Geographic Information Sciences Commons^™

Karst Hydrogeology Of The Haney Limestone, South-Central Kentucky, Sarah Marie Arpin

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

South-central Kentucky has one of the world’s most intensively studied karst
areas, with most work focusing on the Mammoth Cave System and related caves and aquifers. However, slightly higher in the stratigraphic section than Mammoth Cave, the Haney Limestone is a locally important but less well studied carbonate aquifer. This research provides the most comprehensive synthesis to date of the karst hydrogeology of the Haney Limestone of south-central Kentucky, focusing on the distribution and controls on cave and karst features developed within. In contrast to drainage systems within the major limestones below, joints are the most dominant control on ...

When Informationists Get Involved: The Chica-Gis Project, Elizabeth C. Whipple, Jere D. Odell, Rick K. Ralston, Gilbert C. Liu

Journal of eScience Librarianship

Child Health Improvement through Computer Automation (CHICA) is a computer decision support system (CDSS) that interfaces with existing electronic medical record systems (EMRS) and delivers "just in time" patient-relevant guidelines to physicians during the clinical encounter and accurately captures structured data from all who interact with the system. “Delivering Geospatial Intelligence to Health Care Professionals (CHICA-GIS)” (1R01LM010923-01) expands the medical application of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) by integrating a geographic information system with CHICA. To provide knowledge management support for CHICA-GIS, three informationists at the Indiana University School of Medicine were awarded a supplement from the National Library Medicine. The ...

Re-Placing Sprawl: Mapping Place In An American Suburb, Ryan M. Cooper

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

In the post-World War II era land development in the United States has largely been focused on the expansion away from urban centers and out into the surrounding suburbs. While the development of suburbs began with utopian ideals of spiritual wholeness, their actual manifestation on the American landscape has been subject to harsh critiques about their long-term economic and environmental feasibility, fostering of social alienation, and general placelessness. In this thesis I address the criticism of suburbs as placeless, asking ―What are the particular practices of place-making in North American suburbs?‖ Examining interviews, cognitive map surveys, participant observation, archival materials ...

Gis-Based Local Ordered Weighted Averaging: A Case Study In London, Ontario, Xinyang Liu

University of Western Ontario - Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

GIS-based multicriteria analysis is a procedure for combining a set of criterion maps and associated criterion weights to obtain overall value for each spatial unit (location) in the study area. Ordered Weighted Averaging (OWA) is a generic algorithm of the multicriteria analysis. It has been integrated into GIS and applied for tackling a wide range of spatial problems. However, the conventional OWA method is based on an assumption of spatial homogeneity of its parameters. Therefore, it is referred to as a global model. This thesis proposes a local form OWA. The local model is based on the range sensitivity principle ...

Bosnian Immigrants: An Analysis Of The Bosnian Community's Influence On The Cultural Landscape Of Bowling Green, Ky, Nathan Jess Cary

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Diasporas have been occurring for thousands of years, and today globalization has facilitated the quick rate at which diasporas occur on a global scale. Diasporas entail the mass movement of refugees across international borders, and diasporic peoples today now find themselves journeying across oceans and continents to the safety of host cities in a matter of weeks or days. My research analyzes the effects that Bosnian immigrants have had on the cultural landscape of Bowling Green, Kentucky. When people move, they bring their cultures with them, and this type of cultural diffusion impacts the landscape of the host cities. As ...

Object-Based Urban Building Footprint Extraction And 3d Building Reconstruction From Airborne Lidar Data, Ting Zhao

University of Western Ontario - Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Buildings play an essential role in urban intra-construction, urban planning, climate studies and disaster management. The precise knowledge of buildings not only serves as a primary source for interpreting complex urban characteristics, but also provides decision makers with more realistic and multidimensional scenarios for urban management. In this thesis, the 2D extraction and 3D reconstruction methods are proposed to map and visualize urban buildings. Chapter 2 presents an object-based method for extraction of building footprints using LiDAR derived NDTI (Normalized Difference Tree Index) and intensity data. The overall accuracy of 94.0% and commission error of 6.3% in building ...

