Crises are challenges to society as a whole (such as the current COVID 19 pandemic), but also creeping crises (such as climate change) form a special field of discourse. In an effort to judge or justify under high uncertainty or pressure to act, cognitive spatial argumentation patterns are applied in political, but also in everyday language. How spatial metaphors are used to structure public discourses of crisis and which (misleading) metaphors are particularly often used and reused in crisis commuication is subject of this research project.

Further reading:

• Kremer, Dominik (2020): Usage of spatial metaphor in tellings of the crisis. DiscourseNet Collaborative Working Paper Series, no. 2/8, Special Issue: Discourse Studies Essays on the Corona Crisis
  https://discourseanalysis.net/dncwps

The automated exploration of individual spatial conceptions requires an extension of existing human geographic models to the individual experience of space. Between models of specific spatial experience and abstract cartographic representations, there is a modeling gap for the description of these spaces. Multimedia representations of places or along paths offer a starting point for modeling visuality and sensory perception. Graph-based representations can be used to model the topology between places as well as to model location-based knowledge in a social network. Closing this research gap, increasing the geo-informational expressiveness and at the same time bringing it closer to the demands of informed social research is the subject of this research project.

Further reading

• Kremer, D. (2018): Rekonstruktion von Orten als sozialem Phänomen: Geoinformatische Analyse semantisch annotierter Verhaltensdaten. Schriften aus der Fakultät Wirtschaftsinformatik und Angewandte Informatik der Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg 30, UBP
  https://doi.org/10.20378/irbo-51890
• Kremer, Dominik (2013): Orts(re)konstruktionen. Analyse der Mikrostruktur ortsbezogener Argumentationsmuster in Erinnerungsnarrativen Bamberger Einwohner. Berichte. Geographie und Landeskunde 87 (2), 175-193

Current WebGIS systems start to deal with functions of classical content management systems such as structured release processes, versioning, multilingualism and search and filter options. For the first time, apps can be developed that consider the recording process right in the app, integrate location-based multimedia into the app and enable participation on site. The further development of these approaches in application-oriented projects with external partners is the focus of this research project.

Subproject Invisible Places

The app Invisible Places makes it possible to experience Jewish and guest worker migration stories after 1945.

Further reading

• https://www.juedischesmuseum.de/erkunden/detail/unsichtbare-orte-frankfurt/

Mobile location-based games introduce an element missing in video games: locomotion. They are worth geodidactic consideration because they do not only support the social interaction of players, but also offer individual platial learning on site, e.g. of an urban neighborhood or a national park. Since 2004, the Geogames team of the University of Bamberg in cooperation with the Department of Geography at the University of Augsburg has been investigating design and implementation scenarios of various forms of location-based learning games.

Further reading

• Schlieder, C., Kremer, D., Heinz, T. (2018): Teaching Geogame Design: Game Relocation as a Spatial Analysis Task. In: Ahlqvist, Schlieder (Eds.), Geogames and Geoplay, Springer, 111-130
  https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22774-0_6
• Feulner, B., Kremer, D. (2016): Geogames – Räume neu erfahren am Beispiel CityPoker. In: Gryl, I. (Hrsg.): Reflexive Kartenarbeit. Diercke Methoden und Aufgaben. Westermann, 129-141
• http://www.geogames-team.org/
• https://www.uni-augsburg.de/de/fakultaet/fai/geo/prof/geodid/forschung-und-entwicklung/schwerpunkt-mobiles-ortsbezogenes-lernen/#projekt1