What roles does GIS play in scientific research and analysis?

Archive for March, 2010

A GIS-based Back-propagation Neural Network Model and its Cross-application and Validation for Landslide Susceptibility Analyses

In Environmental Science, GIS, Modeling on March 31, 2010 at 10:23 am

Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, Article in Press, 2010

Biswajeet Pradhan, Saro Lee, and Manfred F. Buchroithner

“Landslide-susceptibility mapping is one of the most critical issues in Malaysia. These landslides can be systematically assessed and mapped through a traditional mapping framework that uses geoinformation technologies (GIT). The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the possible application of an artificial neural network model and its cross-application of weights at three study areas in Malaysia, Penang Island, Cameron Highland and Selangor. Landslide locations were identified in the study areas from the interpretation of aerial photographs, field surveys and inventory reports. A landslide-related spatial database was constructed from topographic, soil, geology, and land-cover maps. For the calculation of the relative weight and importance of each factor to a particular landslide occurrence, an artificial neural network (ANN) method was applied. Landslide susceptibility was analyzed using the landslide occurrence factors provided by the artificial neural network model. Then, the landslide-susceptibility analysis results were validated and cross-validated using the landslide locations as study areas. Different training sites were randomly selected to train the neural network, and nine sets of landslide-susceptibility maps were prepared. The paper then illustrates the verification of those maps using an “area under the curve” (AUC) method. The verification results show that the case of the weight using the same test area showed slightly higher accuracy than the weight used for the cross-applied area. Among the three studied areas, the verification results showed similar accuracy trends while using the weight for the study area itself. Cameron showed the best accuracy and Penang showed the worst accuracy. Generally, the verification results showed satisfactory agreement between the susceptibility map and the existing data on the landslide location.”

Managing Sensor Traffic Data and Forecasting Unusual Behaviour Propagation

In GIScience, Spatial Analysis, Temporal Analysis on March 31, 2010 at 9:12 am

GeoInformatica, Volume 14, Number 3 / July, 2010

Claudia Bauzer Medeiros, Marc Joliveau, Geneviève Jomier, and Florian De Vuyst

“Sensor data on traffic events have prompted a wide range of research issues, related with the so-called ITS (Intelligent Transportation Systems). Data are delivered for both static (fixed) and mobile (embedded) sensors, generating large and complex spatio-temporal series. This scenario presents several research challenges, in spatio-temporal data management and data analysis. Management issues involve, for instance, data cleaning and data fusion to support queries at distinct spatial and temporal granularities. Analysis issues include the characterization of traffic behavior for given space and/or time windows, and detection of anomalous behavior (either due to sensor malfunction, or to traffic events). This paper contributes to the solution of some of these issues through a new kind of framework to manage static sensor data. Our work is based on combining research on analytical methods to process sensor data, and data management strategies to query these data. The first aspect is geared towards supporting pattern matching. This leads to a model to study and predict unusual traffic behavior along an urban road network. The second aspect deals with spatio-temporal database issues, taking into account information produced by the model. This allows distinct granularities and modalities of analysis of sensor data in space and time. This work was conducted within a project that uses real data, with tests conducted on 1,000 sensors, during 3 years, in a large French city.”

Deadlines Approaching for URISA Awards and Student Competition

In Conferences, Education, GIS on March 31, 2010 at 8:36 am

The May 2010 URISA Calendar is full of deadlines for URISA programs.

GIS Hall of Fame – Nominations Due May 1

(http://www.urisa.org/hall_of_fame)

URISA is seeking nominations for it’s GIS Hall of Fame which recognizes and honors the best in GIS. The selection criteria for this honor are:

  • At least 25 years of sustained professional involvement in the GIS field.
  • Original and creative contributions to the field.
  • Well known and respected by a wide range of peers.
  • Consistent demonstration of sound professional and personal ethics.

2010 Student Competition – Submissions Due May 1

(http://www.urisa.org/2010students)

This year’s Student Competition consists of a three-tiered approach:

  • Papers (graduate students)
  • Presentations (undergraduate students)
  • Posters (community college and GIS certificate students)

Exemplary Systems in Government (ESIG) Awards – Submissions Due May 3

(http://www.urisa.org/2010esigapplication)

URISA’s ESIG Awards recognize extraordinary achievement in the delivery and quality of government services through the application of geospatial information technology.

Information about all URISA Awards is detailed online: www.urisa.org

[Source: URISA press release]

Using GIS-based Multicriteria Evaluation and Path Optimization for Effective Forest Field Inventory

In Environmental Science, GIS, Modeling on March 31, 2010 at 8:08 am

Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, Article in Press, 2010

Ron Store and Harri Antikainen

“The inventory practices concerning non-industrial privately owned forests are undergoing significant changes in Finland. In the future, the collection of information will be increasingly carried out by the means of remote sensing technologies, which is bound to have strong implications for the traditional and extensive field inventory practices. This study presents a new method for determining the importance of individual forest stands to the field inventory, including a technique for using this information to calculate efficient field inventory tours. The proposed method is essentially based on expert knowledge modeling and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), which enable the production of an inventory importance map for any forest area. In a similar fashion, it is possible to produce a traversability map for the particular area, which serves as a basis for inventory tour planning. The method incorporates an optimization technique, which can be used to determine the forest stands encompassing the highest overall inventory utility and the optimal traversal path for inventorying them under the presence of time constraint. Preliminary tests on the method have been carried out in a case study area located in Kuortane, Finland. The results of the tests suggest that the method has a lot of application potential, but more information and experience is needed about the new forest inventory system for further development of the method.”

Climate Helped Bring Angkor to Its Knees

In Environmental Science, Science on March 31, 2010 at 7:21 am

Tree ring record reveals abrupt end to empire

Throughout written history there have been many abrupt ends to empires and civilizations that have little explanation. Political climates deteriorate, passions rise, revolts happen and the next thing you know–the culture is a thing of the past relegated to a short chapter in a textbook.

The natural world leaves a record in the form of tree rings, which can be read like a very detailed book, covering a long period of human history. Now a team of researchers has correlated the demise of Angkor, the capitol of the Khmer Empire in Cambodia, with a decades-long drought interspersed with intense monsoons in the 14th and 15th centuries.

