Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Geographic Information'
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1
Alvarez, Elma L. "Semantic geographic information system." FIU Digital Commons, 1996. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1262.
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This thesis research describes the design and implementation of a Semantic Geographic Information System (GIS) and the creation of its spatial database. The database schema is designed and created, and all textual and spatial data are loaded into the database with the help of the Semantic DBMS's Binary Database Interface currently being developed at the FIU's High Performance Database Research Center (HPDRC). A friendly graphical user interface is created together with the other main system's areas: displaying process, data animation, and data retrieval. All these components are tightly integrated to form a novel and practical semantic GIS that has facilitated the interpretation, manipulation, analysis, and display of spatial data like: Ocean Temperature, Ozone(TOMS), and simulated SeaWiFS data. At the same time, this system has played a major role in the testing process of the HPDRC's high performance and efficient parallel Semantic DBMS.
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Tao, Jia. "Exploring Massive Volunteered Geographic Information for Geographic Knowledge Discovery." Licentiate thesis, KTH, Geoinformatik, 2010. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-27034.
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Conventionally geographic data produced and disseminated by the national mapping agencies are used for studying various urban issues. These data are not commonly available or accessible, but also are criticized for being expensive. However, this trend is changing along with the rise of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI). VGI, known as user generated content, is the geographic data collected and disseminated by individuals at a voluntary basis. So far, a huge amount of geographic data has been collected due to the increasing number of contributors and volunteers. More importantly, they are free and accessible to anyone. There are many formats of VGI such as Wikimapia, Flickr, GeoNames and OpenStreetMap (OSM). OSM is a new mapping project contributed by volunteers via a wiki-like collaboration, which is aimed to create free, editable map of the entire world. This thesis adopts OSM as the main data source to uncover the hidden patterns around the urban systems. We investigated some fundamental issues such as city rank size law and the measurement of urban sprawl. These issues were conventionally studied using Census or satellite imagery data. We define the concept of natural cities in order to assess city size distribution. Natural cities are generated in a bottom up manner via the agglomeration of individual street nodes. This clustering process is dependent on one parameter called clustering resolution. Different clustering resolutions could derive different levels of natural cities. In this respect, they show little bias compared to city boundaries imposed by Census bureau or extracted from satellite imagery. Based on the investigation, we made two findings about rank size distributions. The first one is that all the natural cities in US follow strictly Zipf’s law regardless of the clustering resolutions, which is different from other studies only investigating a few largest cities. The second one is that Zipf’s law is not universal at the state level, e.g., Zipf’s law for natural cities within individual states does not hold valid. This thesis continues to detect the sprawling based on natural cities. Urban sprawl devours large amount of open space each year and subsequently leads to many environmental problems. To curb urban sprawl with proper policies, a major problem is how to objectively measure it. In this thesis, a new approach is proposed to measure urban sprawl based on street nodes. This approach is based on the fact that street nodes are significantly correlated with population in cities. Specifically, it is reported that street nodes have a linear relationship with city sizes with correlation coefficient up to 0.97. This linear regression line, known as sprawl ruler, can partition all cities into the sprawling, compact and normal cities. This study verifies this approach with some US census data and US natural cities. Based on the verification, this thesis further applies it to three European countries: France, Germany and UK, and consequently categorizes all natural cities into three classes: sprawling, compact and normal. This categorization provides a new insight into the sprawling detection and sets a uniform standard for cross comparing sprawling level across an entire country.QC 20101206
3
Lakey, John Christopher. "HIERARCHICAL GEOGRAPHICAL IDENTIFIERS AS AN INDEXING TECHNIQUE FOR GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION RETRIEVAL." MSSTATE, 2008. http://sun.library.msstate.edu/ETD-db/theses/available/etd-11062008-195327/.
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Location plays an ever increasing role in modern web-based applications. Many of these applications leverage off-the-shelf search engine technology to provide interactive access to large collections of data. Unfortunately, these commodity search engines do not provide special support for location-based indexing and retrieval. Many applications overcome this constraint by applying geographic bounding boxes in conjunction with range queries. We propose an alternative technique based on geographic identifiers and suggest it will yield faster query evaluation and provide higher search precision. Our experiment compared the two approaches by executing thousands of unique queries on a dataset with 1.8 million records. Based on the quantitative results obtained, our technique yielded drastic performance improvements in both query execution time and precision.
4
Fonseca, Frederico Torres. "Ontology-Driven Geographic Information Systems." Fogler Library, University of Maine, 2001. http://www.library.umaine.edu/theses/pdf/FonsecaFT2001.pdf.
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Addy, Nicholas G. "Ontology driven geographic information retrieval." Thesis, Curtin University, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/2526.
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The theory of modern information retrieval processes must be improved to meet parallel growth and efficiency in its dependent hardware architectures. The growth in data sources facilitated by hardware improvements must be conversant with parallel growth at the user end of the information retrieval paradigm, encompassing both an increasing demand for data services and a widening user base. Contemporary sources refer to such growth as three dimensional, in reference to the expected and parallel growth in the key areas of hardware processing power, demand from current users of information services and an increase in demand via an extended user base consisting of institutions and organizations who are not characteristically defined by their use of geographic information. This extended user base is expected to grow due to the demand to utilise and incorporate geographic information as part of competitive business processes, to fill the need for advertising and spatial marketing demographics. The vision of the semantic web as such is the challenge of managing integration between diverse and increasing data sources and diverse and increasing end users of information. Whilst data standardisation is one means of achieving this vision at the source end of the information flow, it is not a solution in a free market of ideas. Information in its elemental form should be accessible regardless of the domain of its creation.In an environment where the users and sources are continually growing in scope and depth, the management of data via precise and relevant information retrieval requires techniques which can integrate information seamlessly between machines and users regardless of the domain of application or data storage methods. This research is the study of a theory of geographic information structure which can be applied to all aspects of information systems development, governing at a conceptual level the representation of information to meet the requirements of inter machine operability as well as inter user operability. This research entails a thorough study of the use of ontology from theoretical definition to modern use in information systems development and retrieval, in the geographic domain. This is a study examining how the use of words to describe geographic features are elements which can form a geographic ontology and evaluates WordNet, an English language ontology in the form of a lexical database as a structure for improving geographic information recall on Gazetteers. The results of this research conclude that WordNet can be utilised to as a methodology for improving search results in geographic information retrieval processes as a source for additional query terms, but only on a narrow user domain.
