Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Big Data Applications And Challenges In Giscience (Case Studies: Natural Disaster And Public Health Crisis Management), Amir Masoud Forati

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the application and significance of user-generated big data in Geographic Information Science (GIScience), with a focus on managing natural disasters and public health crises. It explores the role of social media data in understanding human-environment interactions and in informing disaster management and public health strategies. A scalable computational framework will be developed to model extensive unstructured geotagged data from social media, facilitating systematic spatiotemporal data analysis.The research investigates how individuals and communities respond to high-impact events like natural disasters and public health emergencies, employing both qualitative and quantitative methods. In particular, it assesses the impact of socio-economic-demographic …

Beyond Borders: Representations Of Refugees And Place In Clarkston, Georgia, Sarah Ryniker

Theses and Dissertations

In the last thirty years, socio-political shifts within the city of Clarkston, Georgia, have led to an evolution in representations of the city and of its many refugee and immigrant populations. This dissertation examines the site-specific effects of the evolving policies and practices of refugee resettlement and integration within the city of Clarkston and the emerging immigrant gateway of the South. While the city itself has transformed, so have its representations of refugees, challenging imaginative geographies and complicating the mainstream dichotomic racial imaginative geographies and socio-political representation of the U.S. South. Using qualitative methods, I analyze materials from four years …

Visibility And Intervisibility: A Viewshed Analysis Of The Oneota Component Of The Lake Koshkonong Locality, Rebekah Joy Gansemer

Theses and Dissertations

This research was conducted to analyze the visual relationship between Oneota village sites, Late Woodland habitations, and mound sites during a period of time that saw all of these groups living contemporaneously on Lake Koshkonong. My research seeks to not only understand what and who Oneota sites could see on the landscape, but also who might have been able to see them. This research adds to the discussion of Lake Koshkonong Oneota relationships with contemporaneous groups during the 11th-15th centuries.This study focuses on four sites within the Lake Koshkonong Locality that date to the Oneota period: Crescent Bay Hunt Club …

Black Autonomy As A Form Of Resistance And A Symbol Of Rebellion: A Comparative Study Of Robbins, Illinois, And Milwaukee Bronzeville (1920-1970), Nateya Taylor

Theses and Dissertations

Black towns and segregated Black neighborhoods are two examples of majority Black communities that were formed because of the racial discrimination African Americans faced. Previous research has examined majority Black communities from a deficit model; however, this paper highlights the assets of autonomy and resistance in two majority Black communities in the Midwest: Robbins, Illinois, and Milwaukee Bronzeville. This paper compares Robbins, Illinois, a Black town, and Milwaukee’s Bronzeville neighborhood, a segregated Black community, to answer the questions: How did African Americans in Robbins, Illinois, and Milwaukee Bronzeville use autonomous practices to navigate racial discrimination between 1920 and 1970? What …

Baseflow Variability Due To Changes In Climate, Basin Characteristics, And Groundwater Withdrawals In The State Of Wisconsin, Usa, Susan Borchardt

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

BASEFLOW VARIABILITY DUE TO CHANGES IN CLIMATE,BASIN CHARACTERISTICS, AND GROUNDWATER WITHDRAWALS IN THE STATE OF WISCONSIN, USA

bySusan Borchardt The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2022 Under the Supervision of Professor Woonsup Choi

In Wisconsin, the number of high-capacity wells has increased substantially, and concerns have been raised about their impact on both groundwater levels and streamflow. At the same time Wisconsin’s climate has been changing, and both the annual precipitation (5%) and temperature (1.5oC) have been trending upward over the last 68 years and both are predicted to increase into the future. This study attempted to demonstrate the simultaneous effects …

From Orthodoxy To Enlightenment: Discourse, Territory, And Settler Colonialism In Siberia, 1670-1740, Jonathan Noah Adsit

Theses and Dissertations

Though many scholars argue that settler colonialism did not firmly come into practice until the late 18th century in Russia, through an analysis of both 17th century historical chronicle narratives and 18th century explorer accounts, I argue that settler colonial discourses and knowledges are already present, laying the groundwork for later settler practices. In the 17th century, chronicle narratives portrayed Siberian territory as a darkened wasteland turned radiant paradise by the presence of Russian Christians and the expulsion of indigenous non-Christians. In the 18th century, discourse changed to produce the increasing view of Siberia as an object of knowledge, great …

