Developing Youth-Informed And Quality-Aware Spatial Accessibility Measures To Urban Parks Using A Survey-Based 2sfca Method In London, Ontario And Halifax, Nova Scotia, Zhe Chang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Park-related research has gained much attention in recent years, yet not enough studies have focused on the inequity of park accessibility and quality. These are crucial elements that influence youth’s park use, which in turn influence their physical, mental, and social development. Existing literature uses park size as the supply level to examine park accessibility but fails to consider any other park characteristics (e.g., amenities, general condition). This research developed youth-informed and quality-aware measures to consider the influence on park attraction by its quality and size rather than size only. This was implemented by consulting a youth advisory council to …

Understanding Changes To Human Mobility Patterns In Ontario, Canada During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Ben Klar

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Transportation research has shown that socio-demographic factors affect people’s mobility patterns. During the COVID-19 pandemic, some of these effects have changed in accordance with changing mobility needs adapting to the pandemic, including restrictions on in-person gatherings, closure of in-person businesses and working from home. We investigate two gaps in current knowledge in this area of transportation research: to what extent the association between socio-demographic factors and mobility metrics have changed, and how these associations vary across geographic space. We also investigate how closely Ontario’s Public Health Unit boundaries, based on which pandemic restrictions were applied, reflect actual travel regions, and …

Measuring The Morphologic Response Of Braided Rivers To Lateral Constriction, Victoria Barlow

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The aim of this thesis is to understand the morphologic changes to a set of historically braided rivers that have been narrowed. Braided rivers from the agriculturally developed Canterbury Plains, New Zealand, were studied from a period prior to much development (mid-1900s) to the present. Narrowing of channels, decreased braiding intensity, and loss of braided planforms were determined based on aerial imagery, changing the geography of braiding along all rivers. Channel width and count were statistically correlated and show the predictability of braiding change based on narrowing. Reaches with initially wide channels require more narrowing to induce a simplification of …

Using Spatial Methods To Analyse Anthropogenic Predation Risk And Movement Ecology Of White-Tailed Deer (Odocoileus Virginianus), Rhiannon D. Kirton

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Hunting has been used as a central tool by wildlife managers to maintain populations of game species, however, we still lack a good understanding of exactly how hunting influences deer biology. Technological advances in GPS data over the last two decades now enable us to perform more detailed analysis on the effects of human hunters on wildlife populations. This research explores the spatial ecology of hunters and White-tailed deer in the Cross Timbers ecoregion of Oklahoma. Using new statistical methodologies to analyse simultaneous GPS tracking data on deer and hunters to study their spatial interactions. The results show how new …

Life In Between: Prehispanic Settlement Patterns Of The Carabamba Valley, Northern Peru, Amedeo Sghinolfi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation is an archaeological study of the Carabamba Valley (ca. 150 - 3,500 m.a.s.l.) in Northern Peru, which aims to reconstruct settlement patterns through the longue durée (ca. 1800 B.C. - A.D. 1532). This study also documents the relations occupants of this frontier zone maintained with neighboring polities on the Peruvian North Coast (Virú Valley) and in the Northern Highlands. The valley features the resource-rich ecological niche called chaupiyunga, fed by rainwater that flows towards the Pacific Ocean and by a number of springs, where crops like coca, fruits, and vegetables can be easily grown. The Carabamba Valley also …

Intra-Field Nitrogen Estimation For Wheat And Corn Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle-Based And Satellite Multispectral Imagery, Plant Biophysical Variables, Field Properties, And Machine Learning Methods, Jody Seymon Yu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Management of nitrogen (N) fertilizers is an important agricultural practice and field of research to increase productivity, minimize environmental impacts and the cost of production. To apply N fertilizer at the right rate, time, and place depends on the crop type, desired yield, and field conditions. The objective of this study is to use Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) multispectral imagery, PlanetScope satellite imagery, vegetation indices (VI), crop height, leaf area index (LAI), field topographic metrics, and soil properties to predict canopy nitrogen weight (g/m²) of corn and wheat fields in southwestern Ontario, Canada. Random Forests (RF) and Support …