6
Azar, Kamal T. (Kamal Toufic). "Integrating geographic information systems into transit passenger information systems." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1991. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/63195.
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San, Martin Roberto. "Information management in disaster and development : geographic information systems." Master's thesis, Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/6218.
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Mestrado em Desenvolvimento e Cooperação InternacionalThis research considers the theoretical and practical link between long-term sustainable development and disaster management. The aim is to develop a theoretical framework and a methodology which allows the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to manage the related information. Literature review leads us to understand development and disaster management as part of a learning cycle. Within this context, a common approach to information management is suggested to support the decision-making process in a cost-effective manner. A “universal” GIS is proposed to integrate information management for development and disaster while exploring the interactions between projects and project and the related geography which is considered a complex reality full of synergies between space, ecosystem, society, culture and economy. Study of academic production, practical implementations, interviews and a limited GIS application (using ArcMap and QGis) are used to endorse the capabilities of this concept. These capabilities are limited by lack of free information and cost of data gathering, interoperability and other technical issues. Open-source and crowdsourcing may solve some limitations while others need further research.
8
Loenen, B. van. "Developing geographic information infrastructures the role of information policies /." Delft : DUP Science, 2006. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/85357223.html.
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9
Ahlqvist, Ola. "Context Sensitive Transformation of Geographic Information." Doctoral thesis, Stockholm : Univ, 2000. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-200.
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10
Pascoe, Richard T. "Translating data between geographic information systems." Thesis, University of Canterbury. Computer Science, 1989. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/8408.
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Transferring data from one geographic information system (GIS) to another is difficult because of the diverse, and often complex, structure of transfer file formats.
Accordingly, the design and implementation of an interface for transferring data from one format to another is time consuming and difficult. The translation may be performed by an interface constructed for the two formats (the individual interfacing strategy), by two interfaces through an interchange format (the interchange format interfacing strategy), or by a number of interfaces through a series of formats (the ring interfacing strategy).
The interchange format interfacing strategy is widely adopted because it offers an acceptable compromise between the quality of the data translation and number of interfaces required. In contrast, the individual interfacing strategy achieves the best quality of translation but is generally rejected because of the impracticality of constructing a large number of interfaces.
The goal pursued in this thesis is to maximise the quality of the translation by overcoming the impracticality of the individual interfacing strategy. This is achieved in the following way. An interface is divided into three phases: the decode phase, in which the source format decoder places data from the source format into a relational data base; the translate phase, in which the data is restructured according to a translation algorithm written in a relational query language; and the encode phase, in which the target format encoder places data from the relational data base into the target format.
The time and effort involved in implementing these phases of data translation is minimised with the assistance of the following software tools: parser generators and lexical analysers which are used for generating format decoders; a relational data base management system which is used for implementing translation algorithms; and an encoder generator which is used for generating format encoders. The encoder generator is a new tool developed in this thesis. The efficacy of these tools is demonstrated, and a significant reduction in the effort of constructing interfaces is achieved, making the individual interfacing strategy a practical approach.
11
Severinsen, Jeremy John. "Measuring Trust for Crowdsourced Geographic Information." Thesis, University of Canterbury. Geography, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/10472.
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In recent years Crowdsourced, or Volunteered, Geographic Information (CGI, VGI), has emerged as a large, up-to-date and easily accessible data source. Primarily attributable to the rise of the Geoweb and widespread use of location enabled technologies, this environment of widespread innovation has repositioned the role of consumers of spatial information. Collaborative and participatory web environments have led to a democratisation of the global mapping process, and resulted in a paradigm shift to the consumer of geographic data also acting as a data producer.
With such a large and diverse group of participants actively mapping the globe, the resulting flood of information has become increasingly attractive to authoritative mapping agencies, in order to augment their own spatial data supply chains. The use of CGI would allow these agencies to undertake continuous improvement of their own data and products, adding a dimension of currency that has previously been unattainable due to high associated costs. CGI, however, through its diversity of authorship, presents a quality assurance risk to these agencies should it be included in their authoritative products. Until now, this risk has been insurmountable, with CGI remaining a “Pandora’s Box” which many agencies are reluctant to open.
This research presents an algorithmic model that overcomes these issues, by quantifying trust in CGI in order to assess its implied quality. Labeled “VGTrust”, this model assesses information about a data author, its spatial trust, as well as its temporal trust, in order to produce an overall metric that is easy to understand and interpret. The VGTrust model will allow mapping agencies to harness CGI to augment existing datasets, or create new ones, thereby facilitating a targeted quality assurance process and minimizing risk to authoritativeness.
This research proposes VGTrust in theory, on the basis of existing examinations of trust issues with CGI. Furthermore, a facilitated case study, “Building Our Footprints” is presented, where VGTrust is deployed to facilitate the capture of a building footprint dataset, the results of which revealing the veracity of the model as a measure to assess trust for these data. Finally, a data structure is proposed in the form of a “geo-molecule”, which allows the full spectrum of trust indicators to be stored a data structure at feature level, allowing the transitivity of this information to travel with each feature following creation.
By overcoming the trust issues inherent in CGI, this research will allow the integration of crowdsourced and authoritative data, thereby leveraging the power of the crowd for productive and innovative re-use.
12
COUTO, LEONARDO MATRICIANO. "MODEL-DRIVEN ADAPTIVE GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS." PONTIFÍCIA UNIVERSIDADE CATÓLICA DO RIO DE JANEIRO, 2006. http://www.maxwell.vrac.puc-rio.br/Busca_etds.php?strSecao=resultado&nrSeq=9648@1.
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PONTIFÍCIA UNIVERSIDADE CATÓLICA DO RIO DE JANEIROEsta dissertação apresenta uma estratégia para desenvolver sistemas de informação geográfica, seguindo uma variante do padrão de projeto Modelo- Visão-Controle (MVC). A estratégia adota modelos para reproduzir classes de usuário e capturar características adicionais das classes de informação da aplicação. A variante do padrão MVC proposta altera os componentes para implementar mecanismos de adaptação, interpretando os modelos definidos. O trabalho descreve ainda um fragmento de uma aplicação projetada segundo a estratégia proposta.
This dissertation introduces a strategy to develop geographic information systems based on a variant of the Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern. The strategy adopts models to reproduce user classes and to capture additional characteristics of the information classes. The MVC components are modified to implement adaptation mechanisms, which interpret the models. The dissertation also describes an example application designed according to the proposed strategy.
13
Alameh, Nadine Sami. "Internet-based collaborative geographic information system." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/50305.