Terrestrial Perspective On The Formation, Evolution, And Detection Of Zeolites In Lacustrine Environments On Early Mars, Gayantha Roshana Loku Kodikara

Theses and Dissertations

This study evaluates the possible formation and evolution mechanisms of zeolites on early Mars with possible explanations for their limited detections using Earth analogs. This study focuses on the formation of zeolites in the closed basin lakes where the largest relatively pure concentrations of natural zeolites are found on Earth. Five working hypotheses were formulated to explore the limited detection of zeolites in closed basin lakes on Mars and different styles of scientific reasoning with suitable examples were used to test the independent, converging lines of inquiry. Zeolites may not be identifiable in certain locations on Mars using orbital data …

“Not Just Being Out On The Streets”: Serving Lgbtq+ Youth Experiencing Homelessness In Milwaukee, Catherine Heady

Theses and Dissertations

LGBTQ+ youth homeless is a pressing topic for geographic study, as LGBTQ+ youth are overrepresented in youth homeless populations (Cunningham et al. 2014; Morton et al 2018). The conditions that create urban youth homelessness are social, material, and spatial. This research aims to examine service providers’ perspective of the conditions of LGBTQ+ youth homelessness in Milwaukee. Specifically, I examine how service providers in the city understand LGBTQ+ youth homelessness, where service providers identify barriers and gaps in the city for LGBTQ+ homeless youth, and ways service providers challenge and/or reproduce LGBTQ+ youth homelessness in their care work. Drawing on feminist …

Vulnerability And Resilience Of People And Places To Hurricane Damage In The Us. Gulf And Atlantic Coasts From 1950 To 2018, Gainbi Park

Theses and Dissertations

Extreme weather events are expected to increase as a consequence of climate change, increasing the intensity and frequency of natural hazards. Their catastrophic impact is attributable to both the geophysical characteristics of a hazardous event itself and the socio-demographic characteristics of people who are at a greater risk of harm in the aftermath of natural hazards. Previous studies have largely used a place-based approach, measuring the relative level of social vulnerability between places using a social vulnerability index (SoVI), a prevalent spatially explicit method in geographic scholarship. As a composite index, SoVI, has been criticized by scholars due to its …

The Spatial Prevalence And Associated Factors Of Opioid Overdose Mortality In Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, Andrew Schendl

Theses and Dissertations

Mortality from opioid overdose has become the leading cause of non-natural death in Milwaukee County, WI in recent years. In order to better understand the opioid epidemic and formulate pro-active responses to the crisis at the local level, this study examines the spatial prevalence and associated factors of opioid overdoses that end in mortality in Milwaukee, WI using the spatial econometrics model. The social determinants of health framework is used to identify the potential related socioeconomic factors associated with opioid abuse. Using principal component analysis, 6 primary components were identified from the chosen social determinants and used as explanatory variables …

A Simulation Framework For Traffic Safety With Connected Vehicles And V2x Technologies, Md Abu Sayed

Theses and Dissertations

With the advancement in automobile technologies, existing research shows that connected vehicle (CV) technologies can provide better traffic safety through Surrogate Safety Measure (SSM). CV technologies involves two network systems: traffic network and wireless communication network. We found that the research in the wireless communication network for CV did not interact properly with the research in SSM in transportation network, and vice versa. Though various SSM has been proposed in previous studies, a few of them have been tested in simulation software in limited extent. On the other hand, A large body of researchers proposed various communication architecture for CV …

Milwaukee's Unequally Gendered Commemorative Street Names (1920-2021), Ayodeji Oladipo Obayomi

Theses and Dissertations

Urban commemorative spaces have consistently shown vast gender disparities through the domination of men at the expense of women; this is evident in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This thesis employed an archival research method to locate useful primary materials from the City of Milwaukee (which included the Common Council Proceedings) and from other sources. In addition, I employed a geographical information system to visualize gender disparity and also express the spatial distribution of the identified commemorative streets. The study argues (among other ideas) that commemorative street naming is problematically gendered.

