Geographic Information Sciences Commons^™

A Comparison Of Brick-And-Mortar And Online Last Mile Delivery Networks, Dennis Corvi

Honors Program Theses and Projects

Driven by the rapid growth of e-commerce, last mile delivery has become an increasingly necessary strategy for retailers to stay competitive. The locations of distribution centers and the capacity of vehicles have profound effects on transportation costs. Demand for same-day delivery services is expected to increase in popularity as new technologies, such as drones and automated transportation, evolve and become cheaper to develop. Organizations that design their logistic network efficiently hold the largest competitive advantage. Amazon is currently an industry leader in shipping and delivery logistics by utilizing its online ordering process. Brick-and-mortar stores such as Walmart and Best Buy …

A Catch 22 Of 3d Data Sustainability: Lessons In 3d Archaeological Data Management & Accessibility, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Jennifer Von Schwerin

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Archaeologists can now collect an inordinate amount of 3D data. But are these 3D data sustainable? Are they being managed to make them accessible? The MayaArch3D Project researched and addressed these questions by applying best practices to build four prototype tools to store, manage, visualize, and analyze multi-resolution, geo-referenced 3D models in a web-based environment. While the technical aspects of these tools have been published, this position paper addresses a catch 22 that we, as archaeologists, encounter in the field of 3D archaeology – one that formed the initial impetus for the MayaArch3D Project: that is, while the quantity of …

Addressing Childhood Lead Poisoning Through Gis: A Proactive Approach In Scott County, Iowa, Tanner Osing

2016-2017: Scott County, Iowa and the Scott County Health Department

In June 2016, Scott County Health Department (SHCD) officially partnered with the Upper Mississippi Center (UMC) at Augustana College as part of the Sustainable Working Landscapes Initiative (SWLI). The initiative’s main goal is to address childhood lead poisoning in Scott County, Iowa. While the health department has ongoing efforts to address the problem, there are still approximately 50 children testing positive for lead poisoning every year (Tibbets, 2016). Currently, as part of the Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention and Control Program, the health department offers case management services for children poisoned under the age of six, follow-up inspections for residences, and …

Public Health Applications Of Gis: A Spatial Analysis Of Tobacco Sales And Violations For The Worcester Division Of Public Health, Thomas M. Caywood

Sustainability and Social Justice

Performed as part of an internship with the Worcester Division of Public Health in the summer of 2016, this spatial analysis examines the proximity of tobacco retailers to the city’s public schools and finds that those in low-income neighborhoods tend to have greater numbers of tobacco sales outlets in the immediate area than do schools in more-affluent neighborhoods. The analysis also finds that the racial composition of student bodies at individual schools is moderately correlated with the number of tobacco points of purchase located near those schools. Because proximity to tobacco sales outlets is known to be a factor in …

Location-Based Modeling And Statistics Internship With Location, Inc., Yixuan Wang

Sustainability and Social Justice

In the summer 2016, I had the honor to work as a GIS & statistics intern at Location, Inc. It is a Software as a Service (SaaS) private company that builds and delivers location-based big data, analytics, tools, and services. The company’s mission is to create the best location-based technologies to help businesses make well-informed decisions (Location, Inc.). I was chosen by the company’s CEO, Dr. Andrew Schiller, who is also a Clark Alumnus. During the internship period, I worked in the data science team supervised by Jonathan Glick, and my main responsibilities were handling geographical and statistical …

Financial Assessment Of Agricultural Lands At Risk To Coastal Salt Marsh Migration In Relation To Climate Change Induced Sea Level Rise In Dorchester County, Maryland, Jewell Porter

Sustainability and Social Justice

The increasing rate and effects of sea level rise is a major environmental concern in the Chesapeake Bay. This paper evaluates the impacts of rising sea level on coastal salt marshes and the surrounding agricultural lands at risk in Dorchester County, Maryland to build off existing environmental monitoring work performed by NOAA’s Sentinel Site Program. The results of the spatial analysis were used to estimate monetary benefits to incentivize farmers to protect these marshes by making their land available for marsh migration to occur. Looking at three scenarios of sea level rise and marsh migration, grain crops (corn, soybeans, and …

Sentinel-1 Slc Processing: Summer Internship With Clark Labs, Lei Tang

Sustainability and Social Justice

My summer internship with Clark Labs was mainly focused on technological and methodological exploration of Sentinel-1 SLC data, under the direct supervision of James Toledano. The main responsibilities of my internship were understanding theory and science behind Sentinel-1, utilizing the SNAP toolbox to determine the proper imagery processing steps in order to distinguish the land structure clearly. 36 testing on different combination of acquisition modes, speckle filters and time gap were conducted during that time.