The Spatial Equity Of Dockless Micromobility Sharing Systems In Calgary, Canada, Vivian Kong

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Micromobility sharing systems, including bikes and e-scooters, are often promoted as solutions to urban transportation equity challenges. Dockless micromobility sharing systems however remain understudied due in part to their novelty. In particular, there has been limited research on the spatial equity of e-scooter sharing, which concerns whether systems are equally accessible across a city regardless of the relative advantage and disadvantage of urban areas.

This thesis reports on two related analyses of the spatial equity of e-scooter sharing in Calgary, Alberta, Canada using an open dataset of three months worth of trip data (July – September, 2019): a gravity model …

The Physical Properties Of Volcanic And Impact Melt, Gavin Douglas Tolometti

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The emplacement mechanisms of lunar impact melt flows, that form from hypervelocity impact events, have been a subject of debate in the lunar science community, because of their unique physical properties that separate them from other geologic features. Understanding how lunar impact melt flows were emplaced on the surface of the Moon will not only grant us new information about the flow dynamics of impact melt but provide insight into the production and distribution of impact melt and how it built and modified the surfaces of planetary surfaces.

Lunar impact melt flows exhibit surface roughness textures and morphologies that are …

A Novel Spatio-Temporal Examination Of Children's Accessibility, Exposure, And Engagement To Parks And Recreation Spaces In Middlesex-London, Ontario, Malcolm K. Little

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Children are spending more free time engaged in activities indoors, rather than in outdoor environments such as parks and recreation spaces. Parks and recreation spaces provide amenities that promote physical, cognitive, and social health among children. As it relates to the complexities of children’s living situations, properly measuring children’s levels of interactions with these spaces is poorly understood in geography research.

By examining various attributes of children, this thesis improves on the measurement of children’s levels of interactions with parks and recreation spaces. Research herein utilized household survey data, a high-resolution GIS dataset of environmental factors, and GPS logs from …

A Walkthrough Of The Canadian Video Game Industry: An Economic Geography Perspective On The Digital Entertainment Frontier, Grant L. Morin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The video game industry has been examined since the 1970’s, yet individual country analysis from an economic geography perspective has been lacking. It is the contribution of this dissertation to utilize the agglomeration economy and location theory literature in its application to the Canadian video game industry.

To understand this industry, a mixed-method approach is used. Kernel density maps, standard deviational ellipses, and mapping processes were used to illustrate the dispersion and clustering patterns of studios in Canada. In addition, a Poisson regression was performed using count data of the number of video game firms in census metropolitan areas. The …

Seeing The Invisible: An Integrated Remote Sensing Approach To Mapping Buried Architecture At Las Colmenas, Virú Valley, Peru, Kayla C. Golay Lausanne

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis reports on the results of a survey project conducted in 2018 and 2019, intending to address two main research questions: (1) What remote sensing technique(s) worked best to identify buried features at Las Colmenas? (2) What combinations of techniques proved to be optimal for identifying buried features, and what are the benefits and limitations of the use of an integrated approach? This project incorporated two scales of analysis: macroscale optical and thermal Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) surveys and microscale Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR), magnetic susceptibility, and magnetometry surveys. A side-by-side comparison proved the thermal UAV, GPR, and magnetic susceptibility …

Transit Network Design Using Gis And Metaheuristics In Sanandaj, Iran, Armin Ahmadi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The public transit system in Sanandaj has been under review and modification for the last several years. The goal is to reduce the traffic congestion and the share of private car usage in the city and increase the very low share of the public transit. The bus routes in Sanandaj are not connected. There is no connected transit network with the ability to transfer between the routes in locations outside of the downtown terminal. The routes mostly connect the downtown core directly to the peripheries without providing travel options for passengers between peripheries. Although there has been some improvement in …

