MapScore Updates

MapScore has been updated to include Batch Upload, and fix or improve a number of other features.

The MapScore site has been updated! The most exciting new feature is Batch Upload.

  • Batch Upload!  In one fell swoop, upload and re-score all your models and cases (or as many as necessary).  No more clicking around or messing with “active” vs “inactive” cases.  (Unless you want to...)
MapScore batch upload screen. New Nov. 2013.
MapScore batch upload screen. New Nov. 2013.

  • Corollary: you can now redo any case.  New values simply replace old values.  The old system was too rigid.  Modelers are developing as they test, and often discover glitches in the model or data layers.
  • Upload now accepts all RGB and Grayscale PNG images, using the Python Imaging Library to convert them to grayscale before scoring.  (Of course, there is no guarantee that the conversion preserves the rankings of your idiosyncratic full-color heatmap, but that’s not really our problem is it?  J )
  • Leaderboard: fixed averages & confidence intervals, improved formatting.

There are various and sundry small fixes in this a previously un-announced update.  For example:

  • Cleaner login:MapScore login
  • Upgraded to a production webserver & virtual machine.
  • Refactored a bunch of back-end code. Of course.

Elena is now running batches of “Updated” versions of the base models (Distance, Watershed, Combined).  We discovered glitches in the way ArcGIS was exporting PNG files. For now we are leaving the old models up for comparison, but will eventually just replace them.

 

Thanks...

  • SysAdmin extraordinaire Nick Clark for the core upgrades.
  • Summer high-school intern Hardhik Nadella for streamlined HTML.
  • Elena Sava (now a graduate student!) & Mukul Sonwalkar for improvements to the baseline models.
  • 2013 DHS SBIR award to dbS Productions, LLC to support work batch upload.
  • 2011 NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates award to Brigham Young University to create MapScore in the first place.
  • IARPA & Mason: Day-to-day funding for MapScore comes from (a small portion of) the overhead funds from my day job, the SciCast Science & Technology forecasting project.

Author: ctwardy

Charles Twardy started the SARBayes project at Monash University in 2000. Work at Monash included SORAL, the Australian Lost Person Behavior Study, AGM-SAR, and Probability Mapper. At George Mason University, he added the MapScore project and related work. More generally, he works on evidence and inference with a special interest in causal models, Bayesian networks, and Bayesian search theory, especially the analysis and prediction of lost person behavior. From 2011-2015, Charles led the DAGGRE & SciCast combinatorial prediction market projects at George Mason University, and has recently joined NTVI Federal as a data scientist supporting the Defense Suicide Prevention Office. Charles received a Dual Ph.D. in History & Philosophy of Science and Cognitive Science from Indiana University, followed by a postdoc in machine learning at Monash.