I would highly recommend this internship to other GISDE students. The dynamic nature of the GISDE program provides students with the opportunity to be able …

Optimizing Stadium Evacuation By Integrating Geo-Computation And Affordance Theory, Joslyn Jane Zale

Dissertations

The purpose of this project was to optimize football stadium evacuation time by integrating geo-computation with affordance theory from perceptual psychology to account for evacuee characteristics: age, gender, physical fitness, alcohol consumption, and prior experience attending football games at The University of Southern Mississippi (USM), evacuating from large, outdoor public places, and with hazard events.

According to the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act, football stadiums are part of the country’s critical infrastructure warranting special government protection. Evacuation modeling was identified as an important component of game day emergency …

Examination Of The Potential Of Terrestrial Laser Scanning And Structure-From-Motion Photogrammetry For Rapid Nondestructive Field Measurement Of Grass Biomass, Sam D. Cooper, David P. Roy, Crystal B. Schaaf, Ian Paynter

GSCE Faculty Publications

Above ground biomass (AGB) is a parameter commonly used for assessment of grassland systems. Destructive AGB measurements, although accurate, are time consuming and are not easily undertaken on a repeat basis or over large areas. Structure-from-Motion (SfM) photogrammetry and Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) are two technologies that have the potential to yield precise 3D structural measurements of vegetation quite rapidly. Recent advances have led to the successful application of TLS and SfM in woody biomass estimation, but application in natural grassland systems remains largely untested. The potential of these techniques for AGB estimation is examined considering 11 grass plots with …

Geoscientists-In-The-Park Summer Internship Mapping Shoreline Change With The National Park Service, Michael P. Endicott

Sustainability and Social Justice

This project paper details the activities carried out as a Geologist/GIS Specialist in the Gateway National Recreation Area as a part of the Geoscientists-In-The-Park internship program. The focus of this position was on supporting the geomorphological monitoring efforts of the National Park Service. This was accomplished through a combination of field data collection, GIS analysis, report writing, and project work. By the end of the internship, substantial progress was made to the formation of Gateway’s Annual 1D and 2D report for 2015-2016, field data were collected for the 2016 summer season, changes in geomorphology were explored and summarized for the …

The Fight Against Botanical Invaders: Summer Internship With The Montana Conservation Corps And The U.S. Forest Service, Bryan S. Buttigieg

Sustainability and Social Justice

This paper aims to synthesize and reflect upon my internship with the Montana Conservation Corps, and the U.S. Forest Service during the summer of 2016. The primary responsibilities as an intern under the USFS’s Vegetation Manager included eradicating and monitoring invasive weeds within the Hebgen Lake Ranger District, in West Yellowstone, MT. I gained a wealth of knowledge on how invasive plants take control of landscapes throughout Montana specifically. This opportunity provided me with the chance to develop both hands-on and GIS-based conservation efforts. The following chapters review my summer internship by diving deeper into the structural organization of the …

Spatial Variability Of Seedling Disease Pressure In Cotton Fields, Kyle Douglas Wilson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Seedling diseases are important factors in cotton stand establishment, and seedling disease pathogens are widespread in fields in Arkansas. Little is known about the variability of seedling disease pressure within fields. With expanded adoption of site-specific management and other precision agriculture approaches, cotton producers are increasingly interested in predicting seedling disease pressure, particularly in spatially variable fields. The cotton seedling disease pathogens include the soilborne pathogens Thielaviopsis basicola, Rhizoctonia solani, Pythium spp., and Fusarium spp. These pathogens can survive in soil for long periods and, and when the environment is conducive, these pathogens can act individually or in combination to …

Assessing Landslide Susceptibility With Gis Using Qualitative And Quantitative Methods In Knox County, Nebraska, Christian J. Cruz

Department of Geography: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis assesses landslide susceptibility using data from LiDAR DEMs, land cover, and soil surveys. Data were assessed quantitatively through Bayesian logistic regression within a geographic information system (GIS) and statistical software to produce a landslide susceptibility map. The study area exhibits moderate relief where bluffs along the Missouri River valley gradually recede into rolling loess-mantled hills further to the south and southeast in Knox County. The six factors used to determine susceptibility to landslides are: land cover, parent material, slope aspect, slope curvature slope degree, and soil series. My findings show an increase in slope is the most significant …

Dynamic Nearest Neighbor Queries In Euclidean Space, Sarana Nutanong, Mohammed Eunus Ali, Egemen Tanin, Kyriakos Mouratidis

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Given a query point q and a set D of data points, a nearest neighbor (NN) query returns the data point p in D that minimizes the distance DIST(q,p), where the distance function DIST(,) is the L₂norm. One important variant of this query type is kNN query, which returns k data points with the minimum distances. When taking the temporal dimension into account, the k NN query result may change over a period of time due to changes in locations of the query point and/or data points.

