Geographic Information Sciences Commons^™

Enterprise Gis & Architecture, Nevin Gaudet

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

Enterprise GIS solutions are becoming more attractive to companies to implement because of the ability to leverage system of record portals. Information is largely regarded as a company’s competitive advantage enabling organizational capability to operate and build capital and equity within a business. And with good reason large amounts of data and information are difficult to collect and organize within a digital framework. Building a GIS enterprise is a solution for data organization and management. Workflows must be in place to collect, process, calculate, and store data with high regard to timeliness and accuracy. Business decisions are made based on …

Access To Recreation In San Francisco, Ca, Robert Graham

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

This research presents an assessment of the equity of access to public recreation facilities among communities of San Francisco, California using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), database programming, and open sources of data. Urban parks and the recreation facilities contained therein are valuable public resources that contribute to healthy and well-adjusted citizenry and have significant positive impacts on the shared urban experience. This project utilizes the network analysis and spatial processing capacities of GIS alongside web technologies and open data sources to delineate pedestrian and transit service areas around each of over 300 documented recreation facilities and community centers in the …

Creation Of A Spatial Decision Support System As A Risk Assessment Tool Based On Kentucky Tornado Climatology, Christopher Michael Blinn

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Tornadoes are one of Mother Nature’s deadliest phenomena. They affect a large region of the United States. The risk of tornadoes is contingent on dynamic atmospheric conditions that are most likely during spring but which can occur anytime of the year, making the storms challenging to forecast. Using geographical information systems (GIS), a web-based spatial decision support system (SDSS) was created to help understand the spatial dimension of tornado risk assessment. The risk values are calculated using Tornado Days rather than taking a crude density measurement. The SDSS hosts GIS web services that are displayed on an Adobe Flex application. …

Creating A Pedestrian Level-Of-Service Index For Transit Stops: Evidence From Denver’S Light Rail System, Patrick Gallagher

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

An Integrated Approach For Developing Adaptation Strategies In Climate Planning: A Case Study Of Vulnerability In Dukes County, Massachusetts, Jonathan Pollak

Master's Theses

Climate Action Plans (CAP’s) are recent innovations in policy that have been catalyzed by a need to adjust the relationship between human activity and the Earth’s climate system. CAP’s often are composed of methods to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions in addition to adaptation strategies. Research indicates, however, that many plans focus on mitigation strategies while adaptation policies related to predicted changes caused by climate change are often overlooked. This thesis presents an integrative framework for locating areas that are in need of adaptation strategies through a GIS based decision support system that visualizes vulnerability. It is operationalized through an empirical …

Sub-Pixel Classification Of Forest Cover Types In East Texas, Joey Westbrook, I-Kuai Hung, Daniel Unger, Yanli Zhang

Faculty Publications

Sub-pixel classification is the extraction of information about the proportion of individual materials of interest within a pixel. Landcover classification at the sub-pixel scale provides more discrimination than traditional per-pixel multispectral classifiers for pixels where the material of interest is mixed with other materials. It allows for the un-mixing of pixels to show the proportion of each material of interest. The materials of interest for this study are pine, hardwood, mixed forest and non-forest. The goal of this project was to perform a sub-pixel classification, which allows a pixel to have multiple labels, and compare the result to a traditional …

Finding Multi-Centers: Using Crowd-Sourcing Technologies To Define Communities Of Landscape Architecture, Geoffrey Taylor

All Theses

This paper presents findings from website-based analytics identifying social and geographic topic hotspots within the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design. Three crowd-sourced surveys are utilized to record thousands of user's topic interests and pinpoint locations on a global scale. Topics include projects, research, visualization, sustainability, and competitions within architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design. The surveys also identify user locations, topics of interest, day and time of contact, social sharing, and user demographics. The goal of the research is to understand the online social structure and responses of groups involved with developing the built environment. These professionals …

An Alternate Approach To Ecosystem Mapping: Fusing Orthophotography With Landsat Etm+ Data For A Object-Based Classification, South Eastern Arkansas., David Mcfee

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Maintaining representative sampling of biologically rich and rare ecosystems has become an important means to preventing biodiversity loss. A limitation in indentifying and quantifying ecosystems is the cost of obtaining high resolution imagery necessary for a high resolution land cover assessment. This research shows how free, different resolution imagery (orthoimages and LANDSAT ETM+) could be combined to produce a hybrid dataset with enhanced spectral, spectral and temporal properties, and processed to obtain a object-based classification of land cover of bottomland and pine hardwood forest in south eastern Arkansas. Three classification techniques were evaluated: 1) a human derived, rule based method, …

Identifying Optimal Cellulosic Biomass Feedstock Supply Areas For Potential Biorefineries In Arkansas, Mark Cooper

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In February 2010, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released the revised Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS2), mandating at least 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels to be produced annually in America, and blended into all on/off road, locomotive, and marine gasoline and diesel by the year 2022. America's existing biorefineries fall significantly short of being able to meet this mandate, resulting in the need for rapid expansion in the near future if this goal is to be met. The state of Arkansas has abundant resources to offer the renewable energy industry, if properly utilized. The goal of this thesis is to …

Navigation And Accessibility For Persons With Disabilities: An Anthropological Study Using Gis On The University Of Arkansas Campus, Deborah Jean Raiees-Dana

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The University of Arkansas was founded in 1871 on the top of a hill overlooking the Ozark Mountains, resulting in a campus that has steep slopes and numerous historical buildings that were not designed with ADA regulations in mind. This makes getting around campus especially difficult for students with limited mobility, and no campus maps exist that include handicapped accessibility features to help navigate the terrain and limited parking options. This study examines this issue using a holistic approach that explores cultural and technological factors to produce a map of the Historic Core District of campus.