Of the 233 commemorative street names given between 1920 and 2021 in …

Placemaking And The Loss Of Place: Perceptions Of Tourism-Induced Neighborhood Change In South Korea’S Disadvantaged Neighborhoods, Minji Kim

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation research uncovers how seemingly beneficial urban projects associated with tourism reinforce inequitable urban environments and loss of place by examining different perceptions and experiences of tourism-induced neighborhood change in disadvantaged neighborhoods in South Korea. I investigate how public art projects implemented by the government to regenerate daldongnes—informal hillside settlements—have brought economic and social disruption to residents and generated a series of contest outcomes. In this research, I examine how tourists’ perceptions and representation of the neighborhood in social media contribute to the (re)construction of the neighborhood, how the growth of tourism has influenced place attachment, and how residents …

Intersectional Experiences Of Violence: Studying The Serial Murder Of 16 Men And Boys In Milwaukee, 1987-1991, Sally Svetic

Theses and Dissertations

Between the years of 1987 and 1991, 16 multiply-marginalized men and boys went missing in the City of Milwaukee; few other than their family and friends noticed. In 1991, it was discovered that they were murdered by Jeffrey Dahmer, a white man living on Milwaukee’s near west side. This paper argues that state power, racial capitalism, and white supremacy devalued the lives of Black, queer, young and poor people and created conditions that allowed Dahmer to commit 16 murders without detection by the Milwaukee Police Department. In this thesis, responses from Black, Lao, queer and Othered people are centered. In …

An Analysis Of Temperate Deciduous Shrub Phenology In Downer Woods, University Of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Usa, Chloe Rehberg

Theses and Dissertations

Shrub species, both native and non-native, are an important component of temperate deciduous forest ecosystems but are an often-overlooked and under-studied functional group. Shrubs tend to leaf-out earlier than trees in spring and retain their leaves later in autumn thus extending the overall growing season and the carbon uptake period of the forest ecosystem. In this study, a range of 5- native and 3- non-native shrub species were identified in a deciduous urban woodlot, and the phenology was monitored over a 3-year period on the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee campus. The aim of this work was to determine any variation in …

Situating Worker Cooperatives: The Urban, Racial And Gendered Geographies Of Cooperative Development In New York City’S Worker Cooperative Business Development Initiative, Rebecca Wolfe

Theses and Dissertations

Worker cooperatives are gaining increased traction as an urban economic development strategy aimed to better support low-income women, immigrants and communities of color. Worker cooperatives are businesses that are owned and managed by its workers, and their supporters see them as a more equitable form of development that facilitates enhanced economic agency and access to ownership and wealth building. Reflecting and reinforcing growing cooperative momentum, New York City developed the nation’s first municipal-sponsored cooperative development initiative in 2014. The Worker Cooperative Business Development Initiative (WCBDI) brings together policy makers, city administrators and nonprofit community-based organizations to provide educational programming, cooperative …

Everyday Perseverance & Meaningful Toil: Mapping The (In)Distinguishable Process Of Recovery Post-Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, Louisiana, Monique Hassman

Theses and Dissertations

For nearly a century, anthropological scholarship on disaster has contributed to advancing emergency preparation and management, however examination focusing on survivors’ return and responses in the aftermath of catastrophe, specifically the ways in which residents work to recover—if at all—remains far from comprehensive, especially in urban, post-industrial settings.

Following calamity, what remains? What is disturbed? What becomes reconstructed? Who repairs the tattered social fabric or restores the built environment? And how do these processes transpire? These questions summarize the research interests of this dissertation, which examines the place-making practices not of experts or administrators, but, rather, those enacted by (extra) …

A Player’S Sense Of Place: Computer Games As Anatopistic Medium, Kristopher John Purzycki

Theses and Dissertations

This project works to understand how open-world computer games help generate a sense of place from the player. Since their development over a half century ago, computer games have primarily been discussed in terms of space. Yet the way we think about space today is much different than how those scientists calculated space as a construction of time, mass, and location. But as computer games have evolved, the language has failed to accommodate the more nuanced qualities of game spaces. This project aims at articulating the nuances of place through phenomenological methods to objectively analyze the player experience as performed …

