Geographic Information Sciences Commons^™

A Migration Analysis Of Demographic Transitions In The Upper-Midwest From 2006-2010, Andrew Brick

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Rural communities in the Upper-Midwest are essential for contributions to agriculture, oil and development of economic networks to larger towns and cities. Concerning rural population stability and transitions, this research study aims to discover complex migration flows by constructing specified groups of Upper-Midwest regions (i.e., Bakken oil, Taconite iron, high agriculture, developing area of rural depopulation and Interstate 94). Research questions on migrant distributions will be answered by investigating (in-) and (out-) flow data by demographic characteristics (e.g., age, gender and ethnicity) on a county-to-county level. By weighing total demographic populations, a more accurate representation of migration trends called Crude …

Sacred And Mortuary Landscapes In Iron Age Cyprus: A Gis Analysis, James P. Torpy

Senior Independent Study Theses

During the Archaic period (750-480 BC) the island of Cyprus underwent a dramatic transformation as new city-kingdoms rose to dominate the political landscape of the island. This shift resulted in increased competition for resources, establishment of political boundaries, and emergence of a pronounced social hierarchy within the new polities. While many of the large settlements that became centers of power during this time have been thoroughly studied, the manifestation of the large scale changes of the Archaic in the periphery have not been as fully investigated. The rural site of Athienou-Malloura, surveyed and excavated by the Athienou Archaeological Project …

Geography Standard Posters: Places And Regions, Center For Spatial Analysis And Research. Portland State University

Instructional Materials

The poster looks at the physical and human characteristics of place, how people create regions, and the culture influences people's perceptions.

Local Planning And High-Speed Rail: Responses And Perceptions In A Developing Amtrak Corridor, John-Luke D'Ambrosio

Masters Theses

Incremental speed increases have been a main focus of Amtrak in recent years. Now operating at 110 mph within three different service lines in the United States, Amtrak is making progress toward achieving maximum speeds within rail corridors. This study focuses on Amtrak’s Wolverine service line which operates daily passenger rail service between Chicago, Illinois and Detroit/Pontiac, Michigan. Specifically, this study will look at six cities connected by this service that are east of Chicago. The six cities examined in this research are Hammond, Indiana, Michigan City, Indiana, New Buffalo, Michigan, Niles, Michigan, Dowagiac, Michigan, and Kalamazoo, Michigan. This segment …

Sustainability Planning, Environmental Justice And Climate Change: Applications Of The Long Island Markal Model, David S. Friedman, Yehuda Klein, Jose Pillich, Michael T. Sullivan

Suburban Sustainability

As pointed out by many authors, sustainability is often vague and amorphous (See, for example, Dovers, 1989; Faber, et al, 2005; Glavič, et al. 2007). There is a clear need to make analytical and data-driven analyses of established and or proposed plans. MARKAL (MARKet ALlocation model) is an analytical tool that can be used characterize the impacts of sustainability plans at multiple spatial scales: global, national, regional, and local. In this study we apply the Long Island MARKAL model to answer three interrelated issues: 1, the development and incremental improvement of local and regional sustainability plans; 2, the impact of …

A New Forensics: Developing Standard Remote Sensing Methodologies To Detect And Document Mass Atrocities, Nathaniel A. Raymond, Brittany L. Card, Isaac L. Baker

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Aim: The aim of this article is to highlight potential methods applicable to a standard forensic approach for the analysis of high-resolution satellite imagery that may contain evidence of alleged mass atrocities.

Methods: The primary method employed is the retrospective analysis of a case study involving the use of high-resolution satellite imagery analysis to document alleged mass atrocities. The case study utilized herein is the Satellite Sentinel Project’s reporting on the May 2011 sacking of Abyei Town by Government of Sudan-aligned armed actors. In the brief case study, categories of objects, patterns of activities, and types of alleged mass atrocity …

Poverty In The Twin Cities Using Gis Studying, Je Moua

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) allow easy comparison of spatial phenomenon with other variables and output the results onto maps which non-specialist audience can easily interpret and analyze. This study made an effort to understand the spatial distribution of poverty within the Twin Cities Metro Area. Poverty distribution is compared with but not limited to the selected variables such as education level, education funding, family size, family composition, infrastructure distribution, and illicit drugs. The Census 2000 family income variables have been analyzed and mapped using GIS. According to federal guidelines in 2000, the poverty threshold for a family of three was …

