Projects

2024

  • Sudan Conflict Observatory
    Budget: ...
    Sponsor: State Department (MITRE subcontract)
    Role: co-PI, w. Daniel Rothbart
    Keywords: Image analysis, Change detection, Deep Learning
    Summary: Image analysis and change detection

2023-2027

  • METROPOL - Modeling and Encoding TRajectories Of Patterns Of Life
    Budget: $2,900,000
    Sponsor: IARPA (L3Harris subcontract)
    Role: PI, w. T. Anderson, H. Kavak
    Keywords: Agent-based Modeling, Outlier Detection, Language Modeling
    Summary: Urban simulations

2021-2025

  • NSF: III: Small: From Spatial Language to Spatial Data - a simulation-based approach
    Budget: $500,000
    Sponsor: NSF
    Role: PI, w. A. Anastasopoulos
    Keywords: spatial language, spatial simulation
    Summary: Devising means to better understand people's perception of space by deciphering such spatial language terms. This includes (i) developing a simulation to crowdsource geospatial language expression data by having users interact in a virtual environment and (ii) exploring neural language modeling approaches for the problem of grounding language to this spatial context.

2021-2026

  • NSF: Data-Driven Modeling to Improve Understanding of Human Behavior, Mobility, and Disease Spread
    Budget: $2,300,000
    Sponsor: NSF
    Role: co-PI, w. T. Anderson. A. Zuefle, H. Kavak, A. Roess, S. Luke
    Keywords: agent-based modeling, disease simulation, spatial simluation, digital twin
    Summary: The goal of this project is to investigate how including spatiotemporal heterogeneity of human behavior and mobility in ABMs of disease spread will 1) better explain variations of human response to disease spread, 2) improve predictions of infectious disease spread, and 3) prescribe the most effective mitigation policies.

2021-2022

  • Distributed Semi-Supervised Temporal Learning for Global Change Monitoring (DiSSTL)
    Budget: $750,000
    Sponsor: IARPA (Blacksky subcontract)
    Role: co-PI, w. K. Wessels and A. Zuefle
    Keywords: image analysis, change detection, remote sensing
    Summary: IARPA’s Space-based Machine Automated Recognition Technique (SMART) Program strives to automate the quantitative analysis of space-based imagery to perform broad-area search for natural and anthropogenic events and characterize their extent and progression in time and space by fusing very large data from multiple satellite sensors.

2019-2021

  • Guaranteeing the Where – Towards Authoritative Cryptographic Geospatial Computing
    Budget: $24,000
    Sponsor: GMU COS-VSE seed grant
    Role: co-PI, w. F. Baldimtsi
    Keywords: cryptography, data privacy
    Summary: A seed grant to investigate the use of Blockchain technology for spatial verification, i.e., confirming that objects are where they say they are. This verification can be accomplished by a third party that is unaware of the actual locations. The current approach to this so-called Proof-of-Location (PoL) of transitory objects is to create a tamper-proof infrastructure such as dedicated location beacons. Our effort will lay the groundwork for providing a PoL protocol without the need for such hardware.

2018-2020

  • A ground‐truth simulator for socio‐spatial alternate worlds
    Budget: $1,500,000
    Sponsor: DARPA
    Role: co-PI, w. A. Zuefle, A. Crooks, and C. Wenk (Tulane)
    Keywords: agent-based modeling, urban simulation, spatial simluation, digital twin
    Summary: Test and evaluating different methods and tools for analyzing complex social phenomena.

2017-2018

  • DIVES: Discovering Indicators for Interactions in Finance and Government Sector
    Budget: $37,000
    Sponsor: GMU Provost Award seed grant
    Role: co-PI, w. N. Tryfona, J. Wedel, M. Renz
    Keywords: graph mining, data visualization, public policy
    Summary: In today’s complex environment the way power and influence are wielded and understood has changed. Intuitively we sense that the old models of understanding decision-making and governance no longer suffice. To shed light on the issue, this project follows a data-driven scientific approach that brings together a diverse team of scholars from the Schar School and the DataLab /College of Science to analyze and visualize patterns of linkage, influence, and governance in the crucial arenas of finance and the military.

2016-2022

  • NSF/AITF: Collaborative Research: Modeling Movement on Transportation Networks Using Uncertain Data
    Budget: $500,000
    Sponsor: NSF
    Role: PI, w. A. Zuefle
    Keywords: urban analytics, spatial data science, mobility modeling
    Summary: Creation a unified framework for aggregating and analyzing diverse and uncertain movement data on transportation networks and to provide tools for querying and predicting traffic volume and movement in urban environments.

2015-2016

  • Health Narratives: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Understanding Health-Related Information Generation and Dissemination in Social Media
    Budget: $50,000
    Sponsor: GMU Provost Award seed grant
    Role: co-PI, w. A. Stefanidis, A. Croitoru, A. Crooks, K. Jacobsen, P. Delamater
    Keywords: social media mining, public health
    Summary: With major health organizations embracing social media (SM) as a new avenue to communicate and harvest health-related information to/from the general public, advancing our understanding of the patterns of health narrative in SM is a novel multidisciplinary scientific challenge with substantial potential impact. This is the topic that we are addressing in this project.

