The Spatial Organization Of Pre-Colonial African Kingdoms: The Empires Of Ethiopia & Mali, Victoria O. Alapo

Department of Geography: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Pre-Colonial kingdoms in Sub-Saharan Africa were many, and were organized in unique ways. The old Empires of Ethiopia and Mali were selected for this research because of their antiquity and for their contrasts: Ethiopia was an official Christian Empire for about two millennia, while Mali was the quintessential Sub-Saharan Islamic kingdom. Also, both empires possessed documentation written by traditional Africans, in the form of ancient indigenous manuscripts, which predate the colonial period (i.e., the coming of Europeans) by several centuries. In addition, the research analyzes work that has been done by historians and other academics, and incorporates the reports of …

Spatial Downscaling Of Goes-R Land Surface Temperature Over Urban Regions: A Case Study For New York City, Abdou Bah, Hamidreza Norouzi, Satya Prakash, Reginald Blake, Reza Khanbilvardi, Cynthia Rosenzweig

Publications and Research

The surface urban heat island (SUHI) effect is among the major environmental issues encountered in urban regions. To better predict the dynamics of the SUHI and its impacts on extreme heat events, an accurate characterization of the surface energy balance in urban regions is needed. However, the ability to improve understanding of the surface energy balance is limited by the heterogeneity of surfaces in urban areas. This study aims to enhance the understanding of the urban surface energy budget through an innovation in the use of land surface temperature (LST) observations from remote sensing satellites. A LST database with 5–min …

Unraveling The Geographies Of The U.S. Public Education System: An Analysis Of Scale, Segregation, And Hegemony, Olivia Ildefonso

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Other than one or two studies that focus on specific state-wide systems of public education, there has been no accounting for how the U.S. public education system came about in relation to space and scale. My dissertation research seeks to fill in this gap. Through focusing on the development of public education in the North and the South, I provide a foundation for understanding the grounded and contested processes of scale production that largely determined the U.S. public education system’s design and function.

In each of the seven chapters, I detail how fights over the structure and purpose of public …

Bridges And Barriers: An Exploration Of Engagements Of The Research Community With The Openstreetmap Community, A. Yair Grinberger, Marco Minghini, Godwin Yeboah, Levente Juhasz, Peter Mooney

GIS Center

The academic community frequently engages with OpenStreetMap (OSM) as a data source and research subject, acknowledging its complex and contextual nature. However, existing literature rarely considers the position of academic research in relation to the OSM community. In this paper we explore the extent and nature of engagement between the academic research community and the larger communities in OSM. An analysis of OSM-related publications from 2016 to 2019 and seven interviews conducted with members of one research group engaged in OSM-related research are described. The literature analysis seeks to uncover general engagement patterns while the interviews are used to identify …

Detecting And Visualizing Observation Hot-Spots In Massive Volunteer-Contributed Geographic Data Across Spatial Scales Using Gpu-Accelerated Kernel Density Estimation, Guiming Zhang

Geography and the Environment: Faculty Scholarship

Volunteer-contributed geographic data (VGI) is an important source of geospatial big data that support research and applications. A major concern on VGI data quality is that the underlying observation processes are inherently biased. Detecting observation hot-spots thus helps better understand the bias. Enabled by the parallel kernel density estimation (KDE) computational tool that can run on multiple GPUs (graphics processing units), this study conducted point pattern analyses on tens of millions of iNaturalist observations to detect and visualize volunteers’ observation hot-spots across spatial scales. It was achieved by setting varying KDE bandwidths in accordance with the spatial scales at which …

Urban Pastures: A Computational Approach To Identify The Barriers Of Segregation, Noah Gans

Honors Projects

Urban Sociology is concerned with identifying the relationship between the built environment and the organization of residents. In recent years, computational methods have offered new techniques to measure segregation, including using road networks to measure marginalized communities' institutional and social isolation. This paper contributes to existing computational and urban inequality scholarship by exploring how the ease of mobility along city roads determines community barriers in Atlanta, GA. I use graph partitioning to separate Atlanta’s road network into isolated chunks of intersections and residential roads, which I call urban pastures. Urban pastures are social communities contained to residential road networks because …

Geographic Trends Of Terrorist Attacks And Active Shooter Scenarios Perpetrated Inside U.S. Military Installations And Facilities, 1970-2019, Aaron James Ebbenga