Environmental Justice And Gis: A Comparison Of Three Gis Methods For Estimating Vulnerable Population Exposed To Brownfield Pollution In Portland, Oregon, Kyle Goodman

Geography Masters Research Papers

This project compares three GIS techniques that estimate populations who are potentially affected by environmental contamination in Portland, Oregon. All three GIS techniques utilize polygon containment to estimate populations potentially exposed to pollutants based on block level census data. In this study, multiple buffer distances at half-mile increments were used across all three techniques. Circular Euclidean distance buffers surrounding a known contaminated property, such as documented brownfields, approximate the contamination zone. Accurate estimates for populations exposed to harmful environmental conditions could provide a better understanding of environmental justice issues. The specific research questions were: 1) Are the population estimates sensitive …

Gis Specialist 2016 Internship With Cdm Smith In Boston, Massachusetts, Suzanne L. Meek

Sustainability and Social Justice

This report provides a detailed experience of my internship with CDM Smith during the summer of 2016. This was a formal 12-week internship that was extended an additional two weeks due to my success in the first few weeks. My title was listed as a GIS Specialist Intern. My responsibilities included applying GIS technologies to construction, water, and energy projects, digitizing various locations for cities and private clients, FEMA projects, and street light audits in two different towns in New England.

A Spatial Analysis Of The Relationship Between Violent Neighborhood Crime Rates And Alternative Gentrification Indicators In Louisville, Ky (2010-2016)., George A. Noonan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study analyzes recent findings analyzing coffee shops as alternative indicators of gentrification and the spatial relationship to violent crime. This thesis seeks to add to this literature by providing additional alternative gentrification indicators such as breweries, distilleries and wineries. The change in number of coffee shops, breweries, distilleries and wineries may impact crime rates and multiyear average incidences of homicide and robbery in the city of Louisville, KY. The first hypothesis states that gentrification decreases multiyear average robberies per census tract from 2010 to 2016. The second hypothesis states that gentrification decreases multiyear average homicides per census tract from …

Colorectal Cancer Fit Screening In The Hope Vi Population Of Jefferson County, Kentucky., Jeffrey D. Stone

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Using pre-post survey data collected from 209 randomly selected African American people from the population of former residents of Clarksdale and Sheppard Square public housing areas, this study explores the relationship between individual characteristics and colorectal cancer screening behavior, measured by the uptake of the Fecal Immunochemical Test (FIT) and by prior colorectal screening, while controlling for neighborhood factors and geographic proximity to healthcare facilities. This particular public housing population is of interest because of their relocation from the downtown area, where healthcare facilities are within walking distances, to other public housing units either in large apartment complexes or scattered …

Niche Modeling For The Giant Panda, Ailuropoda Melanoleuca, And The Original Panda, Ailurus Fulgens: Habitat Preferences And Evolutionary Consequences, Lauren M. Lyon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The well-known symbol for conservation, the giant panda bear, and the original red panda have been forced into remote habitats due to anthropogenic disturbance, making ecological study difficult. Therefore the first known species distribution model was created to predict the most likely areas of occurrence within the known range of these elusive animals. These models were then projected onto North America and evaluated against existing breeding programs. Additionally, the close proximity of the Gray Fossil Site and the discovery of the most complete fossil red panda specimens in the world allowed ecomorphological comparisons between the modern red panda, Ailurus fulgens …

Mapping Community Space And Place In Mto Wa Mbu, Tanzania Through Surveys And Gis, Jessica Craigg

Georgia College Student Research Events

Cities throughout the African continent have been developing at an unprecedented pace, many of them due to the influence of the tourism industry. This is particularly true in Tanzania, a country famous for its national parks and their draw to tourists who help provide money for development. However, the only way to get the whole story on how to spend this money is through the experiences and needs of the people themselves. This study focuses on a small town in northeastern Tanzania, Mto wa Mbu, situated near Lake Manyara National Park, and its people’s perceptions of the park and community. …