Brendan Buckley of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and his colleagues have put together a high-resolution record of periods of drought and moisture in Southeast Asia that is over three quarters of a millennium long from 1250 to 2008 AD. Their research was funded by the National Science Foundation’s Paleoclimate Program, which is part of the directorate for geosciences.

Just as satellite photos do–large sets of information like this tree ring data bring into focus patterns and phenomena that are larger than one lifetime. In fact they are on the scale of civilizations.

A look at tree ring data, and an analysis of rain, drought and temperature can show a remarkable link from climate in the environment to climate in the king’s court. And this has been shown to be true for the enigmatic demise of Angkor, an empire that stood strong from the 9th to 13th centuries.

Angkor was a city that relied heavily on water. The National Science Foundation-funded work of Buckley and his colleagues reveals that the mid- to late 1300′s experienced persistently dry conditions that spanned decades, followed by several years of severe wetness that may have caused damage to the city’s infrastructure. Afterwards, a shorter but more severe drought in the early 1400′s may have been more than this urban complex could handle.

Bringing insights such as these into focus in the 21st century, there is a sense of urgency in interpreting what the natural world is telling us. The very cypress trees (Fokienia hodginsii) that allow the long-range glimpse backwards are becoming more and more rare as their wood is harvested for the illicit timber trade. The highlands of Vietnam and Laos are home to some of the region’s most diverse biota, and are under threat of over-exploitation.

[Source: NSF press release]

Economist Hernando de Soto to Speak in Redlands

In Social Science on March 31, 2010 at 7:17 am

Town & Gown Cultural Series Presents Expert on the Legal Empowerment of the Poor in Developing Nations

Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto will speak in Redlands on Thursday, April 8, 2010. De Soto is president of Peru’s Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD), a Lima, Peru-based think tank that promotes property rights in developing countries. The public is invited to the event, which will take place from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at the ESRI Conference Center, 380 New York Street.

Known for his expertise on informal economies, de Soto works to bring property rights to the poor in developing nations as a means of helping them lift themselves out of poverty. His ideas are documented in his 2000 book The Mystery of Capital and more recently in the film The Power of the Poor with Hernando de Soto, which was broadcast by the PBS television system in 2009. De Soto has based his work in Peru and around the world on the premise that free markets, individual freedom, and especially the right to property can transform the poor into the most powerful resource in the world.

With ILD, de Soto has worked with governments in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and the former Soviet nations to generate reform programs that bring businesses, as well as property sectors, into mainstream economies. In the 1980s and 1990s, ILD was responsible for new initiatives, laws, and regulations that reformed Peru’s administrative system. The programs gave property titles to more than 1.2 million families and, through reductions in bureaucratic procedures, helped more than 300,000 businesses in Peru leave the black market and enter the formal economy. Currently, ILD is working with the indigenous peoples of the Peruvian Amazon to explore their concepts of property rights and ownership.

De Soto received recognition from Time magazine in 1999 as one of the five leading Latin American innovators of the century and again in 2004 as among the 100 most influential people in the world. He was also listed by Forbes magazine in 2002 as one of the 15 innovators “who will reinvent your future.”

Admission is free; to guarantee seating, attendees should register for the event on the Internet at www.esri.com/culturalseries or by calling 909-748-8011.

[Source:  ESRI press release]

Interactions Between Humans and Environment Focus of National Science Foundation Symposium

In Environmental Science, Social Science on March 31, 2010 at 7:04 am

Topics include Pandas and People; Mississippi River Nutrients; Suburbanization Effects; Mediterranean Landscapes; Sea-level Rise and Storms

How do humans and their environment interact, and how can we use knowledge of these links to adapt to a planet undergoing radical climate and other environmental changes?

To answer these and related questions, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded more than 30 grants to scientists, engineers and educators across the country to study coupled natural and human systems (CNH).

To showcase recent CNH accomplishments and to discuss opportunities for this research in the future, a symposium will take place at NSF on the afternoon of Thursday, April 15, 2010.

Highlighted will be human effects on the Mississippi River; causes and consequences of suburbanization in Boston and other cities; sea-level rise and the changing frequency and severity of storms; landscape dynamics in the Mediterranean; and what pandas, people and policies have to tell us about the complexity of our planet.

The CNH program is supported by NSF’s directorates for Geosciences; Biological Sciences; and Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences.

Research conducted with CNH funding is providing a better understanding of natural processes and cycles, and human behavior and decisions and how and where they intersect.

Understanding coupled natural and human systems lies at the heart of the quest for global sustainability, and generates crucial knowledge for solutions to environmental and socioeconomic challenges.

To promote collaborations among projects and to mentor a new generation of interdisciplinary scientists, NSF also supports the International Network of Research on Coupled Human and Natural Systems (CHANS-Net), based at Michigan State University.

What:

 Symposium on Frontiers in Research on Coupled Natural and Human Systems
Who:

 Scientists conducting research on CNH topics
When:

 Thursday, April 15, 2010, 2 p.m. – 5 p.m.
Where:

 National Science Foundation, 4201 Wilson Blvd., Room 110, Arlington, VA 22230
Detailed Agenda:
2 p.m. – 2:10 p.m.
Welcome and Introductions
2:10 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Hypoxia and the Mississippi River Basin as a Model System: What are the Key Linkages Governing the Social-Ecological Interface?
Laurie Drinkwater, Cornell University
2:30 p.m. – 2:50 p.m.
Mapping and Modeling the Causes and Consequences of Suburbanization in Boston
Colin Polsky, Clark University
2:50 p.m. – 3:10 p.m.
With Sea-Level Rise and Changing Storms, Humans React To Shoreline Erosion-but Shorelines React Back
Brad Murray, Duke University
3:10 p.m. – 3:25 p.m.
Break
3:25 p.m. – 3:45 p.m.
Coupling the Past, Present and Future of Socio-Ecological Systems: The Mediterranean Landscape Dynamics Project
Michael Barton, Arizona State University
3:45 p.m. – 4:05 p.m.
From Local to Global Coupled Human and Natural Systems: Pandas, People, Policies and Planet
Jianguo (Jack) Liu, Michigan State University
4:05 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Prospects and Opportunities
Open Discussion – All Participants

[Source: NSF media advisory]

Workshop: VGI for SDI, Wageningen University, Netherlands, 16 April 2010

In GIS, SDI on March 31, 2010 at 6:59 am

“Traditionally geographic data are captured by well trained specialist using state of the art technology. Recent developments like Web 2.0 platforms, GPS enabled cell phones and sensor technology make capturing of geographic data no longer the exclusive domain of well trained professionals, but opens new possibilities for involvement of citizens. Every human is able to capture geographic information about social and environmental phenomena. Internet provides the means to upload those observations and share it with other users. Information about places of interests, bird species, GPS tracking of bike and hiking routes are examples of this user generated content. The term Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) is used to describe user generated geographic information.

