Geomatics Applications to Contemporary Social and Environmental Problems in Mexico

Abstract

Trends in geospatial technologies have led to the development of new powerful analysis and representation techniques that involve processing of massive datasets, some unstructured, some acquired from ubiquitous sources, and some others from remotely located sensors of different kinds, all of which complement the structured information produced on a regular basis by governmental and international agencies. In this chapter, we provide both an extensive revision of such techniques and an insight of the applications of some of these techniques in various study cases in Mexico for various scales of analysis: from regional migration flows of highly qualified people at the country level and the spatio-temporal analysis of unstructured information in geotagged tweets for sentiment assessment, to more local applications of participatory cartography for policy definitions jointly between local authorities and citizens, and an automated method for three dimensional (3D) modelling and visualisation of forest inventorying with laser scanner technology.