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Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1997, and Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 1997.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 129-131).
by Nadine Sami Alameh.
M.S.
M.C.P.
14
Fischer, Manfred M., and Peter Nijkamp. "Geographic Information Systems and Spatial Analysis." WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, 1991. http://epub.wu.ac.at/4219/1/WSG_DP_1491.pdf.
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Love, Kimberly R. "Modeling Error in Geographic Information Systems." Diss., Virginia Tech, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/29900.
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Geographic information systems (GISs) are a highly influential tool in today's society, and are used in a growing number of applications, including planning, engineering, land management,and environmental study. As the field of GISs continues to expand, it is very important to observe and account for the error that is unavoidable in computerized maps. Currently, both statistical and non-statistical models are available to do so, although there is very little implementation of these methods.
In this dissertation, I have focused on improving the methods available for analyzing error in GIS vector data. In particular, I am incorporating Bayesian methodology into the currently popular G-band error model through the inclusion of a prior distribution on point locations. This has the advantage of working well with a small number of points, and being able to synthesize information from multiple sources. I have also calculated the boundary of the confidence region explicitly, which has not been done before, and this will aid in the eventual inclusion of these methods in GIS software. Finally, I have included a statistical point deletion algorithm, designed for use in situations where map precision has surpassed map accuracy. It is very similar to the Douglas-Peucker algorithm, and can be used in a general line simplification situation, but has the advantage that it works with the error information that is already known about a map rather than adding unknown error. These contributions will make it more realistic for GIS users to implement techniques for error analysis.Ph. D.
16
Corner, Robert J. "Knowledge representation in geographic information systems." Thesis, Curtin University, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/928.
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In order to satisfy increasing demand for better, smarter, more flexible land resource information an alternative form of representation is proposed. That representation is to be achieved through the coupling of Expert System methods and Geographic Information Systems. Instead of representing resource information using entities such as soil types, defined by rigid boundaries on a map, a more fluid presentation is proposed. Individual resource attributes will be represented by surfaces that describe their probability of occurrence, at a number of levels, across a landscape. Such flexible representations, which are designed to better capture the mental models behind their creation, are capable of being combined and synthesised to answer a wide range of resource queries.An investigation of methods of knowledge representation in a number of fields of research, led to the belief that a Bayesian Network provides a representational calculus that is appropriate to the "fuzzy" and imprecise conceptual models used in resource assessment. The fundamental mathematical principles of such networks have been tailored to provide a representation that is in tune with the intuitive processes of a surveyor's thinking.Software has been written to demonstrate the method and tested on a variety of data sets from Australia and overseas. These tests and demonstrations have used a range of densities of knowledge and range of acuity in evidential data. In general the results accord with the mental models used as drivers. A number of operational facets of the method have been highlighted during these demonstrations and attention has been given to a discussion of them.
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Corner, Robert J. "Knowledge representation in geographic information systems." Curtin University of Technology, School of Spatial Sciences, 1999. http://espace.library.curtin.edu.au:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=11740.
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In order to satisfy increasing demand for better, smarter, more flexible land resource information an alternative form of representation is proposed. That representation is to be achieved through the coupling of Expert System methods and Geographic Information Systems. Instead of representing resource information using entities such as soil types, defined by rigid boundaries on a map, a more fluid presentation is proposed. Individual resource attributes will be represented by surfaces that describe their probability of occurrence, at a number of levels, across a landscape. Such flexible representations, which are designed to better capture the mental models behind their creation, are capable of being combined and synthesised to answer a wide range of resource queries.An investigation of methods of knowledge representation in a number of fields of research, led to the belief that a Bayesian Network provides a representational calculus that is appropriate to the "fuzzy" and imprecise conceptual models used in resource assessment. The fundamental mathematical principles of such networks have been tailored to provide a representation that is in tune with the intuitive processes of a surveyor's thinking.Software has been written to demonstrate the method and tested on a variety of data sets from Australia and overseas. These tests and demonstrations have used a range of densities of knowledge and range of acuity in evidential data. In general the results accord with the mental models used as drivers. A number of operational facets of the method have been highlighted during these demonstrations and attention has been given to a discussion of them.
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Latta, James Edward. "Communication in Queensland's geographic information industry." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 1991. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/36384/1/36384_Latta_1991.pdf.
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This Research Project examines methodology used by
the Mapping and Surveying Industry, Industry Advisory
Council to respond to change occurring within
Queensland's Geographic Information "Industry". The word
industry is written in "parenthesis" because it yet has
to be proven that a definable Queensland Geographic
Information Industry exists. This project also examines
that question as a side issue.
The perception that change is occurring is evident
in the Industry Strategic Plan, formulated in 1986, and
in public statements by prominent members of the
industry.
The Industry Advisory Council convened three search
conferences during 1989, and this study of action
learning is based on participant observation at those
conferences with comparison drawn through individual
interviews with "industry" members.
The questions addressed are:
1.Is the search conference action learning construct appropriate to achieve the kind a change and management of change sought by the "industry" leaders?
2. Did negotiated learning take place at the actions search conferences?
3.Are the base assumptions revealed at the search conferences reflected in the wider "industry?"; and
4. Did the search conferences achieve change?
Revans (1982) defines action learning as "Learningby-
Doing", or in more detail:
"Action learning is a means of development,
intellectual, emotional or physical, that
requires its subject, through responsible
involvement in some real, complex and stressful
problem, to achieve intended change sufficient
to improve his observable behaviour henceforth
in the problem field" (Revans 1982, p.626). Ethnographic methodology is used to study the three
search conferences as a participative observer.
Verification or refutation of opinions stated and
conclusions drawn from this observation is sought
through direct interviews conducted with 18 "industry"
members.
Examination of available literature leads to the
conclusion that the answer to the first question
addressed is yes. However, the other three questions
were answered in the negative. Observation of activity
at the search conferences did not indicate that action
learning was taking place, or that opinions expressed
were reflected in the wider "industry". The research
carried out for this project did not find evidence to
suggest that the search conferences promoted change.
Two suggestions are given for possible future action
by the Industry Advisory Council and the "industry".
19
Lingham, Jennifer. "Representing geographic information using a description logic and integrating geographic concept lattices." Thesis, Keele University, 2004. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.406368.
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West, Bryan A. "Conceptions of geographic information systems (GIS) held by senior geography students in Queensland." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2008. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/16682/1/Bryan_Andrew_West_Thesis.pdf.