“In this one day workshop, on the occasion of the PhD defence of Lukasz Grus, the nature, developments and challenges of voluntary geographic information will be presented. The (potential) influence of VGI on Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) will  be discussed.”

Spatio-temporal Analysis of the Indus Urbanization

In GIS, Social Science, Spatial Analysis, Temporal Analysis on March 31, 2010 at 6:31 am

Current Science, Vol. 98, No. 6, 25 March 2010

Kavita Gangal, M. N. Vahia, and R. Adhikari

“The greater Indus valley was home to Neolithic cultures starting from 7000 BCE. They formed the antecedents of the urban Harappan civilization, whose rise and decline are dated to 2600 BCE and 1900 BCE
respectively. At its peak, the Harappan civilization covered an area of more than a million square kilometres, making it the largest urbanized civilization of the Bronze Age. In this communication, we integrate GIS information on topography and hydrology with radiocarbon and archaeological dates of 1874 sites, to analyse the spatio-temporal growth and decline of the Indus urbanization. Our analysis reveals several large-scale patterns in the growth and decline of urbanism. In the growth phase, urbanism appears to nucleate in three distinct geographical locations, situated in Baluchistan, Gujarat and the Ghaggar–Hakra valley. In the mature phase when urbanism is fully developed, the area distribution of sites follows a Zipfian power law, a feature common to modern urban agglomerations. In the decline phase, the pace of de-urbanization is nonuniform with a strong geographical variation. The decline starts in the Ghaggar–Hakra region, followed by a large-scale collapse in the lower Indus plain, leaving, however, a resilient zone in Gujarat which has a delayed decline. The patterns discerned through our analysis will find use within a Bayesian framework to test hypotheses for the growth and decline of the Harappan civilization.”

Understanding the Changing Planet: Strategic Directions for the Geographical Sciences

In Books, Environmental Science, Geography, Science on March 31, 2010 at 6:09 am

New book from the Committee on Strategic Directions for the Geographical Sciences in the Next Decade, National Research Council:

“From the oceans to continental heartlands, human activities have altered the physical characteristics of Earth’s surface. With Earth’s population projected to peak at 8 to 12 billion people by 2050 and the additional stress of climate change, it is more important than ever to understand how and where these changes are happening. Innovation in the geographical sciences has the potential to advance knowledge of place-based environmental change, sustainability, and the impacts of a rapidly changing economy and society.
“Understanding the Changing Planet outlines eleven strategic directions to focus research and leverage new technologies to harness the potential that the geographical sciences offer.”

Integrating Water Resources Information Using GIS and the Web

In Environmental Science, GIS, Modeling on March 31, 2010 at 5:44 am

AWRA 2010 Spring Specialty Conference, Orlando, FL, March 29-31, 2010

Jack Dangermond and David Maidment

“GIS is a vital tool for building a digital information base for water resources management and analysis. Thus far, the focus in application of GIS in water resources has been on processing and synthesis of geospatial water data layers and building GIS preprocessors for water simulation models. Besides desktop and server-based GIS, a new field of web-based GIS is emerging, supported by broader bandwidth, faster computers and massive data storage. Organizations are creating geo-services on the web to open access to their information. A new challenge in water resources is to use GIS and the web to synthesize access to water observations data – the time series of flow, water levels and water quality about surface and groundwater resources that are presently held in a myriad of independently managed tabular databases maintained by water agencies. The Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc (CUAHSI) has invented a language, WaterML, for the transmission of water observations data through the internet, and has built a national water metadata catalog for water observations data in the United States. By geo-enabling and extending the CUAHSI model for water data services a new web GIS for water resources can be created. This will enable the easy integration of large volumes of water data and complex models into simple to use applications that become pervasive.”

Landscapes on the Edge: New Horizons for Research on Earth’s Surface

In Books, Environmental Science, Science on March 30, 2010 at 12:28 pm

New book from the Committee on Challenges and Opportunities in Earth Surface Processes, National Research Council:

“During geologic spans of time, Earth’s shifting tectonic plates, atmosphere, freezing water, thawing ice, flowing rivers, and evolving life have shaped Earth’s surface features. The resulting hills, mountains, valleys, and plains shelter ecosystems that interact with all life and provide a record of Earth surface processes that extend back through Earth’s history. Despite rapidly growing scientific knowledge of Earth surface interactions, and the increasing availability of new monitoring technologies, there is still little understanding of how these processes generate and degrade landscapes.

“Landscapes on the Edge identifies nine grand challenges in this emerging field of study and proposes four high-priority research initiatives. The book poses questions about how our planet’s past can tell us about its future, how landscapes record climate and tectonics, and how Earth surface science can contribute to developing a sustainable living surface for future generations.”

Post-doc Research Associate Position in Migration Modelling at University College London, Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis

In Education, GIS, Modeling, Social Science, Spatial Analysis, Statistics on March 30, 2010 at 9:48 am

“This is an EPSRC-funded research position working on the Explaining, Modelling & Forecasting Global Dynamics (ENFOLD-ing) project.   The main purpose of this post is to initiate, develop, design and be responsible for the delivery of a programme of high quality quantitative research into the relevant statistical, geographical and theoretical aspects related to migration analysis, as well as related issues to the overall aims of the ENFOLD project; this includes working in and contributing to the wider ENFOLD team effort.

“Funding is available for two years in the first instance.

