Geographic Information Sciences Commons^™

Lake Huron Shoreline Analysis, Shubham Satish Nandanwar

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Lake Huron is a popular tourist destination and is home to several businesses and residents. Since the shoreline is dynamic and is subject to change over the years due to several factors such as a change in water level, soil type, human encroachment, etc., these locations tend to encounter floods due to increased water levels and wind speed. This causes erosion and loss to the properties along the shoreline.

This study is based on two areas of interest named Pinery Provincial Park and Sauble Beach which are located on the shoreline of Lake Huron where Pinery Provincial Park is a …

Exploring The Relationship Between Drought And Population Change On The North American Great Plains, 1970-2010, George Heath

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Through the second half of the 20th century, the North American Great Plains saw widespread rural out-migration, a continuation of trends that began with the Dust Bowl crisis during the Great Depression of the 1930s. As part of a wider academic focus on the roles climate and environmental changes have on migration, this research project sought to understand the relationship between drought conditions and rural population decline on the Great Plains. In this explorative research, census population data for Canada and the US from 1970-2010 were analyzed along with temperature, precipitation, and Palmer Drought Severity Index data for the same …

Agent-Based Modelling And Big Data: Applications For Maritime Traffic Analysis, Marc Sirizzotti

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Agent based modeling (ABM) is a powerful tool for examining complex systems in many scientific applications, including maritime transport systems. Growing demands for freight transport and increased industry emphasis on reducing environmental impacts have heightened the focus on vessel and port efficiency. This research aimed to create a maritime route planning model to simulate vessel movement in all waterways. The goal of the ship routing model developed in this research was to develop a simulation tool capable of reproducing real world shipping routes useful for navigation planning, with emphasis on port scheduling and potential application for further use and exploration. …

Factors Limiting Sand Dune Restoration In Northwest Beach, Point Pelee National Park, Canada, Pritichhanda Nayak, Pritichhanda Mohanty Nayak

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Known as home to rare species of flora and fauna, and their critical habitats, Northwest beach of Point Pelee National Park has undergone significant ecological and infrastructural changes in the past decades. A number of important management challenges have emerged, including conservation of endangered Five-lined Skink (Plestiodon fasciatus) which inhabit the extensive dune system within the park. This research investigates key factors for sand dune ecosystem restoration in Northwest beach of Point Pelee with particular attention to the conservation of Skink habitat. Random stratified sampling method was used to collect sand and vegetation samples from the disturbed and …

Spatial Modelling And Wildlife Health Surveillance: A Case Study Of White Nose Syndrome In Ontario, Lauren Yee

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Wildlife data is often limited by survey effort, small sample sizes, and spatial biases associated with collection and missing data. These factors can create unique challenges from a surveillance perspective when trying to extract spatial patterns of habitat suitability and disease distributions for conservation and management purposes. This thesis examined data quality from a wildlife health database in the context of spatial analysis of wildlife disease. Spatial analysis of the data to predict habitat suitability of bats and white nose syndrome afflicted bats was examined by using the MaxEnt modelling method. Methods to reduce spatial bias were examined and specific …

Capturing In-Situ Feelings And Experiences Of Public Transit Riders Using Smartphones, Rafik Said, Rafik Said

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

High-density urban environments are susceptible to ever-growing traffic congestion issues, which speaks to the importance of implementing and maintaining effective and sustainable transportation networks. While transit oriented developments offer the potential to help mitigate traffic congestion issues, transit networks ought to be safe and reliable for ideal transit-user communities. As such, it is imperative to capture meaningful data regarding transit experiences, and deduce how transit networks can be enhanced or modified to continually maintain ideal transit experiences. Historically speaking, it has been relatively tricky to measure how people feel whilst using public transportation, without leaning on recall memory to explain …

Japanese Encephalitis: Assessing Disease Risk Due To Landscape Factors At Multiple Scales, Julia E. Metelka

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Japanese Encephalitis is a mosquito-borne disease and is the leading cause of viral encephalitis in Asia. In many Asian countries, the geographical distribution of JE is dependent on a variety of human-environment interactions that can be conceptualized as a complex social-ecological system. The JE transmission cycle is influenced by a few primary human-landscape factors; the abundance and the spatial configuration of rice paddy fields (which provide habitat for the vector), the distribution of pig farms (which position the virus' amplifying host), and the location of a susceptible human population. Our models integrate population dynamics, landscape characteristics, and weather variables that …

The Feasibility, Practicality And Uses Of Detecting Crop Water Stress In Southern Ontario Apple Orchards With A Uas, Thomas S. Tiidus Mr.