Ambient Geographic Information And Risk Mapping, Todd Barr

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

Research on social media as an information source for emergency managers and epidemiologists is expanding at a rapid pace. When combined with the spatial predictive analysis methodology known as Risk Terrain Mapping and the capability of the local health agencies to response, the predictions of outbreaks and their affects can be modeled. This study attempts to create a spatial Risk Terrain Model outbreaks of influenza, and influenza like illnesses within the continental United States. The Risk Terrain Model will be built upon accepted epidemiological models form the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as Google’s Flu index and …

Using Gis To Assess Firearm Thefts, Recoveries And Crimes In Lincoln, Nebraska, David A. Grosso

Department of Geography: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Firearm use in the United States has long been of great concern and at the center of many debates. Most research, however, has either focused on the use of firearms in violent crimes or the availability of firearms compared to the violent crime rates. Few studies have focused on the theft of firearms or the relationships between stolen firearms and crime. Using seven years of data collected Lincoln, Nebraska Police Department, this thesis focuses on the geospatial dimensions of firearm thefts and recoveries. Specific attention is given to the relationship firearm thefts and recoveries have with gun-related crimes, violent crimes, …

Mapping And Analyzing Historical Sanborn Maps Of San Luis Obispo From 1905 And 1950, Troy A. Lawson

Social Sciences

This project was conducted to map, analyze, and determine historical changes in the city of San Luis Obispo, California. Sanborn maps from 1905 and 1950 were drawn showing streets, parcels, creeks, and buildings of the city. These publications had limited use because they were in a physical format without any geographic reference. Here, these maps were digitized into a GIS format to analyze building trends and identify cultural and historical buildings not on the City’s list of Historic and Culturally Contributing Buildings, as well as published online on the City of San Luis Obispo’s website and on ArcGIS Online. Additionally, …

A Spatial Assessment Of The Go Bg Transit Services In Bowling Green, Kentucky, Frank Aryee

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The decision to live in a particular place, accept a job at a distant location, where to go shopping or purchase groceries, and many other similar decisions are all largely influenced by the availability of transportation. As such, it is important that everyone who requires transportation can have access. However, certain population segments, such as low income earners, are less likely to own cars due to the cost involved. There are others who may be impaired physically or have other difficulties that may prevent them from driving. Access to transportation is essential for people of all backgrounds and social statuses. …

Historical Health Conditions In Major Us Cities: The Hue Data Set, Carlos Villareal, Brian Bettenhausen, Eric Hanss, Jonathan Hersh

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

The Historical Urban Ecological data set is a new resource detailing health and environmental conditions within seven major U.S. cities during the study period from 1830 to 1930. Researchers collected and digitized ward-level data from annual reports of municipal departments that detail the epidemiological, economic, and demographic conditions within each city. They then drafted new geographic information system data to link the tabular records to ward geographies. These data provide a new foundation to revisit questions surrounding the urban mortality transition and the growth of U.S. cities.

Factors Of Inclusion And Exclusion To Housing: An Exploratory Study, Jonathan Abbott, Whitman A. Bouton, Jordan Christensen, Brian Dicarlo, Rylan Firth, Erin Mercer, Erica Molina Rodriguez, Andrew Sneddon, Chad Tucker, Brea Walters, Austin Zeitz

Asset Mapping: Community Geography Project

Portland State University: Spring 2014 Senior Capstone Neighborhood Equity Study.

Advances In Documentation, Digital Curation, Virtual Exhibition, And A Test Of 3d Geometric Morhpometrics: A Case Study Of The Vanderpool Vessels From The Ancestral Caddo Territory, Robert Z. Selden Jr., Timothy K. Perttula, Michael J. O'Brien

CRHR: Archaeology

Three-dimensional (3D) digital scanning of archaeological materials is typically used as a tool for artifact documentation. With the permission of the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma, 3D documentation of Caddo funerary vessels from the Vanderpool site (41SM77) was conducted with the initial goal of ensuring that these data would be publicly available for future research long after the vessels were repatriated. A digital infrastructure was created to archive and disseminate the resultant 3D datasets, ensuring that they would be accessible by both researchers and the general public (CRHR 2014a). However, 3D imagery can be used for much more than documentation. To …

Diagnosing The Third World: The “Map Doctor” And The Spatialized Discourses Of Disease And Development In The Cold War, Timothy Barney