Geographical Information Systems enable …

Assessment Of Land Use Suitability Based On Water Erosion Susceptibility In Medium-Sized Urban Areas Of The Metropolitan Region Of Santiago, Central Chile, Roberto Fernandez

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Urban areas constitute complex spatial entities where biophysical and socioeconomic environments interact through processes that determine the distribution of land use in the territory. Given Chile's variety of landscapes, water erosion, and mass movement, and rapid expansion of its medium-sized cities, straightforward techniques for assessment of land use suitability are essential. Through evaluation of water erosion susceptibility, it is possible to efficiently determine suitability of land use in medium-sized cities and their adjacent environments. The adaptation and application of the Erosion Response Units (ERU) concept (Märker et al., 2001) in the cities of Colina and Melipilla, Metropolitan Region of …

Geographic Information Systems And Cloud Computing, James Hearn

Undergraduate Research Conference

No abstract provided.

A Spatially Explicit Agent Based Model Of Muscovy Duck Home Range Behavior, James Howard Anderson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Research in GIScience has identified agent-based simulation methodologies as effective in the study of complex adaptive spatial systems (CASS). CASS are characterized by the emergent nature of their spatial expressions and by the changing relationships between their constituent variables and how those variables act on the system's spatial expression over time. Here, emergence refers to a CASS property where small-scale, individual action results in macroscopic or system-level patterns over time. This research develops and executes a spatially-explicit agent based model of Muscovy Duck home range behavior. Muscovy duck home range behavior is regarded as a complex adaptive spatial system …

Geographic Information Systems Facilitate Youth, Youth Workers And Community Stakeholder Efforts, Helenmary Hotz

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

A large population of underserved students and residents in the City of Boston suffer from behavioral and/or discipline problems, as well as substance and/or alcohol abuse. A side effect of this behavior is the increasing instance of trash such as cigarette butts, condoms, syringes and packaging being discarded in public areas. The South Boston Youth Action Center (SBYAC) is tackling this problem by making the community aware of the locations and probable sources of this problem. The SBYAC is implementing an effort to rid South Boston parks, playgrounds and areas frequented by children of refuse associated with substance abuse. And, …

Prospects For An International Charter "Space And Major Disaster" Remote Sensing Response To Drought Disasters - An Anhui, China Case Study, Joseph Burkhead

Masters Theses

Remote sensing is often leveraged during the response phase of disaster management to improve the situational awareness of decision-makers. The International Charter "Space and Major Disaster" (Charter) provides remote sensing support to non-spacefaring nations facing disasters such as earthquakes, floods and tsunamis. However, the Charter has never activated for a major drought disaster. Since droughts affect over half of the nearly 3 billion people that suffer from natural disasters annually, this study seeks to determine whether satellite remote sensing can be effectively employed according to the intent, capabilities, and limitations of the Charter to benefit officials responding to a major …

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 …

Foreign Direct Investment In Italy 2000-2010: Spatial Patterns And Implications, Enzo Crescentini

Masters Theses

Foreign direct investment (FDI) has long been shown to be an important driver of economic growth as well as a source of knowledge transfer in host countries. Italy, now the tenth largest economy in the world, has a remarkable distribution of FDI characterized by a metropolitan industrial North and what is commonly referred to as an economically unfit or "backwards" South. Given these regional differences, Italy faces many interesting challenges in attracting FDI in the current global economic climate. The nation must attract capital to less-developed regions as well as to the extensive industrial clusters in the North that are …

Understanding Wildfire Hazard Vulnerability Of Residents In Teton County, Wyoming, Lucas Kanclerz

Masters Theses

The research examines significant differences in wildfire home protection activities between local and seasonal residents in Teton County, Wyoming. Significant differences of wildfire home protection activities results in hazard vulnerability to a whole community. An extensive literature review establishes the purpose and hypothesis of the research to understand if seasonal residents are creating wildfire hazard vulnerability to local residents. A survey-based methodology using nominal YES/NO questions and ordinal Likert-type scale questions were used to understand residents past wildfire experiences, perceptions on the effectiveness of home protection activities, and if residents actually do these activities. Statistical analysis revealed that seasonal residents …

Urban Transition Of Races In The Denver Metro Area, Scott Kilker

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

The racial segregation of the primary racial groups, African-American, Asian, Latino and White, residing within the Denver metropolitan five-county area is analyzed using a Geographic Information System. The study uses census defined block groups to measure racial population within the study area as input to analysis methods that provide insight to the transition of racial groups within the Denver metropolitan area. Markov chain analysis is used to compute the probability that the ratio of a block group of a race will change. The Monte Carlo method is then applied using the probabilities to predict what the segregation in the Denver …