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

UAS (Unmanned Aerial Systems) are becoming more common place in agricultural sites around the world. While the accuracy of achieving NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) from a UAS is well understood, few studies have attempted to acquire other plant health attributes such as CWSI (Crop Water Stress Index), particularly in horticulture such as apple orchards. In addition, no academic studies up to the time of this writing have explored the perceived usefulness of data obtained from a UAS for the average farmer. This study explored the practicality and feasibility of using UAS for apple orchards in Southern Ontario. This study …

Analysis Of The Geosocial Landscape In The City Of Toronto, Courtney J. Jones

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Microblogging on geosocial platforms is a popular form of online communication where users post information about their daily lives and challenges. Since the launch of Twitter in 2006, information sharing through social media has become a largely unused data repository. Tweets often convey content about the users sentiment as it is happening. As such, Tweets can be viewed as a proxy of public mood. In this thesis, I performed a sentiment analysis of all public geo-located Tweets posted by a variety of Twitter users between September 2013 and October 2014. Each Tweet was processed through a custom algorithm to extract …

Space-Time Modelling Of Emerging Infectious Diseases: Assessing Leptospirosis Risk In Sri Lanka, Cameron C F Plouffe

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In this research, models were developed to analyze leptospirosis incidence in Sri Lanka and its relation to rainfall. Before any leptospirosis risk models were developed, rainfall data were evaluated from an agro-ecological monitoring network for producing maps of total monthly rainfall in Sri Lanka. Four spatial interpolation techniques were compared: inverse distance weighting, thin-plate splines, ordinary kriging, and Bayesian kriging. Error metrics were used to validate interpolations against independent data. Satellite data were used to assess the spatial pattern of rainfall. Results indicated that Bayesian kriging and splines performed best in low and high rainfall, respectively. Rainfall maps generated from …

An Analysis Of Quality For Volunteered Geographic Information, Joel C H Meier

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In recent years there has been a growing number of online user communities engaged in the creation, visualization, and use of volunteered geographic information (VGI). These data may represent an untapped resource for researchers analyzing large-area geographic phenomena such as species distributions patterns or land and resource management issues. However very few studies have used VGI for analytic research questions as little is known about the quality of these data. An understanding of the validity of VGI is a prerequisite for further exploitation of these novel data sources in research contexts. This paper looks to identify key issues related to …

Integrated Spatial Analysis Of Volunteered Geographic Information, Haydn Lawrence

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) is becoming a pervasive form of data within geographic academic research. VGI offers a relatively new form of data, one with both potential as a sensitive way to collect information about the world, and challenges associated with unknown and heterogeneous data quality. The lack of sampling control, variable expertise in data collection and handling, and limited control over data sources are significant research challenges. In this thesis, data quality of VGI is tackled as a general composite measure based on coverage of the dataset, the evenness in the density of data, and the relative evenness in …

The Role Of Geospatial Thinking And Geographic Skills In Effective Problem Solving With Gis: K-16 Education, Niem Tu Huynh

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Effective use of a Geographic Information System (GIS) is hampered by the limited geospatial reasoning abilities of students. The ability to reason with spatial relations, more specifically apply geospatial concepts, including the identification of spatial patterns and spatial associations, is important to geographic problem solving in a GIS context. This dissertation examines the broad influence of three factors on GIS problem solving: 1) affection towards computers, geography, and mathematics, 2) geospatial thinking, as well as 3) geographic skills.

The research was conducted with 104 students in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Students were drawn from four educational levels: grade 9 students, 13 …

Intra-Urban Analysis Of Commercial Locations: A Gis-Based Approach, Christopher D. Storie

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The urban landscape is an interspersed mixing of residences, shops, theaters, parks, natural areas, and a multitude of other uses. From the early days of the central markets, to the planned downtown, to the heavily planned super-regional shopping complexes, commercial landscapes evolve. There has been considerable research conducted on analyzing the commercial structure of urban environments in an attempt to better understanding the nature of retailing and its resultant impacts on the geography of the city.

This research has three broad goals: a) to develop a technique that makes operational, in a systematized and objective manner, an approach to analyzing …

An Analytical Overview Of The Factors Influencing Housing Accessibility Of Bangladeshi Immigrants In Kitchener-Waterloo, Farzana Afreen Propa

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This study explores Bangladeshi immigrants’ settlement experiences in Kitchener-Waterloo (K-W) and alyses their housing history, housing search process, barriers and discrimination in accessing housing in the area. It reveals the factors that influence Bangladeshi immigrants housing accessibility in K-W. It also summarises recommendations to support and improve their housing situation. Qualitative research methods were used to collect and document the findings of the research.