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

In the early 1950s, the American Geographical Society, in collaboration with the United States Armed Forces and international pharmaceutical corporations, instituted a Medical Geography program whose main initiative was the Atlas of Disease, a map series that documented the global spread of various afflictions such as polio, malaria, even starvation. The Atlas of Disease, through the stewardship of its director, Jacques May, a French-American physician trained in colonial Hanoi, evidenced the ways in which cartography was rhetorically appropriated in the Cold War as a powerful visual discourse of development and modernization, wherein both the data content of the maps and …

Building A Gis Model To Assess Agritourism Potential, Brian G. Baskerville

Department of Geography: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Rural areas of the world are developing and implementing tourism programs to diversify and reinvigorate their local economies. Often, these programs focus on privately-held lands in largely agricultural regions. In some countries, tourism development strategies have combined agriculture and tourism to create a new industry – agritourism. This industry, although not new in the United States, is still in its nascent stages. Before starting an agritourism enterprise, farmers and ranchers must consider the various factors that will likely influence their potential for long-term success. These factors can be grouped into 1) farm-specific factors such as an operator’s personality or the …

Mapping Disease At An Approximated Individual Level Using Aggregate Data: A Case Study Of Mapping New Hampshire Birth Defects, Xun Shi, Stephanie Miller, Kevin Mwenda, Akikazu Onda

Dartmouth Scholarship

Limited by data availability, most disease maps in the literature are for relatively large and subjectively-defined areal units, which are subject to problems associated with polygon maps. High resolution maps based on objective spatial units are needed to more precisely detect associations between disease and environmental factors. Method: We propose to use a Restricted and Controlled Monte Carlo (RCMC) process to disaggregate polygon-level location data to achieve mapping aggregate data at an approximated individual level. RCMC assigns a random point location to a polygon-level location, in which the randomization is restricted by the polygon and controlled by the background (e.g., …

Mobile 2d And 3d Spatial Query Techniques For The Geospatial Web, Junjun Yin

Doctoral

The increasing availability of abundant geographically referenced information in the Geospatial Web provides a variety of opportunities for developing value-added LBS applications. However, large data volumes of the Geospatial Web and small mobile device displays impose a data visualization problem, as the amount of searchable information overwhelms the display when too many query results are returned. Excessive returned results clutter the mobile display, making it harder for users to prioritize information and causes confusion and usability problems. Mobile Spatial Interaction (MSI) research into this “information overload” problem is ongoing where map personalization and other semantic based filtering mechanisms are essential …

Introduction To Gis Using Open Source Software, 4th Ed, Frank Donnelly

Open Educational Resources

This tutorial was created to accompany the GIS Practicum, a day-long workshop offered by the Newman Library at Baruch College CUNY that introduces participants to geographic information systems (GIS) using the open source software QGIS. The practicum introduces GIS as a concept for envisioning information and as a tool for conducting geographic analyses and creating maps. Participants learn how to navigate a GIS interface, how to prepare layers and conduct a basic geographic analysis, and how to create thematic maps. This tutorial was written using QGIS version 1.8 "Lisboa", a cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) desktop GIS software package.

Change And Continuity: Euro-American And Native American Settlement Patterns In The St. Joseph River Valley, Allison M. Kohley

Masters Theses

In recent years there has been a particular interest in the fur trade and colonialism through identification and investigation of Fort St. Joseph. This fort was an 18th century French trading post in the St. Joseph River valley located in southwestern Michigan and northwestern Indiana. This study expands our current understanding of the change and continuity of the Euro- American and Native American settlement patterns in the valley during the periods immediately prior to, during, and after the abandonment of Fort St. Joseph through the use of geographic information systems (GIS) and statistical analyses.

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 …

Colorful Colorado: The Relationship Between Demographics And The Changing Political Color Of Colorado, Leslie Forbes

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

This research will address the individual relationships between five demographic variables and the changing political color of Colorado (from a “red” state to a “blue” state). The variables addressed are age, education, income, gender, and the Hispanic[1] population growth. Building on recent literature reviews for Colorado’s political trends, I will attempt to show the relationships of the five variables and voting behavior. This data will then be statistically analyzed through Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to determine what relationship strength, weak or strong, exists between the demographic variables. My goal for this research is to determine which of the five …

