Dr. Peter Mooney

CS Home EPA home SAFER OpenStreetMap

Contact Details

Environmental Research Center, Environmental Protection Agency, McCumiskey House, Richview, Clonskeagh, Dublin 14. Ireland. See EPA on openstreetmap.org Get directions to EPA Telephone: +353 1 268 0100 Email: p [dot] mooney [at] epa [dot] ie

Geotechnologies Research Group, Department of Computer Science, National University of Ireland Maynooth (NUIM) Maynooth, Co. Kildare. Ireland. See NUIM on openstreetmap.org Get directions to NUIM Telephone: +353 1 268 0100 Email: peter [dot] mooney [at] nuim [dot] ie

Research and Professional Profile

I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Computer Science, NUI Maynooth (CS-NUIM) Ireland and at the Irish Environmental Protection Agency. In March 2008 I was awarded funding of €735,488 from the Environmental Protection Agency for a five year project titled "Geoinformatics Services for Improved Access to Environmental Data and Information". The funding was awarded under the DERP (Developing Environmental Research Potential) programme under the STRIVE (Science, Technology, Research and Innovation for the Environment) programme (grant number 2008-FS-DM-14-S4). I obtained my PhD Computer Science in 2004. The topic of my PhD research was the use of Evolutionary Algorithms for multicriteria path optimisation problems. I also hold a BSc in Computer Science and Mathematical Physics.

At CS-NUIM I am involved in a very active research group on Geotechnologies lead by Dr. Adam Winstanley. The research group is comprised of myself, a number of PhD students, Dr. Winstanley, and two other senior researchers: Dr. Jianghua Zheng and Dr. Padraig Corcoran. Dr. Corcoran and I have a number of collaborative projects together and curently have a number of significant publications pending publication. Our research group is integrated into the Science Foundation Ireland's STRAT-AG funding (07/SRC/I1168) at the National Center for Geocomputation (NCG) at NUI Maynooth where Dr. Winstanley is a Co-PI.

At the Environmental Research Centre (ERC) in the Irish Environmental Protection Agency Ireland I work as a Research Specialist in Data Management. This role involves: development of web-based systems, database administration, research data policy development, etc towards ensuring that outputs from publicly funded Environmental research are made publicly available. I developed the Secure Archive For Environmental Research Data (SAFER-Data) for the EPA as a web-based tool to allow EPA funded researchers and partner institutions to make the digital outputs of their environmental research freely and publicly available. This role involves ongoing pro-active engagements with the Irish environmental research community through: invited presentations and seminars, demonstrations, etc.

Research Interests

As reflected in my publications listing below I have a wide range of research interests. This results from the cross-domain nature of my work with the Environmental Protection Agency and at the Department of Computer Science. The list below briefly summarises these research interests:

• Quality and Usability of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) in mainstream GIS analysis and web-based GIS. Specific emphasis here on OpenStreetMap
• Using Free and Open Source (GIS) Tools in developing systems which promote the wider availabilty of publicly available environmental information
• Location-based Service applications - including pedestrian navigation, way finding, etc.
• Pattern recognition and shape complexity analysis of vector-based spatial data
• Investigation of the use of Web 2.0 tools such as Twitter, Facebook, OpenStreetMap, Flickr, etc as tools for delivering environmental information to the general public

PhD Student Supervision

I am currently a principal supervisor for two PhD students in Computer Science: Blazej Ciepluch (funded by the Environmental Protection Agency Ireland) and Fangli Ying (funded by the Irish Universities Association and China Scholarship Council). I also assist with the supervision of another PhD student Ricky Jacob ((on LinkedIn), on Twitter) (funded by STRAT-AG). These three PhD students are working on a broad spectrum of research areas.

Blazej, who commenced his PhD in November 2008, is investigating OpenStreetMap as a means of distributing publicly available Environmental Research Data. This investigation involves an analysis of the quality of OpenStreetMap (OSM) data and the development of potential metrics or indicators of data quality in OSM. Blazej is actively involved in OpenStreetMap activities and is pretty much single-handedly responsible for the very fine OSM representation of the Maynooth area. Using Geofabrik's Map Compare tool you can see that the OSM representation of Maynooth even trumps Google's representation of the same area. Fangli, who commenced his PhD in November 2009, is investigating methods to improve the delivery of vector-based geospatial data to mobile devices. This currently involves the development of a new model for selective progressive transmission of vector data based on the complexity of the shapes in the vector data. This will allow mobile device users to explore the spatial data for an area without the need to download all of the vector map data at once. OpenStreetMap XML data is being used as a case-study. Finally, Ricky, who commenced his PhD in April 2009, is investigating the integration of haptic technologies, GIS, and location-based services. His research combines the use of haptic technologies as a user-interface mechanism for tasks such as wayfinding and navigation.