“Requirements

“The ideal candidate will have extensive programming experience (in C#, C++, Java, Python etc) , expertise in designing, constructing and analysing large databases and a PhD in any of the following:

  • a quantitative speciality within a social science discipline such as; statistics, geography, economics, sociology, epidemiology/ public health, GIS, spatial analysis
  • a science discipline with experience in social science applications, such as computer science, maths, physics, medicine, and any other relevant disciplines.”

More information

Evaluating the Benefit of Avalanche Protection Forest with GIS-based Risk Analyses—A Case Study in Switzerland

In Environmental Science, GIS, Modeling on March 30, 2010 at 9:33 am

Forest Ecology and Management, 257 (9), p.1910-1919, Apr 2009

Teich, M. / Bebi, P.

“The protection of people, buildings and infrastructure against natural hazards is one of the key functions of mountain forests. Since the protective function strongly depends on small-scale local conditions such as terrain and stand characteristics, spatially explicit evaluation methods are necessary to provide information required for an effective and cost-efficient forest management. Risk analyses are recognized as the best method for estimating the danger from various natural hazards. Currently, however, risk-based strategies are rarely addressed in the management of protection forest. We present and discuss a risk-based approach to evaluate the protective effect of mountain forests in a spatially explicit manner to demonstrate the advantages of future risk-based protection forest management. We illustrate the approach by performing a GIS-based risk analysis in the case study area ‘Bannwald of Andermatt’ (Switzerland) for a 300-year snow avalanche event. Classifying forest structures based on aerial photographs allowed developing different forest cover scenarios and modeling potential avalanche release areas within the forest. Potential avalanche release areas above the forest and the avalanche run-out distances under five different scenarios of forest cover were calculated by using a two-dimensional avalanche simulation model. We calculated the annual collective risk for each scenario and compared the change in risk to reveal the spatial distribution of the protective effect of the forest. Resulting risks differed strongly between forest cover change scenarios. An enlargement of an existing wind-disturbed area within lower parts of the slope resulted only in a slight increase of risk. In contrast, the effect of an unforested area in the upper parts of the observed forest more than doubled the risk. These results show how a risk-based approach can help to quantify and illustrate the impact of differences in forest cover on the protective effect of mountain forests. It is a promising approach to determine the economic value of protection forests and thus provide quantitative and qualitative information for cost-efficient forest maintenance planning. With regard to the achievements of research to date, the presented approach may serve as a valuable method to support decision-making in a future protection forest management.”

Connecting People and Place: A New Framework for Reducing Urban Vulnerability to Extreme Heat

In Climate Change, GIS, Social Science on March 30, 2010 at 9:00 am

Environmental Research Letters, Volume 5, Number 1, 2010

Olga VWilhelmi and Mary H Hayden

“Climate change is predicted to increase the intensity and negative impacts of urban heat events, prompting the need to develop preparedness and adaptation strategies that reduce societal vulnerability to extreme heat. Analysis of societal vulnerability to extreme heat events requires an interdisciplinary approach that includes information about weather and climate, the natural and built environment, social processes and characteristics, interactions with stakeholders, and an assessment of community vulnerability at a local level. In this letter, we explore the relationships between people and places, in the context of urban heat stress, and present a new research framework for a multi-faceted, top-down and bottom-up analysis of local-level vulnerability to extreme heat. This framework aims to better represent societal vulnerability through the integration of quantitative and qualitative data that go beyond aggregate demographic information. We discuss how different elements of the framework help to focus attention and resources on more targeted health interventions, heat hazard mitigation and climate adaptation strategies.”

A Grid-based Collaborative Virtual Geographic Environment for the Planning of Silt Dam Systems

In Design, GIS, Modeling, Visualization on March 30, 2010 at 8:07 am

International Journal of Geographical Information Science, Volume 24, Issue 4 April 2010 , pages 607 – 621

Lin Hui; Zhu Jun; Gong Jianhua; Xu Bingli; Qi Hua

“To improve the efficiency of planning and designing silt dam systems, this article employs theories and technologies of collaboration and distributed virtual geographic environments (VGEs) to construct a collaborative virtual geographic environment (CVGE) system. The CVGE system provides geographically distributed users with a shared virtual space and a collaborative platform to implement collaborative planning. Many difficulties have been found in integrating data resources and model procedures for the planning of silt dam systems because of their diversity in heterogeneous environments. Unlike most of the current distributed system applications, the proposed CVGE system not only supports multi-platform and multi-program-language interoperability in the dynamically changing network environment, but also shares programs, data and software in the collaborative environment. Based on creating a shared 3D space by virtual reality technology, agent and grid technologies were tightly coupled to develop the CVGE system. A grid-based multi-agent system service framework was designed to implement this new paradigm for the CVGE system, which efficiently integrates and shares geographically distributed resources as well as having the ability to build modelling procedures on different platforms. At the same time, mobile agent computing services were implemented to reduce the network load, process parallel tasks, enhance communication efficiency and adapt dynamically to the changing network environment. Using Java, JMF (Java Media Framework API), Globus Toolkits (GT) core, Voyager, C++, and the OpenGL development package, a prototype system was developed to support silt dam systems planning in the case study area, the Jiu-Yuan-Gou watershed of the Loess Plateau, China. Compared with the traditional workflow, the CVGE system can reduce the workload by between one third and a half.”

IA-SDSS: A GIS-based Land Use Decision Support System with Consideration of Carbon Sequestration

In Climate Change, Environmental Science, GIS on March 30, 2010 at 7:57 am

Environmental Modelling and Software, 25 (4), p.539-553, Apr 2010

Wang, J. / Chen, J. / Ju, W. / Li, M.

“Land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) can play a positive role in mitigating global warming by sequestering carbon from the atmosphere into vegetation and soils. Local entities (e.g. local government, community, stockholders) have been making great efforts in enhancing carbon sequestration (CS) of local forests for mitigating global climate change and participating in international carbon-trade promoted by the Kyoto Protocol. Approaches and tools are needed to assess the enhancement of CS through land use changes and proper policy decisions. This paper presents an integrated assessment framework and a spatial decision support system (IA-SDSS) as a tool to support land-use planning and local forestry development with consideration of CS. The IA-SDSS integrates two process-based carbon models, a spatial decision (EMDS) module, a spatial cost-benefit analysis (CBA) module, and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) module. It can provide spatially explicit CS information as well as CS-induced economic benefits under various scenarios of the carbon credit market. A case study conducted in Liping County, Guizhou Province, China demonstrated that the IA-SDSS developed in this study is applicable in supporting decision-making on ‘where’ and ‘how’ to adopt forestry land use options in favor of CS.”