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, …

Community Loss: A New Social Indicator, Jochen Albrecht, Mimi Abramovitz

Publications and Research

The Community Loss Index ðCLIÞ, a new social indicator, focuses on the understudied role of place as a source of stress and an aggregator of individual experiences. Building on the relationship between loss and stress, the index attempts to capture collective loss, defined as the chronic exposure by neighborhood residents to multiple resource losses at the same time. Using maps, the article analyzes the spatial distribution of six types of loss in New York City and the characteristics of people who live in high- and low-loss neighborhoods. Regionalization reveals a neighborhood-based concentration of loss, patterns of loss that are both …

Mapping Xenophobic Violence In South Africa: Modeling Spatial Relationships Between Group Grievances And Opportunities To Measure The Propensity For Xenophobic Violence, Eric Holder

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Xenophobia can be defined as the hatred or fear of foreigners or strangers or of their politics or culture (Ngwane et al., 2008). This sentiment reached its tipping point in urban areas across the Republic of South Africa in May 2008 when mass, widespread and systematic attacks against African non-nationals took place across the country. Although previous research agrees on who played the various roles during this crisis event (Everatt, 2010), little research has been carried out to create a predictive model to assess where future violence could occur based on a set of conflict indicators. The purpose of this …

Willem Blaeu's 'Asia Noviter Delineata': Expressions Of Power Through Naval Might And Natural Knowledge In Dutch Mapmaking, Joshua W. Poorman

Student Publications

This paper situates Dutch mapmaker Willem Blaeu’s Asia noviter delineata—part of the Stuckenberg Map Collection in the Gettysburg College Special Collections—within the larger framework of Renaissance thought and a shifting colonial balance of power. The map’s pictorial marginalia expresses a Dutch quest for empirical knowledge that echoed contemporary cabinets of curiosities throughout early modern Europe. Similar to these cabinets, Blaeu’s map can be seen as a cartographic teatro mundi, used to propagate Dutch hegemony through both a robust naval presence and an expanding geographic and natural knowledge of the world.

Catastrophes And The Role Of Social Networks In Recovery: A Case Study Of St. Bernard Parish, La, Residents After Hurricane Katrina, Carrie E. Lasley

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the experiences of St. Bernard Parish, La., residents as they coped with the impact of the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005. An estimated 50,000 St. Bernard Parish residents relocated to a new home one year after Katina in 2006, and many of those residents moved again. This study examines the effects of the decisions of St. Bernard residents to relocate or to return on their social connections. The utility, adaptability and durability of social networks of these residents will be explored to enrich our knowledge about the social effects …

A Geographical Analysis Of Hiv/Aids Infection In Nigeria, 1991-2001, Chinekwu Azuka Obidoa, Robert G. Cromley

Journal of Social, Behavioral, and Health Sciences

Abstract

Objectives: Within the gradually accumulating literature on the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in Nigeria, investigations concerning the spatial dimensions of the infection are virtually non-existent. An understanding of the spatial dimensions of the epidemic is central in the development and implementation of appropriate intervention strategies. This study is a geographic analysis of HIV/AIDS infection in Nigeria from 1991 – 2001. The three objectives of this study were: 1) to examine the geographic pattern of the epidemic, 2) to examine the spatial-temporal trend and diffusion pattern of the epidemic, and 3) to explore the factors associated with the spatial …

A Perception Analysis Of Downtown Residents: The City Of Lansing, Mi. Food Desert In Context, Thomas J. Veldman

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the perceptions of residents inside and outside of a USDA-defined food desert in Lansing, MI related to fresh and frozen produce access. Through an online and paper survey, Lansing-area residents ranked their perceived level of access to fresh produce, their perception of their own health, and reported their general daily intake of fresh produce. Through several statistical analyses, this thesis was able to determine that residents residing within the study area in downtown Lansing had statistically significant variations in their perception of access to fresh and frozen produce, traveled longer to their preferred primary and secondary food …

Understanding Flight Delays At U.S. Airports In 2010, Using Chicago O'Hare International Airport As A Case Study, Paul Blackwood

Masters Theses

Flight delays are economic, social, and environmental albatross to U.S. businesses and consumers. In 2007 alone, domestic flight delays cost the U.S. aviation industry $40.7 billion (Joint Economic Committee of the House and Senate Report, 2008). These delays involved inconveniences for airlines and passengers, and untold misery for local and state officials. In that same year, delays forced U.S. airlines to consume an extra 740 million gallons of jet fuel (Joint Economic Committee of the House and Senate Report, 2008). The purpose of this study is to understand flight delays at U.S. airports and to determine how key causal factors …