Comparative Assessment Of Downscaling Methods And Application Towards Analysis Of Climate Change Impact On Urban Regions, Markus Eichenbaum

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Global climate models (GCM) are sophisticated numerical models used to make long term climate projections. However, the resolution of their output is too coarse for climate change related local impact studies on urban regional scales. Downscaling efforts are taken to address this and increase GCM projection resolution. Physical Scaling (SP) downscaling methodology attempts to incorporate the physical basis of dynamical downscaling efforts with the computational efficiency of statistical methods. In this study, North American Regional Reanalysis surface skin temperature and precipitation data for a 1°x1° region centered on Houston, TX are downscaled to a resolution of 500m via SP and …

From Accessibility And Exposure To Engagement: A Multi-Scalar Approach To Measuring Environmental Determinants Of Children’S Health Using Geographic Information Systems, Martin Healy

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

A growing body of research suggests that increasing the accessibility to health-related environmental features and increasing exposure to and engagement in outdoor environments leads to positive benefits for the overall health and well-being of children. Additionally, research over the last twenty-five years has documented a decline in the time children spend outdoors. Outdoor activity in children is associated with increased levels of physical fitness, and cognitive well-being. Despite acknowledging this connection, problems occur for researchers when attempting to identify the child’s location and to measure whether a child has made use of an accessible health-related facility, or where, when and …

Space-Time Analysis Of Breast Cancer In Middlesex County Between 2003 And 2013, Jenny T. Tjhin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Breast cancer is the leading cancer among women in Canada and the incidence rate continues to increase despite improved screening programs and advanced cancer treatments. Some studies have linked breast cancer with risk factors such as genetics, the age of first menstruation, parity, and environmental exposures. This study investigated the spatial distribution of breast cancer cases between 2003 and 2013 in Middlesex County using geospatial techniques. Point data were analyzed with SaTScan and aggregated data were observed at two geographical units, census sub-divisions and dissemination areas using Moran’s Index to detect clusters. Both analyses showed consistency in the cluster locations …

Tensor-Based Hyperspectral Image Processing Methodology And Its Applications In Impervious Surface And Land Cover Mapping, Boyu Feng

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The emergence of hyperspectral imaging provides a new perspective for Earth observation, in addition to previously available orthophoto and multispectral imagery. This thesis focused on both the new data and new methodology in the field of hyperspectral imaging. First, the application of the future hyperspectral satellite EnMAP in impervious surface area (ISA) mapping was studied. During the search for the appropriate ISA mapping procedure for the new data, the subpixel classification based on nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) achieved the best success. The simulated EnMAP image shows great potential in urban ISA mapping with over 85% accuracy.

Unfortunately, the NMF based …

Comparing Geospatial Approaches To Delineating Children’S Interactions With Their Physical Environments: A Case Study Of Children In Rural Northwestern Ontario, Katherine L. Schieman

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Researchers from a variety of disciplines have produced a large body of evidence indicating that the environment a child lives in can profoundly impact their overall health in a multitude of ways. Among this growing body of literature, there is a wide diversity of methodologies and general inconsistency in how the physical environment is conceptualized and delineated. The primary purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of how the physical (natural and built) environment is conceptualized in children’s health studies and to quantify how children engage with their environment. Using a multi-tool protocol, 128 children in grades …

Geosimulation And Multicriteria Modelling Of Residential Land Development In The City Of Tehran: A Comparative Analysis Of Global And Local Models, Hossein Hosseini

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Conventional models for simulating land-use patterns are insufficient in addressing complex dynamics of urban systems. A new generation of urban models, inspired by research on cellular automata and multi-agent systems, has been proposed to address the drawbacks of conventional modelling. This new generation of urban models is called geosimulation. Geosimulation attempts to model macro-scale patterns using micro-scale urban entities such as vehicles, homeowners, and households. The urban entities are represented by agents in the geosimulation modelling. Each type of agents has different preferences and priorities and shows different behaviours. In the land-use modelling context, the behaviour of agents is their …