Online Social Network Friends And Spatio-Temporal Proximity Of Their Geotagged Photos – A Case Study Of Flickr Data, Sumang Liu

Masters Theses

This empirical study aims to analyze relationships between online social network (OSN) friends and spatio-temporal proximity of their geotagged photos, using Flickr data as a case study. First, this study analyzes whether Flickr friends tend to post geotagged photos that are closer to each other compared to Flickr non-friends in space and time. Second, this study investigates whether the number of geotagged photos posted by users is related to the distance and time difference between their geotagged photos. Third, this study examines the spatial distributions of geotagged photos of Flickr friends within specific distance intervals to further understand the geographic ...

Access To Spatial Data: The Political Power Of Legal Control Mechanisms, Patrice A. Day

Theses and Dissertations

According to the U.S. Supreme Court (Island Trees School District v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853, 1982), the Constitution presupposes that the free flow of information between the government and the public is essential to maintaining an informed citizenry, which in turn is essential to holding governments accountable. However, local governments are increasingly using various legal mechanisms to limit public access to geographic information (GI), and this in turn can potentially disrupt this balance. Licensing and copyright are two such mechanisms that local government agencies are using to limit GI access and distribution.

If information is power, whoever controls ...

Is It The “Outstanding Universal Value" Of Heritage Really Global?, Vasco Monteiro, Marco Painho, Eric Vaz

Geography Publications and Research

Web 2.0 and social media play an important role nowadays in our society, not only from a user perspective, but also on an academic perspective. The data and information production based on the user-generated content is an important source to conduct scientific studies, specially the new geospatial information that exists due to the widespread of technological devices that capture the geospatial data. The main objective of this research is to assess if we can measure the brand awareness, with a focus in the reputation component, using geospatial usergenerated content with an approach as a geographic problem. In this paper ...

Smart Dispatch Methods, Hannah K. Panno

Social Sciences

My senior project will be focused on smart dispatch methods for CAL FIRE. Currently the level of dispatch including how many personnel and how much equipment such as fire engines, water tanks, dozers, and aircrafts that are sent to a fire is based on subjectivity rather than science. A reliable dispatch system based on Fire Family Plus software needs to be implemented in San Luis Obispo County. A reliable dispatch should be grounded on the prominent elements of fire progression i.e. fuels, topography, and climatology. These fire catalysts will be applied and considered based on unique climate regions of ...

Exploratory Landscape Metrics For Agricultural Sustainability, Eric Vaz, Teresa Noronha, Peter Nijkamp

Geography Publications and Research

Socio-economic growth and urban change have been an increasing concern for decision makers in recent decades. The monitoring, mapping and analysis of agricultural land-use change, especially in areas where urban change has been high, is crucial. The collision between traditional economic activities related to agriculture in tourist areas such as the Algarve and current demand for tourism infrastructures in urban regions is also leading to loss of economic activity. This paper uses a combined Geographical Information System approach with CORINE land cover datasets to perform a Shannon’s diversity index quantifying changes in agricultural areas. The paper then expands on ...

A Graph Theory Approach For Geovisualization Of Land Use Change: An Application To Lisbon, Eric Vaz, Joseph Aversa

Geography Publications and Research

Urban sprawl and growth has experienced increased concern in geographic and environmental literature. Preceding the existence of robust frameworks found in regional and urban planning, as well as urban geography and economics, the spatial properties of allocation of urban land use are still far from being completely understood. This is largely due to the underlying complexity of the change found at spatial level of urban land use, merging social, economic and natural drivers. The spatial patterns formed, and the connectivity established among the different subsets of land-use types, becomes a complex network of interactions over time, helping to shape the ...

Proximal Sensing As A Means Of Characterizing Phragmites Australis, Travis Yeik

Theses and Dissertations in Geography

Phragmites australis is an invasive wetland weed found throughout much of the United States. Documenting and mapping the growth and spread of this emergent macrophyte can be an important step in developing and implementing successful management strategies. Characterizing the phenology of a vegetation species with a sensor capable of hyperspectral resolution, positioned at close proximity to the canopy of interest, is often a first step necessary for understanding the basic species-specific reflectance patterns, and for quantifying the manner in which light interacts with the plants comprising particular communities. Spectral data over a P. australis canopy were collected during 22 field ...