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Geographical Information Systems (GIS) represent one of the major contributions to spatial analysis and planning of the new technologies. While teachers and others have viewed its potential contribution to geographical education as considerable, it has not been known with any certainty whether they present a valuable educational tool that aids geographical education. The value of GIS to geographical education is viewed as depending on a geographical education being, in itself, valuable.
Within this context, synergetic focus groups are employed to explore the conceptions of GIS held by 109 secondary school students studying Senior Geography in metropolitan and regional Queensland, Australia. A phenomenographic approach is adopted to identify the six qualitatively different ways, or conceptions, in which the participating students experience GIS as:
1. Maps and a source of maps in geography.
2. Mapping in geography: a way to use and create maps.
3. A professional mapping tool: exceeding the needs of senior
geography.
4. Frustrating geography: irksome and presenting many challenges
to the student-user.
5. Relevant geography: within and beyond the school experience.
6. A better geography: offering a superior curriculum, and broader
geographical education, when contrasted to a senior geography
that omits its use.
The structural and referential elements of each of these conceptions are elucidated within corresponding Categories of Description. The qualitatively different ways in which the conceptions may be experienced are illustrated through an Outcome Space, comprising a metaphoric island landscape. This structural framework reveals that for the Senior Geography students who participated in this investigation, the extent to which GIS may augment the curriculum is influenced by the nature of students' individual understandings of how GIS manages spatial data.
This research project is a response to repeated calls in the literature for teachers of geography themselves to become researchers and for a better understanding of GIS within geography education. It reviews the salient literature with respect to geography and geography education generally, and GIS within geographical education specifically. The investigation has confirmed that qualitatively different conceptions of GIS exist amongst students and that these are not consistently aligned with assumptions about its use and benefits as presented by current literature.
The findings of the study contribute to knowledge of the potential educational outcomes associated with the use of GIS in geography education and decisions related to current and potential geography curricula. It provides guidance for future curriculum development involving GIS and argues for additional research to inform educators and the spatial sciences industry about the actual and perceived role of GIS within geography education.
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West, Bryan A. "Conceptions of geographic information systems (GIS) held by senior geography students in Queensland." Queensland University of Technology, 2008. http://eprints.qut.edu.au/16682/.
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Geographical Information Systems (GIS) represent one of the major contributions to spatial analysis and planning of the new technologies. While teachers and others have viewed its potential contribution to geographical education as considerable, it has not been known with any certainty whether they present a valuable educational tool that aids geographical education. The value of GIS to geographical education is viewed as depending on a geographical education being, in itself, valuable. Within this context, synergetic focus groups are employed to explore the conceptions of GIS held by 109 secondary school students studying Senior Geography in metropolitan and regional Queensland, Australia. A phenomenographic approach is adopted to identify the six qualitatively different ways, or conceptions, in which the participating students experience GIS as: 1. Maps and a source of maps in geography. 2. Mapping in geography: a way to use and create maps. 3. A professional mapping tool: exceeding the needs of senior geography. 4. Frustrating geography: irksome and presenting many challenges to the student-user. 5. Relevant geography: within and beyond the school experience. 6. A better geography: offering a superior curriculum, and broader geographical education, when contrasted to a senior geography that omits its use. The structural and referential elements of each of these conceptions are elucidated within corresponding Categories of Description. The qualitatively different ways in which the conceptions may be experienced are illustrated through an Outcome Space, comprising a metaphoric island landscape. This structural framework reveals that for the Senior Geography students who participated in this investigation, the extent to which GIS may augment the curriculum is influenced by the nature of students' individual understandings of how GIS manages spatial data. This research project is a response to repeated calls in the literature for teachers of geography themselves to become researchers and for a better understanding of GIS within geography education. It reviews the salient literature with respect to geography and geography education generally, and GIS within geographical education specifically. The investigation has confirmed that qualitatively different conceptions of GIS exist amongst students and that these are not consistently aligned with assumptions about its use and benefits as presented by current literature. The findings of the study contribute to knowledge of the potential educational outcomes associated with the use of GIS in geography education and decisions related to current and potential geography curricula. It provides guidance for future curriculum development involving GIS and argues for additional research to inform educators and the spatial sciences industry about the actual and perceived role of GIS within geography education.
22
Bengtsson, Jonas, and Mikael Grönkvist. "Performing Geographic Information System Analyses on Building Information Management Models." Thesis, KTH, Geodesi och satellitpositionering, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-208922.
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As the usage of both BIM (Building Information Modelling) and 3D-GIS (Three-Dimensional Geographic Information Systems) has increased within the field of urban development and construction, so has the interest in connecting these two tools. One possibility of integration is the potential of visualising BIM models together with other spatial data in 3D. Another is to be able to perform spatial 3D analyses on the models. Both of these can be achieved through use of GIS software. This study explores how integration of BIM and GIS could look. The goal was to perform typical GIS analyses in 3D on BIM models. Previous research points towards some success within the field through use of the indicated standard format for each tool – IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) for BIM and CityGML (City Geographic Markup Language) for GIS. Transformation between the formats took place through use of the BIM software Revit, the transformation tool FME and the GIS software ArcGIS. A couple of reviewed applications of GIS analyses were chosen for testing on the converted models – indoor network analysis, visibility analysis and spatial analysis for 3D buildings. The input data in the study was several BIM models, both models created for real-life usage and others that only function as sample data within the different software. From the results of the practical work it can be concluded that a simple, automated and full-scale integration does not seem to be within reach quite yet. Most transformations between IFC and CityGML failed to some extent, especially the more detailed and complex ones. In some test cases, the file could not be imported into ArcGIS and in others geometries were missing or existing even though they should not. There were also examples where geometries had been moved during the process. As a consequence of these problems, most analyses failed or did not give meaningful results. A few of the original analyses did give positive results. Combining (flawed) CityGML models with other spatial data for visualisation purposes worked rather well. Both the shadow volume and sightline analyses did also get reasonable results which indicates that there might be a future for those applications. The obstacles for a full-scale integration identified during the work were divided into four different categories. The first is BIM usage and routines where created models need to be of high quality if the final results