Quality Assessment Of The Canadian Openstreetmap Road Networks, Hongyu Zhang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Volunteered geographic information (VGI) has been applied in many fields such as participatory planning, humanitarian relief and crisis management because of its cost-effectiveness. However, coverage and accuracy of VGI cannot be guaranteed. OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a popular VGI platform that allows users to create or edit maps using GPS-enabled devices or aerial imageries. The issue of geospatial data quality in OSM has become a trending research topic because of the large size of the dataset and the multiple channels of data access. The objective of this study is to examine the overall reliability of the Canadian OSM data. A systematic …

Exploring Factors Influencing Children's Use Of A Free Recreation Access Pass: Does Geography Matter?, Joannah M. Campbell

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Only a small proportion of Canadian children achieve the recommend daily minimum amount of moderate-vigorous physical activity (PA). The Grade 5 ACT-i-Pass (G5AP) program in London, Ontario offers fifth-grade children a free access pass to multiple PA opportunities at recreation facilities for an entire school year. This thesis used a mixed-methods approach to examine barriers and enablers to children’s use of those PA opportunities. In-depth interviews with recreation service providers afforded an understanding of potential factors influencing pass use. Surveys of child participants and their parents provided data on participant demographics, parental and peer support, and pass usage. Spatial analysis …

Examining The Active Transportation - Built Environment Relationship In London, Ontario, Douglas M. Rivet

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Research on the relationship between the built environment and active transportation has accelerated and expanded over the past 20 years. This growth is in large part due to continuing evidence of rising rates in obesity and Type-2 diabetes that coincides with decreasing rates of physical activity across all ages in the post-industrial world. Walking more is a simple solution to increasing rates of physical activity. While for most people walking is possible throughout the day, there has been a decrease in the use of walking as a means of transportation. This study examines environmental determinants of active transportation from two …

An Automated Framework To Identify Lost And Restorable Wetlands In The Prairie Pothole Region, Ann Waz

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Abstract

While progress has been made in automating wetland identification, identifying lost and restorable wetlands remains a challenge. A suite of automated methods was developed and applied to the Nose Creek watershed near Calgary, Alberta to establish a historical wetland inventory and the proportion of permanently versus temporarily lost wetlands. A power-law function of wetland area vs. wetland frequency using wetlands derived from the fusion of a high resolution digital elevation model and near-infrared data identified permanent loss of 11.0% by number and 0.6% by area. The difference between historical and existing wetlands was used to estimate a further temporary …

Urban Walkability Measures: Data Quality, Cautions, And Associations With Active And Public Transportation Across Canada, Thomas C. Thayer

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) has emerged as a primary tool to study the built environment (BE) and its correlates. Accurate results employing GIS-based methods, however, depend on high-quality data sets and agreement on the appropriate nature and scale of areal units. Exploratory groundtruthing exercises illuminated possible issues of data accuracy. GIS-derived walkability measures for intersection density and land use mix were calculated for 2011 using Census of Canada data to determine whether commercially- or municipally-sourced urban data sets were better suited for BE studies. Road network data were ‘cleaned’ to remove unwalkable sections of road and to repair instances of …

Application Of Polarimetric Sar For Surface Parameter Inversion And Land Cover Mapping Over Agricultural Areas, Xiaodong Huang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this thesis, novel methodology is developed to extract surface parameters under vegetation cover and to map crop types, from the polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PolSAR) images over agricultural areas. The extracted surface parameters provide crucial information for monitoring crop growth, nutrient release efficiency, water capacity, and crop production. To estimate surface parameters, it is essential to remove the volume scattering caused by the crop canopy, which makes developing an efficient volume scattering model very critical.

