An employee of terrestris participated in this years Spring School at the ifgi (Institute for Geoinformatics) of the University of  Münster. Within the 10-day program three short block courses with innovative topics of GIScience were attended:

• Ontology, Vagueness and Geography (Brandon Bennett, University of Leeds, UK)
• Similarity: Concepts, measures, and applications in (cognitive) spatial sciences (Alexander Klippel, Penn State University, USA )
• Self-organizing Maps (Fernando Bação. ISEGI, New University of Lisbon, Portugal)

Besides introductive and deepening lectures the knowledge was consolidated by practical exercises:

Within the block “Similarity” a research proposal about the perception of “near and far” was developed. Therefore an analysis of the cammunity-based geonames data set and its “nearby” tag was introduced in order to determine the different understandings of “near and far”.

Developing a raw concept of integrating self-organizing maps (SOM) in current research projects was another task. Here a possible usage of SOM in a landslide early warning system was presented. Therefore the applicability of SOM within the ILEWS project, in which terrestris is partner, was analyzed: By sensor observations on endangered slopes and information on real landslides a derivation of critical measurement combinations could be possible.

We thank the organizer for the free of charge participation including a felicitous social program.