are to be correct. The second are problems concerning the level of detail, especially the lack of common definitions for the amount of details and information. The third category concerns the connection between local and global coordinate systems where a solution in form of updates to IFC might already be in place. The fourth, and largest, category contains those surrounding the different formats and software used. Here, focus should lie on the transformation between IFC and CityGML. There are plenty of possible, future, work concerning these different problems. There is also potential in developing own tools for integration or performing different analyses than those chosen for this thesis.I takt med den ökade användningen av både BIM och 3D-GIS inom samhällsbyggnadsprocessen har även intresset för att sammanföra de två verktygen blivit större. En möjlighet med integration är potentialen att visualisera BIM-modeller tillsammans med andra geografiska data i 3D. En annan är att kunna genomföra rumsliga 3D-analyser på modellerna. Båda dessa går att utföra med hjälp av GIS-programvara. Denna studie utforskar hur en integration mellan BIM och GIS kan se ut. Målet är att genomföra typiska GIS-analyser i 3D på BIM-modeller. Tidigare forskning pekar mot vissa framgångar inom området genom att arbeta med det utpekade standardformatet för respektive verktyg – IFC för BIM och CityGML för GIS. Transformation mellan formaten skedde med hjälp av programvarorna Revit, FME och ArcGIS. Ett par framhållna tillämpningar av GIS-analyser valdes ut för tester på de konverterade modellerna – nätverksanalyser inomhus, siktanalyser och rumsliga analyser för 3D-byggnader. Som indata användes flera olika BIM-modeller, både sådana som tillverkats för faktisk användning och modeller som skapats för att användas som exempeldata inom programvarorna. Utifrån resultaten från det praktiska arbetet kan konstateras att en enkel, automatiserad och fullskalig integration mellan verktygen verkar ligga en bit in i framtiden. De flesta transformationerna mellan IFC och CityGML misslyckades i någon aspekt, speciellt de mer detaljerade och komplexa. I vissa testfall kunde filen inte importeras i ArcGIS, i andra saknas eller existerar oväntade geometrier även om importen lyckats. Det finns också exempel där geometrier förflyttats. Som en konsekvens av dessa problem kunde de flesta 3D-analyser inte genomföras alls eller lyckades inte ge betydelsefulla resultat. Ett fåtal av de ursprungliga analyserna gav dock positiv utdelning. Att kombinera (felaktiga) CityGML-modeller med annan rumslig data fungerade förhållandevis väl ur ett visualiseringssyfte. Både skuggvolymsanalysen och framtagandet av siktlinjer från byggnaderna gav någorlunda korrekta resultat vilket indikerar att det kan finnas en framtid gällande de tillämpningarna. Hindren för en fullskalig integration som identifierades genom arbetet delades upp i fyra olika kategorier. Den första är BIM-användning där hög kvalitet på de skapade modellerna är viktigt för korrekta slutresultat. Den andra är detaljeringsgraden där avsaknaden av gemensamma definitioner för detaljeringsgraderna ställer till problem. Den tredje kategorin är koordinat- och referenssystem där en lösning på kopplingen mellan lokala och globala system redan kan finnas på plats i en av de senare utgåvorna av IFC-formatet. Den sista och största kategorin är problematiken kring just format och programvaror där mer arbete på översättningen mellan IFC och CityGML kommer att krävas. I framtiden finns det gott om arbete att göra med dessa olika problem. Det finns också potential att utveckla egna verktyg för integrationen eller att ägna sig åt att göra andra analyser än de som valdes ut i den här studien.
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Dos-Santos, Sasha. "A geographic information system for dynamic ridematching." [Tampa, Fla.] : University of South Florida, 2005. http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/SFE0001046.
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Basnet, Badri Bahadur. "Geographic Information System based manure application planning." University of Southern Queensland, Faculty of Engineering and Surveying, 2002. http://eprints.usq.edu.au/archive/00001410/.
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[Abstract]: The disposal of animal waste has become a problem in many parts of the world due to the rapid growth in the number and the size of intensive animal industries. Safe waste disposal sites are rarely available and the relocation and/or treatment of animal waste is seldom economically viable. The reuse of animal waste for energy recovery and re-feeding is also not popular. Animal waste is a valuable source of plant nutrients and a very good soil conditioner, and has been commonly applied as fertiliser to agricultural fields. However, due to the increasing oversupply of animal waste in recent years, it has often been applied in excess to the agricultural fields. Excessive application of animal waste, without due consideration of its implications, is a serious concern. The run-off and leaching losses of nutrients from the fields fertilised with animal waste have contributed significantly to the eutrophication and toxic blue-green algae blooms in surface water systems and nitrification of ground water systems. It has also led to nutrient imbalances in the soils and odour pollution to the surrounding communities. The animal waste, which is a valuable source of plant nutrients, has thus become both an economic and environmental burden, and there is a need to develop a strategy for its sensible use as a fertiliser in agricultural fields. Sensible use of animal waste involves the consideration of all the agricultural, environmental, social, and economical limitations. A rational method of achieving this is to restrict the use of animal waste to sites suitable for such uses, identify areas where it can be relocated and applied economically, limit the application rates to a safe level, and observe appropriate manure management practices. This study addressed each of these components by developing a comprehensive manure application plan (MAP) for the site-specific use of animal waste as fertiliser in agricultural fields. Various geographic information systems (GIS) based techniques, including a weighted linear combination model and map algebra based cartographic modelling, were employed to achieve the goal. The appropriateness of the existing techniques and procedures were evaluated and modified to meet the current input requirements. New methods of analysis were devised as necessary. The Westbrook sub-catchment of the Condamine River catchment in south-east Queensland was selected as the study area. The sub-catchment covers 24,903 hectares and contains 39 intensive animal industries. The catchment is also a part of the Murray-Darling Basin, which has been suffering from toxic blue green algae blooms recurrently since 1991. This study identified that only about one-fifth of the sub-catchment area is suitable for animal waste application. Depending on the method of site suitability analysis and the number of input factors used the suitable area ranged between 16 and 22 percent. This comparatively small area is mainly due to the presence of a large proportion of non-agricultural areas in the sub-catchment. The suitable areas were also found to have various degrees of suitability for waste application. However, the degree of site suitability was affected by the number of input factors used in the analysis, the weighting of the factors, and the method of factor attribute standardisation. Conventional methods of weighting input factors were found to be cumbersome and not particularly suitable. Hence, this study developed a new ‘objective oriented comparison’ method of factor weighting. Standardisation of input factors using a continuous, rather than discrete, classification (ie fuzzy set) method was found to be more consistent in degree of suitability determination. The discrete classification of factor attributes into classes of different numbers and sizes, and the weighting of classes to a sum of one, were identified as a limitation in using this standardisation method. A new ‘weight adjustment’ method was devised and demonstrated to reduce factor-weighting biases. The suitable sites, degree of site suitability, and other relevant spatial and non-spatial information were processed within a GIS framework to develop a comprehensive manure application plan. The inherently high presence of available phosphorus in the soils of the study area was recognised and the P2O5 content in the manure was used as the basis for determining manure application rates. A complimentary nitrogen supply map was also generated. Manure management practices applicable to the areas with a lower degree of suitability were also suggested.