Identifying Spatial Patterns of Recovery and Abandonment in the Post-Katrina Holy Cross Neighborhood of New Orleans

In Geography, Social Science, Spatial Analysis on March 30, 2010 at 7:43 am

Cartography and Geographic Information Science, Volume 37, Number 1, January 2010 , pp. 45-56(12)

Curtis, Andrew; Duval-Diop, Dominique; Novak, Jenny

“The devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina is still being felt by many neighborhoods of New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast. As these communities struggle to recover, academia has been forced to acknowledge that there is little known or theorized about the spatial processes of recovery, especially at the fine scale. As a result this paper will investigate how post-disaster landscape characteristics can be extracted from spatial video data for neighborhoods of New Orleans. These will be turned into a statistical surface using analytical approaches more commonly applied in spatial epidemiology. Spatial patterns of abandonment and recovery will be identified that can be used as a basis for a next round of causative investigation. The paper finds that by using the spatial overlap of four different analyses involving two different data input locations and two filter sizes, the Holy Cross neighborhood of New Orleans does indeed reveal areas with higher rates of recovery, and continuing abandonment. However, even within these areas, spatial heterogeneity can be found. This paper uses Google Street View to mirror spatial video data collected in participatory collaborations with New Orleans community groups so that readers can replicate the methods presented here for other neighborhoods of New Orleans.”

A Knowledge Infrastructure for Intelligent Query Answering in Location-based Services

In GIScience on March 30, 2010 at 7:15 am

GeoInformatica, Volume 14, Number 3 / July, 2010

Shijun Yu and Stefano Spaccapietra

“Intelligent query answering in Location-based Services refers to their capability to provide mobile users with personalized and contextualized answers. Personalization is expected to lead to answers that better match user’s interests, as inferable from the user’s profile. Contextualization aims at not selecting answers that for some reason would not be appropriate at the time and place of the user query. These goals are beyond the current state of art in LBS, or are provided based on ad hoc solutions specific to the application at hand. This paper reports on the results of an investigation aiming at defining the knowledge infrastructure that should be developed within the LBS to make it capable of returning intelligent answers. We first discuss the data management features that make LBS different from other query answering systems. Next we propose a data infrastructure that builds on the idea of modular ontologies. We explain how the relevant knowledge may be incrementally set up and dynamically maintained based on an application-independent approach. Last we show how this knowledge is used to reformulate user’s queries via personalized and contextualized rewriting.”

Environmental Controls on Multiscale Spatial Patterns of Salt Marsh Vegetation

In Environmental Science, Spatial Analysis on March 30, 2010 at 6:20 am

Physical Geography, Volume 31, Number 1 / January-February 2010

Daehyun Kim, David M. Cairns, and Jesper Bartholdy

“In coastal environments, biogeographic patterns are generally influenced by surface elevation and horizontal distance from sea water. However, it is still unclear whether these major topographic factors are significant controls of vegetation patterns across spatial scales at which different physical processes operate. This study investigated such a topography-vegetation relationship in a Danish salt marsh, focusing upon two scales: a macro-scale (ca. 500 m) across the marsh platform, encompassing seaward and landward areas, and a meso-scale (ca. 25 m) across tidal creeks. While long-term sea-level variation and grazing influenced the macro-scale pattern, short-term fluvial-geomorphic processes drove the meso-scale pattern. Despite these different underlying processes, similar floristic gradient structures between the two scales were identified by nonmetric multidimensional scaling. The gradient represented an ecological sequence from early to late succession, and strongly correlated with surface elevation. However, the gradient did not show any significant relationship with distance from shoreline or tidal channels. Our results suggest that, in salt marshes, elevation plays a still more important ecological role than the horizontal position relative to sea water at both macro- and meso-scales. The presence of one such fundamental component makes the system relatively simple, and will facilitate future scaling attempts.”

Semantic-based Pruning of Redundant and Uninteresting Frequent Geographic Patterns

In GIScience, Geography on March 29, 2010 at 10:08 am

GeoInformatica, Volume 14, Number 2 / April, 2010

Vania Bogorny, Joao F. Valiati, and Luis O. Alvares

“In geographic association rule mining many patterns are either redundant or contain well known geographic domain associations explicitly represented in knowledge resources such as geographic database schemas and geo-ontologies. Existing spatial association rule mining algorithms are Apriori-like, and therefore generate a large amount of redundant patterns. For non-spatial data, the closed frequent pattern mining technique has been introduced to remove redundant patterns. This approach, however, does not warrant the elimination of both redundant and well known geographic dependences when mining geographic databases. This paper presents a novel method for pruning both redundant and well known geographic dependences, by pushing semantics into the pattern mining task. Experiments with real geographic databases have demonstrated a significant reduction of the total amount of patterns and the efficiency of the method.”

Spatio-temporal Patterns of Pressure over the North Atlantic

In Environmental Science, Spatial Analysis, Temporal Analysis on March 29, 2010 at 8:46 am

International Journal of Climatology, published online 20 Nov 2009

Sílvia Antunes, Oliveira Pires, and Alfredo Roch

“The North Atlantic mean sea level pressure field variability is analysed. A space-time study is performed using multichannel singular spectral analysis, allowing the detection of significant space-time modes of variability with periodicity behaviour. It is shown that there is a space variability associated with the time variability of the pressure field. The oscillation is not quasi-meridional but has different orientations, rotating in a cycle, with a periodicity of about 9 years, from the positive North Atlantic oscillation (NAO) phase through the negative NAO phase and again to the positive phase. This periodicity behaviour was previously detected in the temporal principal components extracted from a principal component analysis but, in the time domain, it was found as not significant. Furthermore, the analysis of a long series of an NAO index had already revealed similar periodicity behaviour. Copyright © 2009 Royal Meteorological Society”

GIS/Remote Sensing Techniques for Resource Management and Biodiversity Protection in Mountainous Regions

In Climate Change, Environmental Science, GIS, Imagery on March 29, 2010 at 8:10 am

Botanica Orientalis: Journal of Plant Science, 6: 93-99 (2009)

John All

“Biodiversity protection in mountainous regions requires effective fact-driven resource management techniques. Geoinformatic tools including GIS and remote sensing can be integrated to provide regional-scale data products across time for use in strategic and management level policymaking. Several principles are discussed to ensure that geoinformatics data and analysis can effectively contribute to resource management by clarifying issues and minimizing misinterpretation. A case study in the Chilean Andes elucidates these principles. Biological impacts of recent climate changes have not been equal across different ecosystems and stable forest ecosystems provide the best response to climate change. Geoinformatics is used to differentiate functional ecological groups and evaluate long-term resilience to climate change.”

