Papers published by lab members were recently accepted into two upcoming symposia this December.
A short peer-reviewed paper entitled “Data Horror”: Mapping (Spatial) Data Privacy Violations onto a Cognitive Account of Horror lead by Master’s student Daniel Romm with contributions by Hongyu Zhang, Priyanka Verma, Grant McKenzie, and Emily Chen was accepted to the The 2nd Spatial Data Science Symposium. The event will take place December 13-14 online and is completely free. Register here.
A short peer-reviewed paper entitled Leveraging Place Reviews to Identify the Affects of COVID-19 on Canadian Tourism by Grant McKenzie was accepted to the Third International Symposium on Platial Data Science. Lab members, Hongyu Zhang and Grant McKenzie are also organizing a mini-workshop during this event related to Cyber Ethics in Platial Research. This symposium will take place December 15-17 online and almost free. Register here.
Abstracts for the two papers:
“Data Horror'”: Mapping (Spatial) Data Privacy Violations onto a Cognitive Account of Horror
by Daniel Romm, Hongyu Zhang, Priyanka Verma, Grant McKenzie, Emily Chen
While spatial data privacy is not a new concern, recent information technology developments that allow for the increased collection and alternative use of spatial data have brought the discussion about geoprivacy back in focus. In this work, we draw a parallel between a conceptualization of horror based on work from cognitive scientists and philosophers, and the intrusiveness of current data collection methods, the unauthorized use of this data, and the transgressions made by data stewards. By drawing this connection, we discuss the familiar topic of data privacy through a novel lens that clarifies the importance of data privacy and elucidates the particular importance of geoprivacy.
Leveraging Place Reviews to Identify the Affects of COVID-19 on Canadian Tourism
by Grant McKenzie
The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted travel world-wide and substantially impacted tourism in most countries. Though many governmental agencies and tourism boards have published data on the impact of the pandemic, in Canada, the vast majority of these data are reported at the national level or sparsely within individual regions. In this preliminary work, we leverage user-contributed tourist attraction reviews to better understand the nuanced changes in travel behavior resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. We examine the regional impacts as well as the affects on different categories of tourism within Canada. The purpose of this short paper is to demonstrate the value of analyzing place-based user-generated tourism data and highlight some of the ways it can be leveraged by policy experts and tourism agencies.