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Leung, Kai Chi. "Geographic information and urban development in Shanghai." online access from Digital Dissertation Consortium, 2007. http://libweb.cityu.edu.hk/cgi-bin/er/db/ddcdiss.pl?3264606.
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Walbridge, Shaun. "Assessing ship movements using volunteered geographic information." Thesis, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2013. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=1536569.
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Shipping, the ocean transportation of people and goods, moves most world trade, and understanding its effects is required to assess human use of the oceans. This work examines the shipping trade by combining global observations of ship location with vessel identification records, and interpreting the results in an ecological context. By incorporating quality checking methods with volunteered geographic information, I provide a spatially resolved high resolution dataset which links individual ships with their movement patterns and vessel attributes. This contributes knowledge on the state and distribution of shipping, and identifies areas where mitigation of impacts are achievable.
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Overell, Simon E. "Geographic information retrieval : Classification, disambiguation and modelling." Thesis, Imperial College London, 2009. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.504918.
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Smith, Ian Stewart. "Sharing geographic information in French local government." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 1997. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.264440.
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China, Samuel Soita. "Land use planning using geographic information systems." Thesis, University of Southampton, 1993. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.239501.
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Finniear, Lee John. "An intelligent Geographic Information System for design." Thesis, Loughborough University, 1991. https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/32546.
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Recent advances in geographic information systems (GIS) and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques have been summarised, concentrating on the theoretical aspects of their construction and use. Existing projects combining AI and GIS have also been discussed, with attention paid to the interfacing methods used and problems uncovered by the approaches. AI and GIS have been combined in this research to create an intelligent GIS for design. This has been applied to off-shore pipeline route design. The system was tested using data from a real pipeline design project.
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Ndaendelao, Noongo Emma. "The Implementation of geographic information systems in Namibia /." Joensuu : University of Joensuu, 2007. http://opac.nebis.ch/cgi-bin/showAbstract.pl?u20=9789524589147.
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Martin, David. "On the representation of socio-economic information within geographic information systems." Thesis, Cardiff University, 1989. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.238188.
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Fontanella, Shaun. "Indexing Geographic Information Using the Domain Name System." The Ohio State University, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1345531139.
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Sener, Basak. "Landfill Site Selection By Using Geographic Information Systems." Master's thesis, METU, 2004. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12605409/index.pdf.
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One of the serious and growing potential problems in most large urban areas is the shortage of land for waste disposal. Although there are some efforts to reduce and recover the waste, disposal in landfills is still the most common
method for waste destination. An inappropriate landfill site may have negative environmental, economic and ecological impacts. Therefore, it should be selected carefully by considering both regulations and constraints on other
sources. In this study, candidate sites for an appropriate landfill area in the vicinity of Ankara are determined by using the integration of Geographic Information Systems and Multicriteria Decision Analysis. For this purpose, sixteen input map layers including topography, settlements (urban centers and villages), roads (Highway E90 and village roads), railways, airport, wetlands, infrastructures (pipelines and power lines), slope, geology, land use, floodplains, aquifers and surface water are prepared and two different MCDA methods
(Simple Additive Weighting and Analytic Hierarchy Process) are implemented in GIS environment. Comparison of the maps produced by these two different methods shows that both methods yield conformable results. Field checks also
confirm that the candidate sites agree well with the selected criteria.
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Rydberg, Christoffer. "Time Efficiency of Information Retrieval with Geographic Filtering." Thesis, KTH, Skolan för datavetenskap och kommunikation (CSC), 2015. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-172918.
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This study addresses the question of time efficiency of two major models within Information Retrieval (IR): the Extended Boolean Model (EBM) and the Vector Space Model (VSM). Both models use the same weighting scheme, based on term-frequency-inverse document frequency (tf-idf). The VSM uses a cosine score computation to rank the document-query similarity. In the EBM, P-norm scores are used, which ranks documents not just by matching terms, but also by taking the Boolean interconnections between the terms in the query into account. Additionally, this study investigates how documents with a single geographic affiliation can be retrieved based on features such as the location and geometry of the geographic surface. Furthermore, we want to answer how to best integrate this geographic search with the two IR-models previously described. From previous research we conclude that using an index based on Z-Space Filling Curves (Z-SFC) is the best approach for documents containing a single geographic affiliation. When documents are retrieved from the Z-SFC-index, there are no guarantees that the retrieved documents are relevant for the search area. It is, however, guaranteed that only the retrieved documents can be relevant. Furthermore, the ranked output of the IR models gives a great advantage to the geographic search, namely that we can focus on documents with a high relevance. We intersect the results from one of the IR models with the results from the Z-SFC index and sort the resulting list of documents by relevance. At this point we can iterate over the list, check for intersections of each document's geometry and the search geometry, and only retrieve documents whose geometries are relevant for the search. Since the user is only interested in the top results we can stop as soon as a sufficient amount of results have been obtained. The conclusion of this study is that the VSM is an easy-to-implement, time efficient, retrieval model. It is inferior to the EBM in the sense that it is a rather simple bag-of-words model, while the EBM allows to specify term- conjunctions and disjunctions. The geographic search has shown to be time efficient and independent of which of the two IR models that is used. The gap in efficiency between the VSM and the EBM, however, drastically increases as the query gets longer and more results are obtained. Depending on the requirements of the user, the collection size, the length of queries, etc., the benefits of the EBM might outweigh the downside of performance. For search engines with a big document collection and many users, however, it is likely to be too slow.Den här studien addresserar tidseffektiviteten av två större modeller inom informationssökning: ”Extended Boolean Model” (EBM) och ”Vector Space Model” (VSM) . Båda modellerna använder samma typ av viktningsschema, som bygger på ”term frequency–inverse document frequency“ (tf- idf). I VSM rankas varje dokument, utifrån en söksträng, genom en skalärprodukt av dokumentets och söksträngens vektorrepresentationer. I EBM används såkallade ”p-norm score functions” som rankar dokument, inte bara utifrån matchande termer, utan genom att ta hänsyn till de Booleska sammanbindningar som finns mellan sökorden. Utöver detta undersöker studien hur dokument med en geografisk anknytning kan hämtas baserat på positionen och geometrin av den geografiska ytan. Vidare vill vi besvara hur denna geografiska sökning på bästa sätt kan integreras med de två informationssökningmodellerna. Utifrån tidigare forskning dras slutsatsen att det bästa tillvägagångssättet för dokument med endast en geografisk anknytning är att använda ett index baserat på ”Z-Space Filling Curves” (Z-SFC). När dokument hämtas genom Z-SFC-indexet finns det inga garantier att de hämtade dokumenten är relevanta för sökytan. Det är däremot garanterat att endast dessa dokument kan vara relevanta. Vidare är det rankade utdatat från IR-modellerna till en stor fördel för den geografiska sökningen, nämligen att vi kan fokusera på dokument med hög relevans. Detta görs genom att jämföra resultaten från vald IR-modell med resultaten från Z-SFC-indexet och sortera de matchande dokumenten efter relevans. Därefter kan vi iterera över listan och beräkna vilka dokuments geometrier som skär sökningens geometri. Eftersom användaren endast är intresserad av de högst rankade dokumenten kan vi avbryta när vi har tillräckligt många sökresultat. Slutsatsen av studien är att VSM är enkel att implementera och mycket tidseffektiv jämfört med EBM. Modellen är underlägsen EBM i den mening att det är en ganska enkel ”bag of words”-modell, medan EBM tillåter specificering av konjuktioner och disjunktioner. Den geografiska sökningen har visats vara tidseffektiv och oberoende av vilken av de två IR-modellerna som används.Skillnaden i tidseffektivitet mellan VSM och EBM ökar däremot drastiskt när söksträngen blir längre och fler resultat erhålls. Emellertid, beroende på användarens krav, storleken på dokumentsamlingen, söksträngens längd, etc., kan fördelarna med EBM ibland överväga nackdelen av den lägre prestandan. För sökmotorer med stora dokumentsamlingar och många användare är dock modellen sannolikt för långsam.