Anomaly Detection and Spatio-temporal Analysis of Global Climate System

In Climate Change, Environmental Science, Spatial Analysis, Temporal Analysis on March 29, 2010 at 8:02 am

International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Knowledge Discovery from Sensor Data, Paris, France 2009

Mahashweta Das and Srinivasan Parthasarathy

“Knowledge discovery from temporal, spatial and spatio-temporal data is pivotal for understanding and predicting the behavior of Earth’s ecosystem model. An important influence leaving its impact on the ecosystem is the global climate system. In this paper, the Earth Science data that we have analyzed consists of daily global air temperature and precipitation measurements, aggregated from heterogeneous sensors for fifty years (1950–1999). The enormous amount of data that is available for analysis requires employment of data mining techniques for discovering interesting patterns, detecting significant changes and extracting meaningful insights from the data. Our work considers the problem of detecting anomalous (abnormal or unexpected) behavior in the global climate system, discovering teleconnection patterns and providing consequential insights to the analysts.”

Spatial Data Infrastructures as Complex Adaptive Systems

In GIS, GIScience, SDI on March 29, 2010 at 7:24 am

International Journal of Geographical Information Science, Volume 24, Issue 3 March 2010 , pages 439 – 463

L. Grus; J. Crompvoets; A. K. Bregt

“Many researchers throughout the world have been struggling to better understand and describe spatial data infrastructures (SDIs). Our knowledge of the real forces and mechanisms behind SDIs is still very limited. The reason for this difficulty might lie in the complex, dynamic and multifaceted nature of SDIs. To evaluate the functioning and effects of SDIs we must have a proper theory and understanding of their nature. This article describes a new approach to understanding SDIs by looking at them through the lens of complex adaptive systems (CASs). CASs are frequently described by the following features and behaviours: complexity, components, self-organization, openness, unpredictability, nonlinearity and adaptability, scale-independence, existence of feedback loop mechanism and sensitivity to initial conditions. In this article both CAS and SDI features are presented, examined and compared using three National SDI case studies from the Netherlands, Australia and Poland. These three National SDIs were carefully analysed to identify CAS features and behaviours. In addition, an Internet survey of SDI experts was carried out to gauge the degree to which they consider SDIs and CASs to be similar. This explorative study provides evidence that to a certain extent SDIs can be viewed as CASs because they have many features in common and behave in a similar way. Studying SDIs as CASs has significant implications for our understanding of SDIs. It will help us to identify and better understand the key factors and conditions for SDI functioning. Assuming that SDIs behave much like CASs, this also has implications for their assessment: assessment techniques typical for linear and predictable systems may not be valid for complex and adaptive systems. This implies that future studies on the development of an SDI assessment framework must consider the complex and adaptive nature of SDIs.”

Delineating a Managed Fire Regime and Exploring its Relationship to the Natural Fire Regime in East Central Florida, USA: A Remote Sensing and GIS Approach

In Environmental Science, GIS, Imagery on March 29, 2010 at 7:20 am

Forest Ecology and Management, 258 (2), p.132-145, Jun 2009

Duncan, B.W. / Shao, G. / Adrian, F.W.

“A managed fire regime on John F. Kennedy Space Center, Florida and surrounding federal properties was mapped using time series satellite imagery and GIS techniques. Our goals were to: (1) determine if an image processing technique designed for individual fire scar mapping could be applied to an image time series for mapping a managed fire regime in a rapid re-growth pyrogenic system; (2) develop a method for labeling mapped fire scar confidence knowing a formal accuracy analysis was not possible; and (3) compare results of the managed fire regime with regional information on natural fire regimes to look for similarities/differences that might help optimize management for persistence of native fire-dependent species. We found that the area burned by managed fire peaked when the drought index was low and was reduced when the drought index was high. This contrasts with the expectations regarding the natural fire regime of this region. With altered natural fire regimes and fire-dependent species declining in many pyrogenic ecosystems, it is important to manage fire for the survival of fire-adapted native species. The remote sensing and GIS techniques presented are effective for delineating and monitoring managed fire regimes in shrub systems that grow rapidly and may be appropriate for other fire-dependent systems world wide.”

A Qualitative Approach to Understanding the Role of Geographic Information Uncertainty during Decision Making

In GIScience on March 29, 2010 at 7:15 am

Cartography and Geographic Information Science, Volume 36, Number 4, October 2009 , pp. 315-330(16)

Roth, Robert E.

“Much recent research in GIScience is focused on developing deep comprehension of the underlying nature of uncertainty in order to design effective uncertainty representations that support informed decision-making. As it is impossible to eliminate all uncertainty from an abstracted representation, it is important to understand the involvement of uncertainty in the geographic information life cycle, the many forms that uncertainty can take, and the influence these forms have on decision-making. This paper examines the involvement and influence of geographic information uncertainty during decision-making, using the case study domain of floodplain mapping. A set of focus groups composed of floodplain mapping experts was conducted to provide initial insight into the following research questions: (1) How is uncertainty involved in the creation, representation, and use of geographic information in the domain of floodplain mapping and how can this practice be improved? (2) Is the MacEachren et al. typology an appropriate categorization of the many geographic information uncertainties in the domain of floodplain mapping or are there categories that must be added, removed, or revised? (3) Which categories of uncertainty are the most influential on the decision-making process in the domain of floodplain mapping? Although the focus groups revealed that the current involvement of geographic information uncertainty is less than ideal, there was clear consensus that the MacEachren et al. typology is an appropriate categorization of geographic information uncertainty for the domain of floodplain mapping and that the categories accuracy/error, precision/resolution, and currency are the most influential on the decision-making process. “

Clark Labs and Conservation International Partner to Develop REDD-Specific Tools within IDRISI Taiga’s Land Change Modeler Application

In Climate Change, Environmental Science, GIS, Geography on March 29, 2010 at 7:13 am

Clark Labs and Conservation International (CI) have recently signed a contract to partner in the application of REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) baselines as well as the co-design and development of REDD-specific functionality within the Land Change Modeler application in the IDRISI Taiga GIS and Image Processing system. Clark Labs and CI’s Science and Knowledge Division (formerly the Center for Applied Biodiversity Science) have shared a long-standing collaborative relationship in the testing, application and improvement of spatial modeling tools for REDD projects.