Spatial Dimensions Of Drilling Technologies: Controversies Over Unconventional Oil And Gas Development In Northern Colorado, Nicholas J. Schuelke

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates three controversies surrounding oil and gas development in populated areas of the Front Range region of northern Colorado that have emerged as a result of renewed interest in developing unconventional hydrocarbon resources using horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing techniques. These controversies surround disputes between competing capital interests over rights of access to subsurface hydrocarbon resources, municipal challenges in accommodating oil and gas development in residential areas, and perceptions among more ‘moderate’ residents regarding activism resisting oil and gas development in Colorado and alternative strategies adopted by these residents to oppose hydrocarbon extractive activities in their neighborhoods. Through …

Using Historic Glo Data And Gis To Assess The Potential For Local Bison Bison Near Two Wisconsin Late Prehistoric Oneota Localities, Andrew Michael Saleh

Theses and Dissertations

Bison (Bison bison) remains are rare in the archaeological record of Wisconsin. This thesis uses a Geographic Information System (GIS) to better understand native vegetation near sites with reported bison bone to assess their ecological viability to support local bison herds. The distribution of bison bone recovered in archaeological contexts in Wisconsin can be summarized as follows: few sites report bison remains, the archaeological contexts that do report bison are clustered in a few Late Prehistoric period locations (approximately A.D. 1300-1650), and bison remains are rare in comparison to other fauna at those sites (Arzigian et al. 1989; Boszhardt 1989, …

Comparing Autumn Phenology Derived From Field Observations, Satellite Data, And Carbon Flux Measurements In A Northern Mixed Forest, Bailu Zhao

Theses and Dissertations

In this project, autumn phenological transition dates and senescence rate (derived from field observation, satellite data and carbon flux measurements) are compared in a northern Wisconsin deciduous forest. Field data cover 2010 and 2012 for the northern site and 2010, 2012 and 2013 for the southern site, with leaf coloration and leaf fall recorded. Satellite indices are EVI and NDVI obtained from the MODIS V006 product via Google Earth Engine platform, covering 2000 to 2017. Carbon flux indices are NEE and GPP covering 1997 to 2017. Field data and normalized satellite data are fitted by a two-section logistic model while …

A Conceptual Modeling Framework For Hydrological Ecosystem Services And Its Application To The Impacts Of Climate Change And Urban Expansion, Feng Pan

Theses and Dissertations

Ecosystem services (ESs) are used as intermediates for researchers, stakeholders, and the public to understand and deal with the current environmental situation and problems, and ESs-related studies have drawn increasing attention. The quantitative assessments of ESs to calculate how much the ecosystem can benefit human beings and society, are still under development. Hydrological ESs, a subset of ESs that is related to water bodies and the surrounding environment, carry several challenges and opportunities for both hydrological and ESs modeling. Specifically, new quantitative tools with the capability to simulate explicit spatial and temporal scales are desired, and such tools should be …

Using Historic Glo Data And Gis To Assess The Potential For Local Bison Bison Near Two Wisconsin Late Prehistoric Oneota Localities, Andrew Michael Saleh

Theses and Dissertations

Bison (Bison bison) remains are rare in the archaeological record of Wisconsin. This thesis uses a Geographic Information System (GIS) to better understand native vegetation near sites with reported bison bone to assess their ecological viability to support local bison herds. The distribution of bison bone recovered in archaeological contexts in Wisconsin can be summarized as follows: few sites report bison remains, the archaeological contexts that do report bison are clustered in a few Late Prehistoric period locations (approximately A.D. 1300-1650), and bison remains are rare in comparison to other fauna at those sites (Arzigian et al. 1989; Boszhardt 1989, …

Socio-Spatial Disparities In Dementia Mortality In The United States, Wei Xu

Theses and Dissertations

Mainly due to the expansion of the geriatric population, the number of deaths attributable to dementia in the United States is likely to increase rapidly in the coming decades. In the hope of offering some valuable insights into discovering disease risk factors linked to geography, advocating place-based prevention and intervention strategies and supporting equitable access to end-of-life care, this study examines three aspects of socio-spatial disparities in dementia mortality in the U.S.: (i) small area spatial and temporal variations in dementia mortality risk; (ii) “place effects” on the differentials in individual dementia mortality risk; and (iii) disparities in place of …

