Dr René Westerholt
Information on archiving:
Selected pages of this website are being preserved for archiving purposes. Since their contents are not getting updated anymore, the given information may be out of date or inaccurate.
I am a geo-information scientist at the GIScience group of the Institute of Geography, where I am teaching spatial analysis and GIS courses and am conducting research on spatial analysis methodologies. My background is geoinformatics, in which I graduated with an MSc degree from the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Osnabrück University. Currently, I am conducting a PhD project on the spatial analysis of social media and related data, which includes the participation in a DFG priority programme on volunteered geographic information. My practical experience includes working with the Botanical Garden of Osnabrück University, where I have been working as a software developer for several years in nature conservation projects. Further, I conducted several independent software projects with different external partners. I am professional member of the OGC, the Association for Geoinformatics, GeoIT and Navigation, and a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in London.
- the application of spatial statistics to AGI data,
- spatial analysis methodologies (e.g., Moran’s I, G-statistics),
- the role of spatial heteroscedasticity and spatial variance in AGI data,
- the conflation of spatial and platial analysis.
Research Experience
Since 2013: | Research Assistant, GIScience Research Group, Institute of Geography, Faculty of Chemistry and Earth Sciences, Heidelberg University (Germany). |
10/2013 -12/2013: |
Visiting Scholar, Center for Geographic Analysis, Institute for Quantiative Social Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (USA). |
2011-2012: | Research Assistant, Steinbeis Centre for Applied Geoinformatics and Environmental Research, Osnabrück (Germany). |
Practical Experience
2011-2017: | Software Developer (mobile and web-based GIS applications), Botanical Garden, Osnabrück University (Germany). |
2010-2011: | Software Developer (web-based routing application), Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg (Germany). |
Education
2013-2018: | Ph.D. (Dr. rer. nat.), GIScience Research Group, Institute of Geography, Faculty of Chemistry and Earth Sciences, Heidelberg University (Germany). |
2010-2012: | Graduate Studies of Geoinformatics (M.Sc.), Institute for Geoinformatics and Remote Sensing, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Osnabrück University (Germany). |
2007-2010: | Undergraduate Studies of Geoinformatics (B.Sc.), Institute for Geoinformatics and Remote Sensing, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Osnabrück University (Germany). |
Awards and Honours
04/2018: | First Prize CDRC Data Challenge, GISRUK'18 Conference, Leicester, UK |
03/2014: | Young Researchers Award 2013, North-German Society for Geoinformatics |
10/2013: | International Mobility Grant Funding, German Universities Excellence Initiative II |
01/2013: | PhD Scholarship, State of Baden-Württemberg |
Peer-reviewed Journal Articles
Li, M., Westerholt, R. and Zipf, A. (accepted): Do people communicate about their whereabouts? Investigating the relation between user-generated text messages and Foursquare check-in places. Geo-spatial Information Science, volume and issue pending. DOI: pending.
Westerholt, R., Resch, B., Mocnik, F.-B., and Hoffmeister, D. (2018): A statistical test on the local effects of spatially structured variance. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 32 (3), 571 - 600. DOI: 10.1080/13658816.2017.1402914.
Li, M., Westerholt, R., Fan, H. and Zipf, A. (2018): Assessing spatiotemporal predictability of LBSN: A case study of three Foursquare datasets. GeoInformatica, 22 (3), 541–561. DOI: 10.1007/s10707-016-0279-5.
Bluemke, M., Resch, B., Lechner, C., Westerholt, R. and Kolb, JP. (2017): Integrating Geographic Information into Survey Research: Current Applications, Challenges and Future Avenues. Survey Research Methods, 11 (3), 307-327. DOI: 10.18148/srm/2017.v11i3.6733.
Borgmann, P., Westerholt, R., Oevermann, S. and Zachgo, S. (2017): Webbasierte und mobile Datenerfassung im Projekt "Netzwerk zum Schutz gefährdeter Wildpflanzen in Deutschland (WIPs-De)". Natur und Landschaft, 92 (2), 69 - 75. DOI: 10.17433/2.2017.50153439.69-75.
Westerholt, R., Steiger, E., Resch, B. and Zipf, A. (2016): Abundant Topological Outliers in Social Media Data and Their Effect on Spatial Analysis. PLOS ONE, 11 (9), e0162360. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0162360.
Steiger, E., Westerholt, R., Resch, B. and Zipf, A. (2015): Twitter as an indicator for whereabouts of people? Correlating Twitter with UK census data. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 54, 255-265. DOI: 10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2015.09.007.
Westerholt, R., Resch, B. and Zipf, A. (2015): A local scale-sensitive indicator of spatial autocorrelation for assessing high- and low-value clusters in multi-scale datasets. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 29 (5), 868-887. DOI: 10.1080/13658816.2014.1002499.
You can find a preprint ("as accepted") here.
Westerholt, R. and Resch, B. (2014): Asynchronous Geospatial Processing: An Event-Driven Push-Based Architecture for the OGC Web Processing Service. Transactions in GIS, 19 (3), 455-479. DOI: 10.1111/tgis.12104.
Conference Proceedings
Westerholt, R., Gröbe, M., Zipf, A. and Burghardt, D. (2018): Towards the statistical analysis and visualization of places. 10th International Conference on Geographic Information Science, Melbourne, Australia, DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.GIScience.2018.63.
Westerholt, R. (2018): The impact of the spatial superimposition of point based statistical configurations on assessing spatial autocorrelation. In: Proceedings of the 21st AGILE Conference on Geographic Information Science, Lund, Sweden.
Westerholt, R. (2017): Topological and scale-related issues in Twitter analyses through superimposed forms of spatial heterogeneity. Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers 2017, Boston, MA.
