Digital Commons Network^™

Utilization Of Gis In Tracking Disinterment And Movement Of Unknown Us Wwii War Dead: Foundations For A Geospatial Approach To Addressing Commingled Remains, Ella Axelrod

Anthropology Department: Theses

In the aftermath of World War II, the US was faced with the monumental task of finding and identifying over 405,000 service members who did not survive the conflict (McDermott, 2005, p. 1). Of these 405,000, 81,000 remain missing and 2,498 remain unidentified in cemeteries across Europe alone (American Battle Monuments Commission, 2022). Often, these individuals were interred and disinterred multiple times, crossing the continent in the journey from loss incident or battlefield to their final resting place. Commingling, the accidental mixing of remains, is an ever-present concern in the forensic identification of individuals from mass casualty incidents (Belcher et …

Application Of Geospatial Technologies For Urban Planning And Management, Flood Modelling, Urban Heat Island, Water Resources Management And Planning, Hydrological Modelling, Climate Change And Water Quality Modelling Etc., Anoop Kumar Shukla Dr.

Basic Science Collection

Human activities are altering the natural landscape on the earth’s surface. The thermal environment of densely populated cities is also experiencing rapid change. Remote sensing provides the necessary spatial and temporal data to understand cities' complex human–climate interactions. However, the complex temporal and spatial variability of human activities, urban landscapes, and urban climates make understanding the interactions among them challenging. The study of human–climate interactions is also complicated by the mixed pixels of remote sensing data.

Therefore, I am looking to collaborate with those who want to do research in the field of Remote Sensing and GIS application in water …

Pesticide Application Management Toolset For Worker Protection Standards, Nathan W. Thorson

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The application of Pesticides has become a widely adopted practice within modern agriculture, however this practice poses a significant health risk to farm workers and crop advisors when pesticide exposures occur. Current safety standards require documentation of each application to help mitigate human exposure, yet these standards rely heavily on antiquated data collection formats and complex communication systems putting little emphasis on notification timeliness. Our objective was to reduce the risk of pesticide exposure for all farm workers and crop advisors by utilizing technological automation processes to reduce the number of links within the communication system. This proved successful though …

Tracking And Estimating The Commingling Of Missing U.S. Service Personnel: A Gis And Forensic Anthropological Approach, Mason Mckinney

Anthropology Department: Theses

During times of war, the remains of fallen U.S. military service members overseas are often difficult to track postmortem as they move from their recovery location to a permanent cemetery. After a recovery, remains are typically sent to multiple temporary cemeteries, morgues, and/or identification points before reaching their final resting place. Repeated disinterments and reinterments among vast numbers of remains in multiple temporary locations may lead to unintended commingling. This analysis is meant to examine the postmortem movement of multiple U.S. military members and assess their potential for commingling based on historical records and identification reports supplied by the Defense …

Osm-Gan: Using Generative Adversarial Networks For Detecting Change In High-Resolution Spatial Images, Lasith Niroshan, James Carswell

Articles

Detecting changes to built environment objects such as buildings/roads/etc. in aerial/satellite (spatial) imagery is necessary to keep online maps and various value-added LBS applications up-to-date. However, recognising such changes automatically is not a trivial task, and there are many different approaches to this problem in the literature. This paper proposes an automated end-to-end workflow to address this problem by combining OpenStreetMap (OSM) vectors of building footprints with a machine learning Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) model - where two neural networks compete to become more accurate at predicting changes to building objects in spatial imagery. Notably, our proposed OSM-GAN architecture achieved …

Multi-Criteria Evaluation Model For Classifying Marginal Cropland In Nebraska Using Historical Crop Yield And Biophysical Characteristics, Andrew Laws

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Marginal cropland is suboptimal due to historically low and variable productivity and limiting biophysical characteristics. To support future agricultural management and policy decisions in Nebraska, U.S.A, it is important to understand where cropland is marginal for its two most economically important crops: corn (Zea mays) and soybean (Glycine max). As corn and soybean are frequently planted in a crop rotation, it is important to consider if there is a relationship with cropland marginality. Based on the current literature, there exists a need for a flexible yet robust methodology for identifying marginal land at different scales, which …