The technical issues of REDD–carbon accounting, additionality, baseline or “business as usual,” leakage and permanence—are complex and require sophisticated tools. Currently, IDRISI Taiga and its Land Change Modeler is the only integrated modeling solution to address many aspects of REDD projects. The Land Change Modeler application was developed by Clark Labs in cooperation with Conservation International in a prior contract to address land cover change and its impacts on biodiversity. Clark Labs, with close collaboration from Conservation International, will enhance the current tools with additional functionality and an automated workflow.

“Conservation International is a major player in the development of REDD projects throughout the world,” stated Stefano Crema, Research Associate at Clark Labs. “Our relationships with organizations such as CI are extremely valuable, as they inform and optimize our development of robust analytical and modeling tools to solve complicated and multi-faceted problems.”

The first step in implementing a REDD project at the site or national level is to estimate the deforestation and/or degradation baseline, i.e., the expected future rate and distribution of change if a REDD project or policy is not employed. Conservation International has worked with the World Bank, CATIE (Centro Agronomico Tropical de Investigacion y Ensenanza) and Clark Labs in the development of the first and second version of the baseline method for the World Bank’s BioCarbon Fund, and it is currently under review by the Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS) Program for approved methods. Following IPCC guidelines, application of the method requires not only the generation of a precise map of historical deforestation and biomass estimates, but also spatial modeling of the expected future trends of deforestation, a step accomplished using GIS modeling tools. In the case of the BioCF method submissions to VCS, the IDRISI Taiga software was utilized.

Dr. Marc Steininger, Scientific Director of Habitat Monitoring and Climate Change Mitigation Science and Knowledge division of Conservation International explained, “Clark has created a state-of-the-art tool for modeling future land-use change, a key need for assessing future emissions and a requirement for setting emissions baselines for REDD projects.” IDRISI Taiga currently allows for the calibration, validation and creation of maps of expected future deforestation trends, a fairly complex process.

The purpose of this contract between Clark Labs and Conservation International is to design a REDD tool within the Land Change Modeler application of IDRISI to guide the user through the steps of baseline development and directly produce tables and graphics necessary for reporting. This new tool will greatly reduce the time and cost in the development of a deforestation baseline, which many regard as the most challenging technical hurdle in  project development for many prospective REDD projects. The project will also include case studies, testing in different REDD scenarios and production of user guidelines. The tool will be co-designed by CI and Clark Labs. CI will provide all case study data for testing the tool.

“Conservation International greatly values its professional collaboration with Clark Labs,” stated Dr. Steininger. “Their long history of providing low-cost, high capacity analysis tools and training is a testament to their dedication to helping international organizations better manage natural resources and conserve biodiversity.”

It is hoped that the results of this collaboration will allow for wider adoption of REDD project development from the carbon and climate community by providing a more accessible approach to the complex technical challenges.

[Source: Clark Labs press release]

USC Partners with Embanet to Support Online Masters in Geographic Information Science and Technology

In GIS on March 23, 2010 at 9:26 am

Embanet, a leading global online learning services provider to the country’s top institutions, announced today that it has been selected by the University of Southern California (USC) to support the University’s online program expansion, including its renowned Master of Science in Geographic Information Science and Technology (GIST).

A pioneer in online learning, Embanet has been partnering with prominent public and private institutions for nearly a decade, including among others Vanderbilt University, Boston University, George Washington University, and now USC. Embanet provides universities with capital, program and course development, marketing and enrollment services, online faculty training, student services, and technology hosting and support. Embanet has customized its services for USC, and will provide a suite of student services as well as marketing and enrollment support for the existing online GIST program.

“We are extremely pleased to begin our partnership with the University in support of its initiative to expand the availability of its online graduate programs,” said Stephen Fireng, president and CEO of Embanet. “Our goal is to assist USC in growing the numbers of highly capable graduates of the GIST program while ensuring that the services we provide and the pace of growth continue to reflect the quality and selectivity of the program and the institution.”

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, geotechnology is one of the most important emerging fields of study in the country.

“Increasingly sophisticated technology and the availability of geo-referenced data has vastly expanded the applications for the field—from public health and safety to urban planning and environmental science,” said Dr. John P. Wilson, professor of geography and director of the GIST graduate programs and GIS Research Laboratory.

Wilson helped develop and design the online Masters program to provide the sophisticated level of training needed to fill the currently unmet demand for these skills in government and industry.

“USC is committed to providing Distance Learning programs that reflect the academic quality one expects from a world class research university,” said Howard Gillman, dean of the College of Letters, Arts & Sciences. “Embanet understands the academic and administrative rigors of an elite private university, and this exciting partnership will enable us to provide an outstanding experience for ambitious, talented, and highly motivated students.”