Borgmann, P. and Westerholt, R. (2015): Citizen Science im Botanischen Artenschutz. Dialogforum Citizen Science, German Federal Environmental Foundation, Osnabrück, Germany.
Reimer, A. and Westerholt, R. (2014): Schematization for the analysis of geolocated microblog messages. In: Proceedings of AutoCarto 2014, International Symposium on Automated Cartography, Pittsburgh, PA.
Westerholt, R., Borgmann, P. and Zimmer, B. (2012): WebMapping-basierte Erfassung pflanzengenetischer Ressourcen in der Botanik. In: Löwner, M.-O., Hillen, F. and Wohlfahrt, R. (eds.): Geoinformatik 2012 „Mobilität und Umwelt“. Aachen: Shaker-Verlag, 411 - 414.
Borgmann, P., Westerholt, R., Zimmer, B. and Zachgo, S. (2012): Einsatz eines Geoportals in der Saatguterfassung. In: Lohwasser, U., Zachgo, S. und Börner, A. (ed.): Saatguterhaltung und Nutzbarmachung von Kulturpflanzen und heimischen Wildarten. Nürtingen: Gesellschaft für Pflanzenbauwissenschaften e.V., Berichte der Gesellschaft für Pflanzenbauwissenschaften, volume 6, 17 - 19.
Book Chapters
Steiger, E., Westerholt, R. and Zipf, A. (2016): Research on social media feeds – A GIScience perspective. In: Capineri, C, Haklay, M, Huang, H, Antoniou, V, Kettunen, J, Ostermann, F and Purves, R. (eds.): European Handbook of Crowdsourced Geographic Information, London: Ubiquity Press, 237-254. DOI: 10.5334/bax.r.
Further Contributions
Borgmann, P., Westerholt, R., Oevermann, S. and Zachgo, S. (2014): WEL-Webmapping. In: Poschlod, P., Borgmann, P., Listl, D., Reisch, C. and Zachgo, S. (eds.): Handbuch Genbank WEL. Regensburg: HOPPEA Denkschriften der Regensburgischen Botanischen Gesellschaft, 133 - 140.
2018: | Places–Analysing Human Urban Experiences, Mini Conference on VGI and Social Media for Urban Planning, Z_GIS, University of Salzburg, Austria |
2018: | Urban Spatial Heterogeneity – Nuisance, or Source of Information?, WISC Seminar Series, Warwick Institute for the Science of Cities, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK |
2017: | Topological and scale-related issues in Twitter analyses through superimposed forms of spatial heterogeneity, Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Hynes Convention Center, Boston, MA, USA |
2017: | Methodological challenges in the spatial analysis of georeferenced social media data, ABCD GIS Series, Center for Geographic Analysis, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA |
2016: | Mining the “big noise:“ Challenges and opportunities of social media analysis, Mapping, Sensing, and Crowdsourcing Geographic Information, Royal Geographical Society, London, UK |
2016: | Spatial Analysis of Twitter Data, WISC Seminar Series, Warwick Institute for the Science of Cities, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK |
2016: | The mapping portal of the GE_Sell project, Coordination Meeting GE_Sell, Federal Agency for Agriculture and Food, Bonn, Germany |
2015: | Mixed-Scale Spatial Autocorrelation, Forum GI, Institute for Geoinformatics and Remote Sensing, Osnabrück University, Germany |
2015: | Sampling and management of species in the national responsibility of Germany within the WIPs-De project, Dialogforum Citizen Science, German Federal Environmental Foundation, Osnabrück, Germany |
2014: | Peeling the onion – multiple geographic scale levels within tweets, CrowdAnalyser Workshop 2014, Heidelberg Collaboratory for Image Processing, Heidelberg, Germany |
2013: | Multi-Scale Event Detection on Twitter Tweets, Geography Colloquium, Center for Geographic Analysis, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA |
2012: | Using a geoportal in seed collection, Joint Congress of the Consortia for Seeds and Plant Breeding, Society for Plant Breeding, Osnabrück, Germany |
Convening and Organizing of Scientific Events
2017: | Workshop: Spatial urban analytics and crowdsourced geographic information for smarter cities (convenor and session chair), Annual International Conference, Royal Geographical Society, London, UK |
2015: | Workshop: CrowdAnalyser 2015 (co-organiser), Institute of Geography, Heidelberg University, Germany |
2014: | Workshop: CrowdAnalyser 2014 (co-organiser), Heidelberg Collaboratory for Image Processing, Heidelberg University, Germany |
2017: | Special Issue on Crowdsourcing for Urban Geoinformatics (guest editor), Geo-spatial Information Science, Taylor & Francis |
WS 2017/18: | Masterclass on "Spatial Analysis" (Invited Compact Course, University of Warwick, UK) |
WS 2017/18: | Introduction to the spatial analysis of human-geographic data (Lecture) |
SS 2017: | Introduction to computer science for geographers (Seminar + Lab) |
SS 2017: | Introduction to GIS (Lab; conception and supervision of tutors) |
WS 2016/17: | Introduction to the spatial analysis of human-geographic data (Lecture) |
WS 2016/17: | Spatiostatistical exploration of human-geographic data (Lab) |
SS 2016: | Fundamentals of computer science for geographers (Seminar + Lab) |
SS 2016: | Introduction to GIS (Lab; conception and supervision of tutors) |
WS 2015/16: | Spatial associations in human geography (Lecture) |
- Geo-Spatial Information Science, Taylor & Francis
- International Journal of Digital Earth, Taylor & Francis
- Journal of Location Based Services, Taylor & Francis
- Knowledge and Information Systems, Springer
- Open Geospatial Data, Software and Standards, Springer
- Transactions in GIS, John Wiley & Sons
- Royal Geographical Society, Fellow
- Association for Geoinformatics, GeoIT and Navigation, Member
- OGC, Member