Insular Interconnectivity In The Viking Age: A Geospatial View From Norse Jarlshof, Trent Michael Carney

Anthropology Department: Theses

During the Viking Age, settlements and trading centers were often located near lakes, seas, waterways, and sailing routes. As such, access to other locations was facilitated, whether for the purpose of settlement, trade, resource acquisition, or conflict, by some form of seafaring vessel or watercraft. Over the course of the Scandinavian Diaspora, a level of cultural and economic interconnectedness was maintained between mainland Scandinavia and the settlements in the North Atlantic region. This shared link with Scandinavia contributed to the development of local connections between insular and coastal sites within the broader diasporic network. This thesis considers the archaeological evidence …

Geospatial Assessment Of Groundwater Quality With The Distinctive Portrayal Of Heavy Metals In The United Arab Emirates, Imen Ben Salem, Yousef Nazzal, Fares M. Howari, Manish Sharma, Jagadish Kumar Mogaraju, Cijo M. Xavier

All Works

Groundwater is a valuable resource, and its quality is critical to human survival. Optimal farming and urbanization degraded groundwater reserves. This research investigates and reports the spatial variability of selected heavy metals developed in the Liwa area of the United Arab Emirates. Forty water samples were collected from existing wells and analyzed for different elements. Principal components analysis was applied to a subgroup of the data set in terms of their usefulness for determining the variability of groundwater quality variables. Geographic information systems were used to produce contour maps to analyze the distribution of heavy metals. Ordinary kriging was used …

Bridging The Geospatial Education-Workforce Divide: A Case Study On How Higher Education Can Address The Emerging Geospatial Drivers And Trends Of The Intelligent Web Mapping Era, Wendy Rose Stout

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this exploratory collective case study is to discover how geospatial education can meet the geospatial workforce needs of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the emerging intelligent web mapping era. Geospatial education uses geographic information systems (GIS) to enable student learning by increasing in-depth spatial analysis and meaning using geotechnology tools (Baker & White, 2003). Bandura’s (1977) self-efficacy theory and geography concept of spatial thinking form an integrated theoretical framework of spatial cognition for this study. Data collection included in-depth interviews of twelve geospatial stakeholders, documentation collection, and supporting Q methodology to determine the viewpoints of a total …

‘Big’ And ‘Little’ Quo Vadis? In The United States, 1913–1916: Using Gis To Map Rival Modes Of Feature Cinema During The Transitional Era, Jeffrey Klenotic

Faculty Publications

This article emanates from a geospatial database of over 600 premieres of the Cines company’s Quo Vadis? (1913), an eight-reel film distributed by George Kleine, and nearly 250 premieres of the Quo Vadis Film Company’s Quo Vadis? (1913), a three-reel film of ambiguous origins distributed by Paul De Outo. By mapping local premieres of both films across the United States from 1913 through 1916, the data show with spatiotemporal precision the spread of Quo Vadis? as one of cinema’s early blockbuster titles. Yet within this national phenomenon, the two films’ footprints reveal differing cultural geographies served by competing efforts to …

The Role Of Aid On Peace Consolidation In Postwar Sri Lanka, Narayani Sritharan

Economics Department Working Paper Series

The three-decade war in Sri Lanka left parts of the northern and eastern regions severely destroyed. Those regions are populated by minority and marginalized ethnic groups. The expectation is that aid flows to those regions to rebuild after the war as they need the aid more than other places. Nonetheless, the regions are underdeveloped, and the underlying issues which caused the war are yet to be addressed. Hence, this paper aims to answer the research question, ‘Are conflict-affected districts a priority in aid allocation in postwar Sri Lanka?’ This paper is primarily concerned about the aid allocation post-conflict. However, since …