The study findings reveal Bangladeshi immigrant households in K-W have comparaitvely higher levels of education compared to mainstream population and better employment condition compared to other Bangladeshi immigrants living in Toronto or Montreal. Many of these …

Using Gis And Spatial Statistics To Explore And Model Demand For Emergency Medical Services In The City Of Sudbury, Ontario, Marc Lefebvre

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The purpose of this research is to examine the nature of the relationship between EMS ambulance call volume and demographic, socioeconomic and geographic (urban structural) forces in the City of Sudbury, a medium sized city of approximately 100,000 persons in Ontario, Canada. As in past research in the area of EMS demand, linear regression is used to model this relationship. However, unlike previous work, spatial autocorrelation inherent in real world data is addressed to mitigate violation of the assumption of independence required for classic regression. Using a Geographical Information System (ArcView 3.2) EMS data are geolocated onto a spatial framework …

Using A Computerized Data Collection Method To Explore Sketch Map Drawing Sequence, Niem Tu Huynh

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Cognitive mapping has attracted immense interest from many fields, creating collaborative and cross-disciplinary research. The study of cognitive maps enjoyed almost two decades of growth, until its decline in the early 1980s. By the 1990s, the new cross-disciplinary exchange with computer science and information technology has renewed interest in the field, which may be the next wave of cognitive mapping research explosion. This study will, through the development of an innovative tool and an in depth analysis of cognitive maps, namely, sequence, search for links between sequence and other variables, namely sketch map type classification, sketch map drawing processes and …

Circulation Mapping Of The North Atlantic Ocean During The 1990'S And From 1974 To 1984 As Determined From The World Ocean Circulation Experiment (Woce) Eulerian Current Meter Moorings, Roger Palmini

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The Study of the ocean presents many challenges due to its vast size and the difficulty in representing such a system with the availability of few data measurements. The World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) is the largest oceanographic experiment ever conducted. Data collection has been completed and we are now in the analysis, interpretation, modeling and synthesis phases (AIMS). An analysis and interpretation of the North Atlantic Ocean was conducted using a subset of the WOCE data. In the pre-WOCE period between Apr-11-74 and Sep-03-84 a total of 272 records were obtained having a spatial range of 23.2˚- 60.2˚N and …

Combining Dynamic Cartography And Temporal Gis To Visualize Industrial Development In Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, Shawn Mueller

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This thesis uses dynamic cartography and temporal geographic information systems (GIS) to explore visualization of the industrial development of Kitchener, Ontario. The discussion centres on the nature of dealing with temporal data in geography. This project addresses this issue by constructing a temporal dataset that accounts for the historical location of industrial/manufacturing businesses in Kitchener. Based on this temporal data, animated visualizations are then constructed that show the cadence and distribution of industrial development in Kitchener. The visualization process used by this project makes use of the inherent temporality of GIS to plan and construct animated visualizations in a way …

The Use Of Geographic Information Systems To Study Repeat Victims Of Domestic Abuse In The Waterloo Region Of Ontario, Canada, Claudia Saheb

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The importance of repeat victims as an effective target for crime prevention measures has been widely recognised. Many have studied repeat victims of property crimes, but few have studied repeat victims of personal crimes and their spatial distribution. This study used 1996 and 1997 crime data from the Waterloo Regional Police Service (WRPS) in Ontario, Canada and focused specifically on domestic-abuse-related crimes and repeat victims of those crimes. Various methods of mapping and analysis were used to better understand the spatial distribution of those crimes and vulnerability of the victims. Standardised crime rates and crime density were calculated. Thematic and …

Assessing The Role Of Geographical Information Systems (Gis) In The Classroom, Christopher D. Storie

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Only within the past few years has the diffusion of geographical information systems (GIS) technologies made their way down the educational ladder. Until recently GIS was largely restricted to the confines of upper year university and college programs in Canada. Over time, the instruction of GIS has made its way towards first and second year post secondary students. Recently, GIS has been gaining popularity within the High School curriculum and continues to filter its way down the educational hierarchy. This thesis covers two major areas pertaining to GIS in education. The first area deals with the literature pertaining to GIS, …

Working Towards A Cartographic Lexicon: The Role Of Units, Structure, Content, And Expression In Geographic Information, Michael Charles Fabbri

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This thesis was conceived from an interdisciplinary perspective towards the advancement of cartographic research and geographic education. The primary focus is to understand the cognitive process of cartographic communication as an approach both to improvements in design and to teaching and learning of the cartographic language. Specifically, it attempts to understand more about how the map functions. It accepts that the map is a functional graphic display, whose main purpose is to represent, communicate, and store geographical information, which allows a focus on what that geographical information is conceptually. The essential goal of map use is geographic comprehension, and if …

Shoreline Bluff Failures: A Gis Assessment Of Susceptibility And Risk For Lake Erie's North Central Shore (Ontario), Nathan Joel Badger