Recent Selected Publications

In this section I provide a selection of recent publications and presentations. A full list is available upon request (if necessary). Where possible I have provided persistent links to Journal articles, conference proceedings, etc. PDF versions of other papers/presentations are available upon email request.

• Jacob, R. and Mooney, P. and Corcoran, P. and Winstanley, A.C Haptic-GIS: Exploring the possibilitiesTo Appear ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS 2010: PhD Showcase - To appear in SIGSPATIAL SPECIAL journal newsletter in November 2010
• Ying, F. and Mooney, P. and Corcoran, P. and Winstanley, A.C A model for progressive transmission of spatial data based on shape complexityTo Appear ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS 2010:: PhD Showcase - To appear in SIGSPATIAL SPECIAL journal newsletter in November 2010
• Mooney, P. and Corcoran, P. and Winstanley, A.C Towards Quality Metrics for OpenStreetMapTo Appear ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS 2010:: In the Proceedings of the 18th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems (San Jose, California, - November 2--5, 2010)
• Mooney, P. and Corcoran, P. Geospatial data issues in the provision of Location-based Services To Appear Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on LBS & TeleCartography at South China Normal University (SCNU) on 20th - 22nd Sept, 2010, Guangzhou, China
• Ying, F. and Mooney, P. and Corcoran, P. A shape complexity approach to simplification of geospatial data for use in Location-based Services To Appear Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on LBS & TeleCartography at South China Normal University (SCNU) on 20th - 22nd Sept, 2010, Guangzhou, China (Accepted for Post-conference edited volume by Springer)
• Corcoran, P. and Mooney, P.Topological and Shape Consistent Vector Map Simplification for LBS To Appear Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on LBS & TeleCartography at South China Normal University (SCNU) on 20th - 22nd Sept, 2010, Guangzhou, China (Accepted for Post-conference edited volume by Springer)
• Mooney, P. and Corcoran, P. and Winstanley A.C. A Study of Natural Feature representation in OpenStreetMap To Appear Proceedings of GIScience 2010: Sixth international conference on Geographic Information Science Zurich, 14-17th September, 2010
• Corcoran, P. and Winstanley, A.C and Mooney, P. and Tilton, J. Convexity Based Perceptual Organization of Image Contours. To Appear In Proceedings of The International Machine Vision and Image Processing Conference (IMVIP), University of Limerick, Ireland (September 2010).
• Ciepluch, B. and Mooney, P. and Jacob, R. and Winstanley, A. Comparison of the accuracy of OpenStreetMap for Ireland with google maps and Bing maps. In Proceedings of the 9th International Symposium on Spatial Accuracy Assessment in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences (2010), N. J. Tate and P. F. Fisher, Eds., University of Leicester, UK, pp. 337-340.
• Mooney, P. and Corcoran, P. Can we look at your Polygons? Presentation at the OpenStreetMap State of the Map (SOTM) 2010 conference in Girona, Spain. July 2010.
• Ciepluch, B. and Mooney, P. and Jacob R. and Corcoran, P. Using a fully open source approach to working with OpenStreetMap Presentation at the 2nd Annual Open Source GIS UK (OSGIS) Conference held at Centre for Geospatial Science University of Nottingham, UK (June 2010)
• Mooney, P. and Corcoran, P. and Jacob, R. and Ciepluch, B. Citizens as sensors. How can phenology benefit from volunteered geographic information? Invited presentation at the International Conference on Phenology 2010: Climate change impacts and adaptations Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, June 2010
• Zheng, J. and Chen, X. and Ciepluch, B. and Winstanley, A.C. and Mooney, P. and Jacob R. Mobile routing services for small towns using Cloudmade API and OpenStreetMap: Maynooth as an example. In Proceedings of the 14th Joint International Conference on Theory, Data Handling and Modelling in GeoSpatial Information Science (Hong Kong, China, 2010), J. Shi, Q. Zhou, Y. Leung, and C. Zhou, Eds., The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, pp. 149-154.
• Ying, F. and Mooney, P. and Corcoran, P. and Winstanley A.C. Polygon processing on openstreetmap xml data. In Proceedings of the GIS Research UK 18th Annual Conference (London, England, 2010), M. Haklay, J. Morely, and H. Rahemtulla, Eds., University College London, pp. 149-154.
• Ciepluch, B. and Zheng, J. and Mooney, P. and Winstanley A.C. Development of a server to manage a customised local version of OpenStreetMap in Ireland. In Proceedings of the GIS Research UK 18th Annual Conference (London, England, 2010), M. Haklay, J. Morely, and H. Rahemtulla, Eds., University College London, pp. 149-154.
