English Version: A quick chat with Qasem Safariallahkheili

What is your personal role in the InNoWest project?

Qasem Safariallahkheili: I’m part of the Digitalisation team and affiliated with Potsdam University of Applied Sciences. My role focuses on developing web-based GIS solutions that support sustainable development and enhance user interaction. My work involves handling and visualising geographic data on both the backend and frontend sides of the application.

So you are creating the backend and frontend of MOSIDI?

Qasem Safariallahkheili: Yes, that’s right. We are currently developing MOSIDI, a web-based application designed to host, store, process, visualise, and interact with various geospatial datasets. Especially decision-makers –particularly at the municipal level can use it. The goal is to help them better understand and interpret the complexity of these datasets. We are developing tools for all statistical levels of municipalities across Germany, and we have already conducted several successful user tests with local authorities.

We work with both demographic and environmental data that come from heterogeneous sources such as different geoportals and data providers. For instance, demographic datasets are sourced from INKAR, while environmental datasets are obtained from the Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD), including variables such as precipitation, frost index, sunshine duration, and frost days.

Are there examples from other countries with apps comparable to MOSIDI?

Qasem Safariallahkheili: Within Germany, there are multiple institutions developing similar initiatives. For example, I connected with one of them at a conference in June. They are working on strategies for hosting and visualising demographic datasets across the country. Naturally, there are also various portals and solutions that perform functions similar to MOSIDI.

Looking ahead, I hope we can establish a communication framework and collaborative efforts with other organisations pursuing similar goals. This would help avoid redundancy, reduce duplicated efforts, and ensure that public resources are used efficiently. Achieving this requires significant work at the management and coordination level.

What are the biggest current challenges in your subproject?

Qasem Safariallahkheili: One of the main challenges is user engagement – specifically, how to encourage municipalities to use the application and build their trust in it. To address this, we need to communicate the credibility of our visualisations and the underlying data. One solution is providing metadata, which describes the sources, accuracy, and reliability of the data.

Another challenge is the comprehensibility of results and visualisations. Our users range, and not all of them have expertise in cartography or working with geospatial data. Therefore, we need to make maps and analytical results intuitive and easy to interpret.

One potential strategy we are exploring is using large language models (LLMs) to generate textual summaries of visualised results. This allows users to understand the data both visually and through explanatory text, improving accessibility for a wider audience.

In summary, our key challenges are engaging users, building trust, and making the application understandable across different user groups.

Do you think MOSIDI will play a role in the future?

Qasem Safariallahkheili: We envision that future maintenance and development of MOSIDI could be supported by an organisation with which we are already in communication. MOSIDI’s modular and simple architecture makes it a flexible and extensible application. Future maintainers could easily add new modules or plugins on top of the existing system, allowing the platform to evolve and continue supporting municipalities and decision-makers effectively.