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

In recent years, a variety of devastating terrorist attacks have been perpetrated against American military installations, spurring not only national outrage but also global public upheaval. Our public preconception of considering military bases as impenetrable to the dangers of active shooter scenarios and bomb threats has since become widely scrutinized by worldwide media sources. For this reason, the people of the U.S. have expressed concerns about the safety of the nation’s military personnel. The diverse nature of the attacks, committed both by domestic and foreign terrorist organizations, illustrates vulnerabilities of American military installations and support facilities. These types of attacks …

Wilderness And The Geotag: Exploring The Claim That "Geotagging Ruins Nature" In The Alpine Lakes Wilderness, Wa, Mara Gans

All Master's Theses

This research explores the claim that “geotagging ruins nature” by quantifying and qualifying patterns in geotag use and visitors’ experiences in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, in Washington, United States. Many have raised concerns that geotags increase recreational visitation to public lands, which subsequently contributes to negative resource impacts. Others, however, claim that geotagging has made the outdoors more accessible to less privileged communities and raise concerns that condemning geotags will perpetuate the exclusion of certain groups from outdoor recreation. This debate is studied within federally designated Wilderness, which is legally defined as “untrammeled by man,” a definition rooted in problematic …

Forging Ahead And Adapting To Change: A Review Of The Initiatives Of The Isprs Student Consortium, Sheryl Rose C. Reyes, Charmaine A. Cruz

SOSE Affiliate: Manila Observatory

The International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Student Consortium (ISPRS SC) is an international organization that represents a constituency of the students and the young professionals with common interests and goals within ISPRS in the areas of photogrammetry, remote sensing and spatial information science. The ISPRS SC Board of Directors strengthened the organization’s foundations and increased its engagement in the Society from 2016 to 2022. Given the current global health crisis, selected members of the Board of Directors continued to serve in the ISPRS SC for a two-year extension and developed creative strategies in navigating the new normal. Building …

Quantifying Water Security In West Virginia And The Potomac River Basin, Eric Carl Edvard Sinius Sjostedt

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

All healthy ecosystems, communities, and economies are founded on access to clean, adequate water sources to support ecosystem services, provide clean drinking water, and allow the production of water-intensive goods and services. The state of available water resources must be analyzed through the lens of water security, defined as the capability to safeguard sustainable access to adequate quantities of acceptable quality water for people, the economy, and ecosystems. Mountain regions are sources of freshwater resources for downstream regions, which produce disproportionately higher runoff than downstream regions. As a result, mountain regions are often referred to as natural water towers …

Agent-Based Modelling And Big Data: Applications For Maritime Traffic Analysis, Marc Sirizzotti

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Agent based modeling (ABM) is a powerful tool for examining complex systems in many scientific applications, including maritime transport systems. Growing demands for freight transport and increased industry emphasis on reducing environmental impacts have heightened the focus on vessel and port efficiency. This research aimed to create a maritime route planning model to simulate vessel movement in all waterways. The goal of the ship routing model developed in this research was to develop a simulation tool capable of reproducing real world shipping routes useful for navigation planning, with emphasis on port scheduling and potential application for further use and exploration. …

Shadow-Based Automatic Building Height Estimation From High Spatial Resolution Satellite Imagery, Lonnie Lee Byrnside Iii

MSU Graduate Theses

Three-dimensional city (3D) models are very useful in supporting natural disaster preparation and response. LiDAR surveying is currently the main method by which 3D city models are created; however, LiDAR data on a local scale is hard to obtain for developing countries. This project sought to test whether or not urban feature height data obtained using the photogrammetric sun-angle shadow method is a viable alternative to LiDAR-derived 3D city models. A core element of this work was the development of a toolset to be shared freely to the public to promote crowdsourcing of 3D building data. Prior works were reviewed …

Using Spatial Methods To Analyse Anthropogenic Predation Risk And Movement Ecology Of White-Tailed Deer (Odocoileus Virginianus), Rhiannon D. Kirton

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Hunting has been used as a central tool by wildlife managers to maintain populations of game species, however, we still lack a good understanding of exactly how hunting influences deer biology. Technological advances in GPS data over the last two decades now enable us to perform more detailed analysis on the effects of human hunters on wildlife populations. This research explores the spatial ecology of hunters and White-tailed deer in the Cross Timbers ecoregion of Oklahoma. Using new statistical methodologies to analyse simultaneous GPS tracking data on deer and hunters to study their spatial interactions. The results show how new …

Exploring Micro-Scale Spatiotemporal Dynamics Of Restaurant Entrepreneurship With Public Open Data, Chanwoo Jin, Alan T. Murray