• Mooney, P. and Corcoran, P. and Winstanley, A. Preliminary results of a spatial analysis of Dublin's bike rental scheme. In Proceedings of the GIS Research UK 18th Annual Conference (London, England, 2010), M. Haklay, J. Morely, and H. Rahemtulla, Eds., University College London, pp. 149-154.
• Corcoran, P. and Winstanley, A.C and Mooney, P. Segmentation performance evaluation for object-based remotely sensed image analysis. International Journal of Remote Sensing 31, 3 (2010), 617-645.
• Jacob, R. and Zheng, J. and Ciepluch, B. and Mooney, P. and Winstanley, A.C. Campus guidance system for international conferences based on openstreetmap. In Carswell, J. D., Fotheringham, A. S., and McArdle, G., Eds. Web and Wireless Geographical Information Systems, 9th International Symposium, W2GIS 2009, Maynooth, Ireland, December 7-8, 2009. Proceedings (2009), vol. 5886 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer. pp. 187-198.
• Jacob, R. and Zheng, J. and Winstanley, A.C. and Ciepluch, B. and Mooney, P. A multi-lingual pedestrian navigation and campus guidance system using Cloudmade api. In Proceedings of 10th International Conference on GeoCom- putation (Sydney, Australia, November 2009), B. G. Lees and S. W. Laffan, Eds., University of New SouthWales, pp. 473-477.
• Ciepluch, B. and Mooney, P. and Jacob, R. and Winstanley, A.C. Using Openstreetmap to deliver location-based environmental information in Ireland. SIGSPATIAL Special 1, 3 (2009), 17-22.
• Mooney, P. Data Management: What the EPA require from your STRIVE funded project? Invited plenary presentation at the Environmental Protection Agency's Research Seminar Conference 2009. November 2009, Dublin Ireland.
• Mooney, P. Open Access to Scientific Knowledge Invited plenary presentation for Expert Panel Discussion at the Environmental Protection Agency's Research Seminar Conference 2009. November 2009, Dublin Ireland.
• Mooney, P. and Padraig Corcoran and Winstanley, A.C. Evaluating Twitter for use in climate change awareness campaigns. In CIICT 2009 Proceedings of the China-Ireland International Conference on Information and Communications Technologies (Maynooth, Ireland, 2009), National University of Ireland Maynooth, pp. 83--87.
• Mooney, P. and Winstanley, A.C. Representations of Environmental Data in Web-based GIS. In Nick J. Mount, G. L. Harvey, Paul Aplin, and Gary Priestnall, editors, Innovations in GIS 13: Representing, Modeling and Visualizing the Natural Environment, pages 101-116. CRC Press, 2009.
• Mooney, P. and Corcoran, P. and Winstanley, A.C. Integrating environmental research data into the shared environmental information system (SEIS). In Proceedings of the European conference of the Czech Presidency of the Council of the EU TOWARDS eENVIRONMENT. Opportunities of SEIS and SISE: Integrating En- vironmental Knowledge in Europe. Jirí Hrebícek (chief editor), Jirí Hradec, Emil Pelikán, Ondrej Mírovský, Werner Pillmann, Ivan Holoubek, Thomas Bandholtz (Eds.) Masaryk University, (Brno, Czech Republic, March 2009) pp. 237-241.
• Mooney, P. and Winstanley, A.C. Making Environmental Research Data Publicly Available - Experiences From Ireland. Enviro Info 2008, Lunenburg, Germany. September 2008
• Mooney, P. and Winstanley, A.C. Improving Environmental Research Data Management. Enviro Info 2007, Warsaw Poland. September 2007
• Mooney, P. and Winstanley, A.C: Evaluating Interfaces to Publicly Available Environmental Information: Human Computer Interaction 2007: Human Interface, Part I, HCII 2007, Lecture Notes Computer Science 4557, Beijing, China. July 2007
• Donnelly, A., Jennings, E., Finnan, J., Mooney, P., OMahony,T, Thrivel, R and Byrne, G: Objectives, targets and indicator for use in Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy & Management 8: 135-156. 2006
• Mooney, P. and Winstanley, A.C: Evolutionary algorithm for multicriteria path optimization problems International Journal of Geographical Information Science Vol. 20, No. 4, April 2006
• Mooney, P. Web accessibility for dynamically generated websites. In Proceedings of IASTED-HCI 2005 Human-Computer Interaction (Phoenix, Arizona, USA, November 2005), M. Hamza, Ed., IASTED/ACTA Press, pp. 149-154.
• Mooney, P. and Winstanley, AC: Mapping and Internet Based Public Transportation Journey Planning and Information Systems, in Peterson, M. (Ed): Maps and the Internet, 291-310, Elsevier, December 2003

Interests etc...

Outside of research work I run (lots). I have ran 29 marathons (since 2002 and up to August 2010) with a personal best of 2 hours 38 minutes. I have also ran 2:39, 2:40 (three times), and 2:41 (four times). Personal bests in other races include 15:31 (5Km), 33:10 (10KM), 26:00 (5 Miles), and 1:13:10 (1/2 marathon).

I enjoy taking photographs with a Nikon D5000. My Flickr account will give you an overview of what I, or people using my camera, usually photograph. In an almost accidental example of recursion my photosets on Flickr will reveal more information about my other interests.

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