaning through spatial Information, its conversion to 2D environments and in turn to 3D space as a Knowledge markup and the final Action process employed to create the interactive space through both 2D and 3D environments.
The paper posits case study based on the spatial data transition from real to virtual spaces through the creation of a 2D/3D data models that allow social scientists and technologists to understand information in real and virtual worlds.
Keywords: GIS; neogeography; CRISOLA, DIKA; Minecraft; Malta; virtualisation; society; interactionism; place
Wednesday, 30 November 2016
1230-1400hrs
Room 420 – Humanities B (FEMA Building)
For reservations, kindly contact Ms Lucienne Brincat:
Tel: 23403732 / research.fsw@um.edu.mt
Tel: 23403732 / research.fsw@um.edu.mt