In this thesis, a simplified adaptive volume scattering model (SAVSM) is developed to describe the vegetation scattering as crop changes over time through considering …

The Battle Of Hastings: A Geographic Perspective, Christopher E. M. Hewitt

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The Battle of Hastings (1066) is one of the most widely studied battles in medieval history. Yet despite the importance that research shows geography to play in the outcome of such conflicts, few studies have examined in detail the landscape of the battle or the role the landscape played in its eventual outcome. This study, consequently, seeks to assess the impact of geographic factors in understanding the events that shaped the Battle of Hastings. The analysis was undertaken using a geographic information system (GIS) with qualitative and quantitative techniques. Historical and current data combined in a series of detailed state …

Land Use Interactions Drive Southwestern Ontario Stream Nutrient Concentrations, Renee L. Lazor

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Human activities have transformed the landscape and altered natural habitats through intensive land uses including agriculture and urbanization. Identifying land use drivers of tributary nutrient concentrations and describing the magnitude and direction of their relationship are critical activities to improvement management of water quality in basins draining into the Great Lakes. The overarching goal of my thesis was to quantify the cumulative influence of spatial patterns in land use and land cover on variation of nutrient concentrations in tributaries of the Great Lakes. Biweekly water chemistry samples were collected in 29 streams located in southern Ontario between May and November, …

Multivariate Spatial Visualization Using Geoicons And Image Charts, Bo Shan

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Spatial databases are growing in size and complexity, yet current visual data mining methods are challenged when it comes to multivariate spatial data. The specific research question addressed in this thesis is: how can spatial multivariate data be effectively visualized using an icon based non-fused co-visualization approach? The thesis presents a Python based design and implementation of a visualization program termed GeoIcon Viewer. The program incorporates two different visualization methods: GeoIcon Image Map and Region-of-Interest Image Layers Chart. The GeoIcon Image Map technique uses an icon to co-visualize up to nine attributes at a single location. The Region-of-Interest Image …

Analytic Network Process (Anp) For Housing Quality Evaluation: A Case Study In Ghana, Lucia Kafui Hussey

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Quality of housing is crucial to an individual's quality of life as it is known to affect human health and well-being. Several studies have employed different methods to assess housing quality. These methods, however, failed to account for the interdependence among the factors (criteria) used for evaluating the quality of housing. This thesis proposes an Analytic Network Process (ANP)-based framework, integrated into Geographic Information Systems (GIS), to assess housing quality. ANP is a multicriteria analysis method. It provides a tool for identifying the relative importance of all the elements (criteria) influencing a goal of decision/evaluation problem (e.g., the problem of …

Examining The Influence Of Environmental Opportunities And Exposures On Children's Sleep Duration, Leanne B. Mcintosh

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This research aims to fill a void in knowledge on how certain characteristics of the built and natural environments may impact children’s sleep duration. Data was collected on a sample of 614 children (aged 9-14 years) drawn from 22 elementary schools throughout the City of London, Ontario, Canada. Participants completed the STEAM (Spatial Temporal Environmental Activity Monitoring) protocol which involved completion of a survey, daily activity diary, and tracking the time they spent in different environments with a portable Global Position System. This thesis incorporates an innovative analytical approach which uses two Geographic Information System techniques to examine if and …

Automated Building Information Extraction And Evaluation From High-Resolution Remotely Sensed Data, Chuiqing Zeng

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The two-dimensional (2D) footprints and three-dimensional (3D) structures of buildings are of great importance to city planning, natural disaster management, and virtual environmental simulation. As traditional manual methodologies for collecting 2D and 3D building information are often both time consuming and costly, automated methods are required for efficient large area mapping. It is challenging to extract building information from remotely sensed data, considering the complex nature of urban environments and their associated intricate building structures.

Most 2D evaluation methods are focused on classification accuracy, while other dimensions of extraction accuracy are ignored. To assess 2D building extraction methods, a multi-criteria …