Understanding Colombian Violence Through Geographic Information Systems And Statistical Approaches, Brandon Fowler

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In 2002, Colombia had the highest homicide rate of any Latin American country(Berkman, 2007). The origins of this violence, however, are complex and difficult to identify. It would be sensible to argue that it cannot be explained by any one particular factor, but rather an assortment of many factors that wholly represent the social, economic, and political conditions of Colombia. By better understanding the origins of Colombian violence, policy makers can more effectively address and alleviate this prolonged issue. This study examines the geographic nature of municipal homicide rates for Colombia in 2005. The purpose of this study is ...

Situation Analysis Of Somalia’S 2011 Famine, Ahmed Mohamed Askar

Master of Public Health Program Student Publications

This CE examined the contributing factors of famine in Somalia and developed a situation analysis of Somalia’s 2011 famine. The situational analysis was developed using health and famine indicators. Data from geographic information system (GIS) was also used to supplement analysis to look for trends and patterns of the famine. I predicted that conflict was the leading factor in Somalia’s 2011 famine. I concluded that conflict exacerbated the famine situation in the south of Somalia but in the north (Somaliland) famine was due to climate and lack of permanent rivers and water sources.

A Regional Spatial-Retrofitting Approach To Geovisualise Regional Urban Growth: An Application To The Golden Horseshoe In Canada, Eric Vaz, Amy Buckland, Kevin Worthington

Geography Publications and Research

Understanding urban change in particular for larger regions has been a great demur in both regional planning and geography. One of the main challenges has been linked to the potential of modelling urban change. The absence of spatial data and size of areas of study limit the traditional urban monitoring approaches, which also do not take into account visualization techniques that share information with the community. This is the case of the Golden Horseshoe in southern Ontario in Canada, one of the fastest growing regions in North America. An unprecedented change on the urban environment has been witnessed, leading to ...

Business Topographies: A Spatiotemporal Analysis Of 150 Years Of Indian Business, Eric Vaz

Geography Publications and Research

One of the most growing entrepreneurial landscapes has been without a doubt in the last decade India. India, with a total population of almost 1.2 billion inhabitants, is a land of immense business opportunity within a highly competitive market. Before the eighties however, India was mainly a rural country, with a large contrast of the nexus between city and periphery. With the emergence of young generation of entrepreneurs, the economy has been growing at a rate of 8-10% for the last 20 years. The share of the service sector has increased to 60 per cent in the total GDP ...

Using Geospatial Technologies To Characterize Relationships Between Travel Behavior, Food Availability, And Health, Warren J. Christian

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

Epidemic obesity in the U.S. has prompted exploration of causal factors related to the built environment. Recent research has noted statistical associations between the spatial accessibility of retail food sources, such as supermarkets, convenience stores, and restaurants, and individual characteristics such as weight, socioeconomic status, and race/ethnicity. These studies typically use residential proximity or neighborhood density to food sources as the measure of accessibility. Assessing food environments in this manner, however, is very limiting. Since most people travel outside of their neighborhood on a daily basis, the retail food sources available to individuals residing in the same area ...

Collapsing Landscapes? The Regional Science Contribution To Spatial Understanding, Eric Vaz

Geography Publications and Research

Recent decades have witnessed unprecedented landscape change. Most of these changes have been brought by human impact on the environment, and excessive exploitation of resources. While economic growth has brought prosperity and better living conditions, much of the human impact has had irreversible consequences on environmental systems and destroyed fragile ecosystems and biodiversity. As much as our impact on earth has brought irreversible environmental change, our landscapes have in detriment of these choices witnessed a substantial change, most of it affecting our natural and historical heritage (Vaz and Nijkamp, 2009). In the context of regional development, economic geography and complex ...

Quantitative Community Geography: A Preliminary Evaluation Of Nitrogen Dioxide Levels And Possible Solutions To Exposure Rates In Npu-V, Atlanta, Ga, Alyssa M. Combs, Maria C. Martinez, Kumar K. Amarnath, Hannah Kaplan, Mary Winsor, Rebecca A. Pickering

Georgia State Undergraduate Research Conference

No abstract provided.