Probably the most popular photo motif during spring time in Bonn? The cherry blossom! As every year, the cherry blossom festival takes place in Bonn's old town. Tourists, citizens and even professional photographers from all over the world travel to find Bonn in a pink sea of cherry blossoms and capture the spectacle photographically. These photos are often tagged with location data and shared with the public via social media.
Researchers at the Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformation have now taken advantage of this information. Research assistant Peter Rottmann analyzed the photos and used the data to visualize on a map where the most photos of cherry blossoms were taken in Bonn. Around 380 photos from the social media platform Flickr from the years 2006 to 2021 were used for the resulting map. The map should make it easier for future visitors to find attractive locations for their perfect snapshot.
Background: In the priority program VGIScience of the German Research Foundation, researchers at the University of Bonn are investigating the potential of such information shared via social media (more generally: Volunteered Geographic Information, VGI). Three research groups of the Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformation and the Institute of Computer Science at the University of Bonn are involved in the priority program.