International Journal of Geospatial and Environmental Research

Commercial activities within a city have competed to attract people, and the interactions between these activities have affected urban dynamics. Among many services, the restaurant business accounts for a significant portion of the urban economy, with spatiotemporal variations in survivability reflecting crucial signs of changes in urban structure. This study aims to identify the patterns of spatiotemporal changes in restaurants locations to deepen our understanding of urban dynamics. Studies have utilized a variety of data sources, including social media and consumer review services, but they cover relatively short periods and focus on currently operating businesses. Public open data, however, offers …

Impacts Of Sea-Level Rise On Urban Properties In Tampa Due To Climate Change, Weiwei Xie

Theses and Dissertations

The fast urbanization produces a large and growing population in coastal areas. However, the rise of sea level, one of the most significant impacts of global warming, makes coastal communities much more vulnerable to flooding than before. This Master’s thesis study investigates sea-level rise impacts on parcel-level property in the specific coastal city of Tampa, Florida, USA. An improved sea-level rise model based on satellite altimeter data is first used to predict future sea levels. Based on high-resolution LiDAR digital elevation data and property map, flooded properties are identified to evaluate property damage cost. This empirical analysis provides an in-depth …

Intra-Field Nitrogen Estimation For Wheat And Corn Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle-Based And Satellite Multispectral Imagery, Plant Biophysical Variables, Field Properties, And Machine Learning Methods, Jody Seymon Yu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Management of nitrogen (N) fertilizers is an important agricultural practice and field of research to increase productivity, minimize environmental impacts and the cost of production. To apply N fertilizer at the right rate, time, and place depends on the crop type, desired yield, and field conditions. The objective of this study is to use Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) multispectral imagery, PlanetScope satellite imagery, vegetation indices (VI), crop height, leaf area index (LAI), field topographic metrics, and soil properties to predict canopy nitrogen weight (g/m²) of corn and wheat fields in southwestern Ontario, Canada. Random Forests (RF) and Support …

The Spatial Effects Of Elderly Population Presence On Covid -19 Incidence In Dki Jakarta Before, During, And After Large-Scale Social Restriction, Chotib Chotib, I G A A Karishma Maharani Raijaya Mrs., Ahmad Aki Aki Muhaimin Mr., Novani Saputri

Smart City

ABSTRACT

Infected cases and suspect cases of covid-19 are increasing more and more daily. This increment happens either in whole regions of Indonesia and DKI Jakarta as a capital city. The purpose of this research is to seek the pattern in spatial of Covid-19 incidence with 3 different periods of before, during, and after large-scale social restriction, and to identify the influence of the presence of the elderly and other factors. One of the scopes of this study is the presence of the elderly because the elderly population is considered as influencing the increase of Covid-19 incidence. The analysis method …

Algorithm Performance On The Estimation Of Cdom And Doc In The North Slopes Of Alaska, Monica Weisenbach

Masters Theses

Use of satellite imagery makes environmental monitoring easy and convenient with little of the logistics involved in planning sampling campaigns. Colored dissolved organic matter (CDOM) is an important component to track as a proxy for the large pool of dissolved organic carbon (DOC). In a world contending with the looming issue of global climate change, the ability to investigate the carbon cycle of inland to coastal environments allows for examination of the magnitude of carbon flowing through the system and potential changes over years. The Arctic region is a critical area for climate change impacts but is a difficult landscape …

Hispanic Demographics In Cobb County, Ga, Cole Thompson

Symposium of Student Scholars

This research was part of the Direct Applied Research (DAR) GIS: 4100 course. This research was in partnership with the Marietta Museum of History. The objective was to display Hispanic Demographics in Cobb County. Areas focused include education, population, and community. The analysis concluded similar trends in all three topics. Hispanic enrollment has gradually increased in Cobb County public high schools since 2011. High schools with the highest percentage of Hispanic enrollment were located close to interstates or in the southern region of Cobb. The population analysis concluded that zip codes 30008 and 30060 had the highest percentage of Hispanics …

(Re)Opening Closed/Ness: Hauntological Engagements With Historical Markers In The Threshold Of Mastery, Bretton A. Varga, Timothy Monreal

Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education

This project explored functionalities of (ghostly) mastery within the radical context of institutionally historical designations. We first identified historical designations of our university campuses and then, using Jackson and Mazzei’s (2012) thinking with theory, entangled our hauntological perspectives with published “material” (e.g., university website articles, materials on official websites) and researcher generated photographs. As such, the purpose of this project is to loosen the grip of narrative mastery governing the designation of historical markers located throughout learning institutions. Thus, in unleashing ghosts/hauntings, we offer a theoretically informed opening towards troubling the vulnerability of history/ies, narratives, and spaces institutions seek to—and …