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Parker, Christopher J. "A human factors perspective on volunteered geographic information." Thesis, Loughborough University, 2012. https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/10177.
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This thesis takes a multidisciplinary approach to understanding the unique abilities of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) to enhance the utility of online mashups in ways not achievable with Professional Geographic Information (PGI). The key issues currently limiting the use of successful of VGI are the concern for quality, accuracy and value of the information, as well as the polarisation and bias of views within the user community. This thesis reviews different theoretical approaches in Human Factors, Geography, Information Science and Computer Science to help understand the notion of user judgements relative to VGI within an online environment (Chapter 2). Research methods relevant to a human factors investigation are also discussed (Chapter 3). (Chapter 5) The scoping study established the fundamental insights into the terminology and nature of VGI and PGI, a range of users were engaged through a series of qualitative interviews. This led the development of a framework on VGI (Chapter 4), and comparative description of users in relation to one another through a value framework (Chapter 5). Study Two produced qualitative multi-methods investigation into how users perceive VGI and PGI in use (Chapter 6), demonstrating similarities and the unique ability for VGI to provide utility to consumers. Chapter Seven and Study Three brought insight into the specific abilities for VGI to enhance the user judgement of online information within an information relevance context (Chapter 7 and 8). In understanding the outcomes of these studies, this thesis discusses how users perceive VGI as different from PGI in terms of its benefit to consumers from a user centred design perspective (Chapter 9). In particular, the degree to which user concerns are valid, the limitation of VGI in application and its potential strengths in enriching the user experiences of consumers engaged within an information search. In conclusion, specific contributions and avenues for further work are highlighted (Chapter 10).
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O'Connor, Kevin P. "Applications of Geographic Information Systems in public works." Thesis, Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/10945/25695.
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Parsley, Scott. "Methodologies for distributed and higher dimensional geographic information." Thesis, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/10443/462.
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In today's digital era, cartography has changed its role, from that of a pure visual model of the Earth's surface, to an interface to other spatial and aspatial information. Along with this, representationa nd manipulation of graphical information in three-dimensional space is required for many applications. Problems and difficulties must be overcome in order to facilitate the move to three-dimensional models, multimedia, and distributed data. Can accurate measurements, at sufficient resolution, and using affordable resources be obtained? Will application software usefully process, in all aspects, models of the real world, sounds, and videos? Combined with this, the workplace is becoming distributed, requiring applications and data that can be used across the globe as easily as in the office. A distributed, three-dimensional, GIS is required with all the procedural and recording functionality of current two-dimensional systems. Such a GIS would maintain a model, typically comprised of solids of individual buildings, roads, utilities etc. with both external and internal detail, represented on a suitable digital terrain model. This research examines virtual reality software as part of an answer. Alternatively, can technologies such as HTML, VRML, and scripting, along with object-orientation and open systems, allow for the display and interrogation of networked data sets? The particular application of this technology, considered during this research, is the need for accurate reconstruction of historical urban monuments. The construction, manipulation, and exploration of these models is often referred to as virtual heritage. This research constructs an innovative and resource effective methodology, the Phoenix algorithm, which requires only a single image for creating three-dimensional models of buildings at large scale. The development of this algorithm is discussed and the results obtained from it are compared with those obtained using traditional three-dimensional capture techniques. Furthermore, possible solutions to the earlier questions are given and discussed.
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Stassopoulou, Athena. "Bayesian networks for inference with geographic information systems." Thesis, University of Surrey, 1996. http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/863/.
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Capes, Stephen Andrew. "The commodification of geographic information in local government." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 1995. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.364272.
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Evans, John D. "Infrastructures for sharing geographic information among environmental agencies." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/65984.
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Perry, Sherry E. "Acquisition of geographic information from television news maps." Thesis, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1988. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/51908.
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University students were shown simulated television newscasts and then tested on the news material to see if maps within the newscast aided learning world geographic information. Students were shown one of eight simulated newscasts, of three news stories, Each newscast contained maps, varying in complexity. There were five levels of complexity. One group viewed a simulated newscast with no maps, while other groups viewed simulated newscasts containing maps with 6, 10, or 14 variables per map. A control group saw no newscasts. The order of news story presentation was varied.
Students who viewed one of the newscasts did better than students who did not see one, and the average number of correct answers increased as the maps in the news programs increased in map complexity. However, the group viewing the most complex maps--the 14 variable maps, did not perform better than those who saw the 10-variable maps.Master of Science
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Ballard, Michael Rodney Carleton University Dissertation Geography. "Hydrological parameterization and modeling using geographic information systems." Ottawa, 1993.
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Sayar, Ahmet. "High performance, federated, service-oriented geographic information systems." [Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2009. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3344771.