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

One of the characteristic features of the north shore of Lake Erie is its steep, eroding bluffs. Combined with an increase in human presence and pressures at the shoreline, the failure of these slopes has become hazardous. Over the past two decades alone, slope failures have been responsible for millions of dollars of damage to shoreline property, as well as the deaths and near deaths of a number of individuals. Despite the seriousness of this hazard, few studies have identified specific hazard areas and their associated risk of failure along Lake Erie's north shore, and other reaches in the Great …

An Evaluation Of Ambulance Service Performance Using A Geographic Information System, Jeremy Peters

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The accessibility, distribution and utilization of emergency health care services have a great impact on the effectiveness, efficiency and equity of health service delivery. The impact of these factors is heightened by the fact that ambulance resources, which are an important component of emergency health care, are often insufficient, resulting in performances below those required to respond reliably to emergency calls from demand areas. Measures of realized geographic accessibility of ambulances to call locations are of considerable importance in planning the deployment of this service as they allow planners to account for response time variations, often caused when ambulances are …

Issues In Representing Ethnic Residential Segregation, Wanda Teresa Gayle Smith

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This study will look at some of the issues involved in representing ethnic residential segregation. Segregation studies rely heavily upon indices and maps. However, both of these are sensitive to the spatial boundaries used. As well, maps have a visual element which affects the nature and degree of representation. Toronto has been chosen as the area of study because of its high degree of ethnic diversity. Five indices that describe the five dimensions of segregation (Massey and Denton, 1988) will be calculated at four standard levels of aggregation. As well, several types of maps will be produced to illustrate the …

Modelling Spatial Processes: The Identification And Analysis Of Spatial Relationships In Regression Residuals By Means Of Moran's I (Germany), Michael Tiefelsdorf

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This thesis deals with the implementation, identification and analysis of relationships between geo-referenced objects. Significant spatial relationships manifest themselves in a spatial process which is modelled on a combination of spatial structure and spatial autocorrelation levels. Simple spatial structures reflect plain spill-over effects between adjacent spatial objects, whereas theoretical guided spatial structure mirror functional exchange relationships within the system of spatial objects. In empirical work, the underlying spatial process is unknown. The linking mechanism between a hypothetical spatial structure and a stochastic input must be identified from the observed data. This is accomplished here by means of the test statistic …

Teaching Secondary School Geography With The Use Of A Geographical Information System (Gis), Angela Louise Crechiolo

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Until quite recently, geographical information systems have been limited to the resources and students of post-secondary institutions. This situation is now changing in Ontario. In the early 1990's the Ministry of Education adopted mandates to develop curriculum guidelines for the integration of computers into all areas of the curriculum. Although the process is well underway in Ontario, limited access to hardware and software, insufficient pre-service and in-service training, and a paucity of teaching resources has lead to mounting teacher frustration. Although the literature base on teaching GIS at the pre-collegiate level is increasing, it lacks clearly defined examples of how …

Socio-Economic Factors And The Journey To Work: A Case Study Of At&T Gis Employees, Thomas A. Hammers

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Individuals who must commute to work are often concerned with the spatial separation of their home and job site. In many of these cases the socio-economic characteristics of these individual's lives play an important part in deciding how long this commute is, in terms of both time and distance. The following study seeks to identify the relationships between several selected socio-economic characteristics and the journey to work distances for employees at AT&T GIS. The factors being examined in this study are age, education level, number of dependents, income, length of service to the company, occupation type and gender. Significant differences …

Maps As A Visual Language: A Chinese Perspective, Zhaoyuan Li

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

One primary goal of cartographic research is to improve cartographic communication. Psychophysical and cognitive research has assisted our understanding of the map use process. The present study is from a perspective of maps as a visual language. This study hypothesizes that (1) the map symbol system constitutes a visual ideographic language and (2) cartographic communication may be improved by applying the methods of teaching visual ideographic languages as a second language. Chinese script originated in primitive drawings of concrete things--pictographs--and ideographs. These became stylized and combined, and were expanded greatly in number. Although the characters came to include phonetic symbols, …

A Test Of The Multiquadric Method Of Interpolation Using Drumlin Data From The Lunenburg, Nova Scotia And Peterborough, Ontario, Fields, Catherine Treena Conrad

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The multiquadric method of interpolation has been used to generate surfaces from irregularly distributed points of geophysical data, and has proven to be a successful means of mapping such data. There are four stages involved in the implementation of the method (Saunderson, 1994): (1) solution of a system of simultaneous, linear equations; (2) interpolation of new z values, for a number of locations within the x,y area of an initial sample space of points; (3) plots of all the z values at their respective locations, using colour graphics instead of contouring; and (4) plots of the partial derivatives of z …