Frank O. Ostermann's research interest

Frank's main research interests are the opportunities and challenges of distributed collection, storage, processing and sharing of crowd-sourced and volunteered geographic information. Example research themes are: Which new collaborative types of production and consumption of geographic information emerge, and what are their broader societal implications? How can we ensure and improve the quality of user-generated geographic information and exploit new opportunities to generate knowledge by using distributed processing and storage? How can heterogeneous and unstructured geoinformation from mobile and in-situ sensors add to and benefit from geographic semantics and interoperability? How can we use the crowd and the cloud to empower citizens, increase participation and improve near-real-time decision making? Methods and tools include information retrieval, natural language processing, data mining, machine learning, implemented using Python to access geosocial media APIs and web services, as well as free and open source GIS tools (QGIS, R) on the desktop and in the cloud. Application cases include forest fires, tick bites, urban places, and more.