2015

  • Web Mapping Platform Visualizing Risk Assessment
    Budget: $64,000
    Sponsor: DHS (University of Maryland sub-award)
    Role: PI
    Keywords: Web mapping, data visualization

2014-2021

  • Generation and Management of Crowdsourced Place Gazetteers
    Budget: $750,000
    Sponsor: NGA
    Role: PI, w. A. Croitoru, A. Crooks, and A. Stefanidis
    Keywords: geospatial crowdsourcing, map construction, social media mining
    Summary: Traditional gazetteers and maps are artifacts of a geometry-driven view of the world, communicating primarily locations and their coordinates. Human activities may assign multiple meanings to the same geographic location. The activities associated with a space transform it to a sociocultural place, by assigning to it meaning, scope, and function, that far exceed its geometric coordinates. Understanding and mapping places is a key geospatial research challenge, as we are transitioning from mapping the surface of the world to monitoring and assessing geo-located activities.

2013-2015

  • GEOSTREAM - Exploiting User-Generated Geospatial Content Streams
    Budget: 900,000 Euros
    Sponsor: European Commissions, FP7, ICT
    Role: PI, external collaborator (after 2013).
    Keywords: geospatial data management,, geospatial content generation, location-based services, mobile computing, Web publishing.
    Summary: GeoWeb 2.0 is the geographic embodiment of the Web 2.0 vision for the next generation of geographic information publishing, discovery and use on the Web. In this context, GEOSTREAM aims at providing novel techniques and tools for extracting, processing, and exploiting user-generated geospatial information on the Web.

2012-2014

  • TMGuide - TALOS Mobile Guides
    Budget: 500,000 Euros
    Sponsor: European Commissions, FP7, ICT
    Role: PI, external collaborator (after 2013).
    Keywords: mobile computing, location-based services, context, personalization, geocoding, web scraping.
    Summary: Enhance mobile travel guide prototypes to bring them to a market stage and to promote their adoption and use among the respective client base. A key aspect in this project will also be on how to bring geographic information to life, i.e., converting static maps to interactive geospatial information.

2012-2014

  • SIMPLEFLEET - Description: Democratizing Fleet Management Solutions
    Budget: 1,400,000 Euros
    Sponsor: European Commissions, FP7, ICT
    Role: PI, external collaborator (after 2013).
    Keywords: map matching, spatiotemporal data warehousing, routing, shortest-path computation
    Summary: Research project focusing on the creation of a traffic data pool for various areas in Europe based on collected vehicle tracking data and other traffic data sources.

2010-2014

  • GECROWD - Creating a geospatial knowledge world.
    Budget: 3,600,000 Euros
    Sponsor: European Commissions, FP7, Initial training network (ITN)
    Role: co-PI, w. Timos Sellis (NTUA)
    Keywords: geospatial crowdsourcing, stream processing, geodata fusion, mobile computing.
    Summary: Basic research project in the areas of User-contributed geospatial content and geospatial data streams. Funded 10 PhD students across universities in Europe.

2008-2010

  • TALOS - Task aware location-based services for mobile environments.
    Budget: 1,100,000 Euros
    Sponsor: European Commissions, FP7, Research for SMEs
    Role: PI
    Keywords: mobile computing, location-based services, context, personalization, geocoding, web scraping.
    Summary: Extending the concept of location-based services to include tasks. Concept and actual prototype development for mobile travel guides (iPhone).

2006-2008

  • TRACK&TRADE - Building a data mart for floating car data.
    Budget: 1,100,000 Euros
    Sponsor: European Commissions, FP6, CRAFT
    Role: PI
    Keywords: map matching, spatiotemporal data warehousing, routing, shortest-path computation.
    Summary: Deriving traffic information from “Floating Car Data”, i.e., using GPS tracking data form vehicle fleets. Shortest-path computation based on historic and live traffic situations. Prototypes for Athens, Vienna and Berlin.

2006-2009

  • CITER - Creation of a European History Textbook Repository.
    Budget: 1,800,000 Euros
    Sponsor: European Commissions, eContentplus programme
    Role: PI
    Keywords: geocoding, information extraction, text processing, spatiotemporal data management, application design and prototyping.
    Summary: Creation of a European History Textbook Repository. Integration of multi-language history textbooks based on temporal, geospatial and thematic (history) metadata. Development of a Web-based prototype.

2004-2005

  • ARCHAIORAMA - Development of a GIS system for archaeological excavation documentation.
    Budget: 380,000 Euros
    Sponsor: Greek General Secretariat of Research and Technology (GSRT)
    Role: co-PI
    Keywords: data modeling, application design, uncertain spatial information management

2002-2004

  • DBGLOBE - A Data - centric Approach to Global Computing.
    Budget: 900,000 Euros
    Sponsor: European Commissions, FP5, IST-FET
    Role: co-PI
    Keywords: map matching, spatiotemporal data warehousing, routing, shortest-path computation.
    Summary: Development of data management technologies for mobile computing, i.e., design of massively distributed systems based on mobile devices.

2002-2004

  • PATHFINDER - Development of data management and data mining techniques for floating car data (FCD).
    Budget: 80,000 Euros
    Sponsor: Greek General Secretariat of Research and Technology (GSRT)
    Role: co-PI
    Keywords: map-matching algorithms, spatiotemporal data warehousing, data mining