Measured Expectations: An Examination Of Urban Agriculture Development And Operations In Milwaukee, Wi, Jamison Ellis

Theses and Dissertations

Urban agriculture has begun to shape urban spaces throughout the United States. Building from research on urban agriculture projects in Milwaukee I argue that in order for researchers to better understand urban agriculture, they must more thoroughly examine the various developmental and operational strategies that urban agriculture nonprofit organizations implement. The research questions that guides my thesis are the following: first, how do the developmental and operational strategies of urban agriculture projects differ? Second, how do different stakeholders perceive the implications of these approaches for creating positive and negative effects? To do this, I collected data through interviews and participant …

The Invisible Crisis: Framing The Remediation Of Milwaukee's Lead Laterals, Isabella Rieke

Theses and Dissertations

When Milwaukee’s municipal water system was developed in 1874, one-half-inch lead pipes were used to convey water from the mains in the street to a customer’s home; the City has since acknowledged that nearly 100,000 such lead pipes are still in use today, a revelation which has opened for debate whether or not these pipes pose a galvanizing public health risk with far-reaching policy and infrastructure implications. This study explores the community response to Milwaukee’s lead laterals through the efforts of the Freshwater for Life Action Coalition (FLAC). How do Milwaukeeans understand the risks posed by the lead laterals? In …

Uncertainty Assessment Of Spectral Mixture Analysis In Remote Sensing Imagery, Yingbin Deng

Theses and Dissertations

Spectral mixture analysis (SMA), a scheme of sub-pixel-based classifications, is one of the widely used models to map fractional land use and land cover information in remote sensing imagery. It assumes that: 1) a mixed pixel is composed by several pure land cover classes (endmembers) linearly or nonlinearly, and 2) the spectral signature of each endmember is a constant within the entire spatial extent of analysis. SMA has been commonly applied to impervious surface area extraction, vegetation fraction estimation, and land use and land cover change (LULC) mapping. Limitations of SMA, however, still exist. First, the existence of between- and …

The Tale Of Two Cities: A Feminist Critique Of Economic Development & Neoliberal Multiculturalism In Milwaukee, Yui Hashimoto

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I examine how race articulates with economic development in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Drawing on two years of participant observation with the Milwaukee Fight for 15; participant observation of public meetings and days of action; semi-structured interviews with City officials, business leaders, non-profit professionals, and community organizers; and media and document analysis, I find that normative discourses of race underpin economic development in Milwaukee even as City officials and boosters give nominal recognition to racial inequality and purport to embrace diversity and colourblindness.

First, I trace historical and contemporary trajectories of economic development and segregation to show how the …

Examining Urban Heat Island Effect And Its Public Health Implications With Remotely Sensed Data, Yang Song

Theses and Dissertations

The Urban heat island (UHI) as a byproduct of urbanization has long been studied utilizing remote sensing technologies. However, issues remain to be addressed. Land surface temperature (LST) as the indicator of surface UHI can be retrieved from remotely sensed data, but its accuracy is limited as existing studies neglect the neighboring effect. Further, while LST serves well as an indicator of surface thermal condition, it lacks the ability to reveal human heat stress, which is an environmental hazard that can seriously affect productivity, health or even survival of individuals. Although human heat stress has long been studied and can …

Synthesizing Population For Travel Activity Analysis, Hong Zhuo

Theses and Dissertations

Population synthesis is a fundamental procedure for individual-based modeling in transportation research. The population synthesis generates anonymized individuals with selected social-demographic variables that have similar statistical distributions as that of the samples from the real population. Previous studies on population synthesis focused on generating general-purpose population by fitting the joint distributions of multiple variables to their sampled distributions. In addition to fitting the joint distributions, this study focuses on generating population for travel activity analysis by considering individuals’ travel activity patterns and associated social, economic, and demographic characteristics.

A person’s daily movement is a time-sequence of activities connected by travel …