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Computer Science, 2009.Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Oct. 8, 2009). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-02, Section: B, page: 1135. Adviser: Geoffrey C. Fox.
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Eccles, Kristin M. "Applications of Geographic Information Systems in Landscape Ecotoxicology." Thesis, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/39504.
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Landscape ecotoxicology is the study of dose-response relationships to toxicants and integrating environmental factors across a defined landscape. In this thesis, I contributed new knowledge to the field of landscape ecotoxicology by adapting analytical methods to assess spatial patterns of chemical exposure among different wildlife keystone species, quantify the relationships between contaminant sources and exposures, and quantify dose-response relationships across large landscapes. Currently, there are few landscape ecotoxicology tools available for quantifying geospatial patterns of environmental toxicology data. To address this gap, I adapted spatial and statistical methods and demonstrated how they can be used to 1) integrate data and assess spatial patterns of contaminant exposure; 2) assess spatial patterns of exposure to complex mixtures; and 3) examine dose-response patterns across landscapes. I developed fur Hg as a biomarker medium as a non-invasive biomonitoring tool in river otter (Lontra canadensis) and mink (Neovison vison) by developing conversion factors that can be used to estimate internal organ Hg from fur Hg, using a meta-regression approach. Based on these results, I suggest that the fur Hg screening guideline be reduced from 20 ug/g to 15 ug/g to be more conservative. I also quantified how the distribution of fur Hg changes across the pelt of river otters. Results from this study indicate that topcoat should be used for biomonitoring as it is less variable than the undercoat and samples should be taken from the forebody (head and legs) for the most accurate organ Hg estimation. Using biomarkers of exposure, I quantified the relationship between sources of Hg and factors that promote Hg bioaccumulation with dietary Hg from stomach contents and fur Hg to establish fur as a proxy for bioavailability of environmental Hg. I also assessed spatial dose-response patterns between fur Hg and fur cortisol using a geographically weighted regression (GWR). Based on these results I use my proposed fur screening guideline of 15 µg/g to categorize fur Hg exposures and demonstrate that at low exposures (<15 µg/g) in fur, Hg has a positive relationship with cortisol. Conversely, at high exposures (>15 µg/g) in fur, Hg has a negative relationship with cortisol. This research provides a field example of heterogeneous dose-response relationships. Finally, I assessed spatial patterns of complex metal exposures in a variety of biomonitoring datasets. I used normalization and transformation techniques to effectively combine datasets comprised of different species and life stages. I then used a spatial principal components analysis (sPCA) to exemplify clusters of complex exposures associated with oil and gas development in regions of Alberta, Canada. These advancements in the field of landscape ecotoxicology will help advance evidence-based long-term ecological monitoring programs.
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McFarland, Sean Alan. "Decision making theory with geographic information systems support." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2008. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/3393.
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Decisions are made with varying degrees of effectiveness and efficiency and are influenced by a myriad of internal and external forces. Decision Support Systems (DSS) software can effectively aid decision making through processing the facts and producing meaningful outputs for use by the person or team in making the final choice. Geographic Information Systems (GIS), a form of DSS, are very effective when locational data are present. This thesis talks about using GIS software in decision making procedures.
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Hu, You-Heng Surveying & Spatial Information Systems Faculty of Engineering UNSW. "Development, evaluation and application of a geographic information retrieval system." Publisher:University of New South Wales. Surveying & Spatial Information Systems, 2007. http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/41754.
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Geographic Information Retrieval (GIR) systems provide users with functionalities of representation, storage, organisation of and access to various types of electronic information resources based on their textual and geographic context. This thesis explores various aspects of the development, evaluation and application of GIR systems. The first study focuses upon the extraction and grounding of geographic information entities. My approach for this study consists of a hierarchical structure-based geographic relationship model that is used to describe connections between geographic information entities, and a supervised machine learning algorithm that is used to resolve ambiguities. The proposed approach has been evaluated on a toponym disambiguation task using a large collection of news articles. The second study details the development and validation of a GIR ranking mechanism. The proposed approach takes advantage of the power of the Genetic Programming (GP) paradigm with the aim of finding an optimal functional form that integrates both textual and geographic similarities between retrieved documents and a given user query. My approach has been validated by applying it to a large collection of geographic metadata documents. The third study addresses the problem of modelling the GIR retrieval process that takes into account both thematic and geographic criteria. Based on the Spreading Activation Network (SAN), the proposed model consists a two-layer associative network that is used to construct a structured search space; a constrained spreading activation algorithm that is used to retrieve and to rank relevant documents; and a geographic knowledge base that is used to provide necessary domain knowledge for network. The retrieval performance of my model has been evaluated using the GeoCLEF 2006 tasks. The fourth study discusses the publishing, browsing and navigation of geographic information on the World Wide Web. Key challenges in designing and implementing of a GIR user interface through which online content can be systematically organised based on their geospatial characteristics, and can be efficiently accessed and interrelated, are addressed. The effectiveness and the usefulness of the system are shown by applying it to a large collection of geo-tagged web pages.
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Zhu, Bin, and Hsinchun Chen. "Validating a Geographic Image Retrieval System." Wiley Periodicals, Inc, 2000. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/105934.
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Artificial Intelligence Lab, Department of MIS, University of ArizonaThis paper summarizes a prototype geographical image retrieval system that demonstrates how to integrate image processing and information analysis techniques to support large-scale content-based image retrieval. By using an image as its interface, the prototype system addresses a troublesome aspect of traditional retrieval models, which require users to have complete knowledge of the low-level features of an image. In addition we describe an experiment to validate the performance of this image retrieval system against that of human subjects in an effort to address the scarcity of research evaluating performance of an algorithm against that of human beings. The results of the experiment indicate that the system could do as well as human subjects in accomplishing the tasks of similarity analysis and image categorization. We also found that under some circumstances texture features of an image are insufficient to represent a geographic image. We believe, however, that our image retrieval system provides a promising approach to integrating image processing techniques and information retrieval algorithms.
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Shi, Wei. "Web-based geographic information system for the archives of the Water Resources Institute." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2007. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/3312.
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This project is focused on the goal of improving access to the Water Resources Institute (WRI) archives using a web-based GIS architecture. This project uses the newest version of ArcGIS Server as a method to support an internet-based map search environment, improved information management and data sharing.
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Wang, Zheye Wang. "Analyzing social media data to enrich human-centric information for natural disaster management." Kent State University / OhioLINK, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1542645723348042.
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