[Source: Embanet press release]

Creating and Validating Object-Oriented Geographic Data Models: Modeling Flow within GIS

In GIS, GIScience, Modeling on March 23, 2010 at 9:10 am

Transactions in GIS, Volume 14 Issue 1, Pages 23 – 42, Published Online 17 Jan 2010

Alan Glennon

“Object-oriented geographic data models provide an organizational scheme to associate domain specific meaning to primitive GIS elements like points, polylines, and polygons. Although use of data models is widespread in the GIS community, the design process is not necessarily obvious and often ad hoc. This article outlines a procedure for the creation and validation of geographic data models through the examination and distillation of use cases. As an example, the article follows the development of a data model for the spatial concept of flow. Flow, the collective movements of people, materials, or ideas, is a common driver of geographic change, not generally supported by functionality within contemporary GIS, and an abstract dynamic entity that would presumably be difficult to model. Model design was facilitated through the distillation of flow cases of tabular human migration data, Minard’s map of Napoleon’s march on Moscow, and stream channel routes in a karst watershed. Unified Modeling Language diagrams are created for each case and the models’ commonalities combined to yield a generic data model. As a means of validation, each use case was instantiated with the generic model and tested to re-create the fundamental components of flow and address predefined typical queries.”

Assessing the Vulnerability of Asian Megadeltas to Climate Change Using GIS

In Books, Climate Change, GIS, Geography, Social Science on March 23, 2010 at 8:15 am

In Coastal Systems and Continental Margins, Volume 13: Coastal and Marine Geospatial Technologies, 2010

Colin D. Woodroffe

“Susceptibility of Asian megadeltas to climate change, including sea-level rise, is investigated using GIS. The Indus, Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna, Irrawaddy, Chao Phraya, Mekong, Red, Pearl, Changjiang, and Huanghe deltas began to form around 6000 years ago and have prograded since. The surface topography of active and abandoned delta plains is examined using digital terrain models derived from Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data and channel morphology is investigated using radar imagery. After delta plains are abandoned they become increasingly dominated by tidal processes. Population density is estimated using gridded world population data but highly variable local microtopography and uncertainty regarding future climate changes preclude detailed vulnerability analysis.”

Physics-Based Earthquake Source Characterization and Modeling with Geostatistics

In Environmental Science, Statistics on March 23, 2010 at 7:35 am

Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, April 2010; v. 100; no. 2; p. 482-496

Seok Goo Song and Paul Somerville

“Physics-based ground-motion simulation requires the development of physically self-consistent source modeling tools to emulate the essential physics of earthquake rupture. Because of the high computational demand of full-dynamic rupture modeling, the kinematic description of earthquake source processes provides the most practical way of covering a wide range of rupture and wave propagation scenarios. We apply 2D spatial data analysis tools, commonly used in geostatistics, to characterizing earthquake rupture process and developing an effective source modeling tool for strong-motion prediction. The earthquake source process is described by key kinematic source parameters, such as static slip, rupture velocity, and slip duration. The heterogeneity of each source parameter is characterized with autocoherence while the linear dependency (coupling) between parameters is characterized with cross coherence. Both zero- and nonzero-offset spatial coherence can be considered in the form of cross coherence. We analyzed both synthetic and real dynamic rupture models to demonstrate the efficiency of these new techniques and found that many important features of earthquake rupture can be captured in this way, which may be difficult to analyze, or even detect by zero-offset coherence only. For instance, the correlation maximum between slip and rupture velocity can be shifted from the zero offset, that is, large slip may generate faster rupture velocity ahead of the current rupture front, which may be important for rupture directivity. We demonstrate that we can generate a number of realizations of earthquake source models to reproduce the target coherence using stochastic modeling techniques (e.g., sequential Gaussian simulation) once coherence structures in earthquake rupture are well understood. This type of coherence analysis may provide the potential for improved understanding of earthquake source characteristics and how they control the characteristics of near-fault strong ground motions.”

GIS Spatial Analysis of Population Exposure to Fine Particulate Air Pollution in Beijing, China

In Environmental Science, GIS, Spatial Analysis on March 23, 2010 at 7:31 am

Environmental Geosciences, March 2010; v. 17; no. 1; p. 1-16

Tao Tang, Wenji Zhao, Huili Gong, Xiaojuan Li, Ke Zang, Joel D. Bernosky, Wenhui Zhao, and Shanshan Li

“This research diagnoses the exposure of the residential population and the vulnerable groups of children and elderly people to air particle pollution in urban Beijing. We surveyed the air particle pollutant concentrations in the field. We used a universal kriging model in a geographic information system to interpolate the spatial distributions of each pollutant. Spatial patterns of air particle pollution were overlaid to community-level population distributions to identify the community exposures to high air particle pollution. Spatial and statistic modeling reveals that high concentration of ultra-fine air particles of particulate matter (PM) 0.3 µm is strongly associated with high-population urban communities in the southwest and central western areas in the winter season. By contrast, all the other particle sizes surveyed (PMs of 0.5, 1.0, 3.0, and 5.0 µm) indicate that high concentrations in the summer are associated with high-population communities. Reversed spatial and temporal patterns between PM 0.3 µm and other particle sizes suggest that PM 0.3 µm may have different sources of origin.”

Analytical 3D Views and Virtual Globes — Scientific Results in a Familiar Spatial Context

In Science, Spatial Analysis, Visualization on March 23, 2010 at 7:24 am

ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 6 January 2010

Dirk Tiede, Stefan Lang

“In this paper we introduce analytical three-dimensional (3D) views as a means for effective and comprehensible information delivery, using virtual globes and the third dimension as an additional information carrier. Four case studies are presented, in which information extraction results from very high spatial resolution (VHSR) satellite images were conditioned and aggregated or disaggregated to regular spatial units. The case studies were embedded in the context of: (1) urban life quality assessment (Salzburg/Austria); (2) post-disaster assessment (Harare/Zimbabwe); (3) emergency response (Lukole/Tanzania); and (4) contingency planning (faked crisis scenario/Germany). The results are made available in different virtual globe environments, using the implemented contextual data (such as satellite imagery, aerial photographs, and auxiliary geodata) as valuable additional context information. Both day-to-day users and high-level decision makers are addressees of this tailored information product. The degree of abstraction required for understanding a complex analytical content is balanced with the ease and appeal by which the context is conveyed.”

Using Bioclimatic Envelopes to Identify Temporal Corridors in Support of Conservation Planning in a Changing Climate

In Climate Change, Environmental Science, GIS, Spatial Analysis, Temporal Analysis on March 23, 2010 at 7:12 am

Forest Ecology and Management, 258, p.S64-S74, Dec 2009

Rose, N.A. / Burton, P.J.

“Current and expected shifts in climate are threatening global biodiversity and are forcing managers to re-evaluate how they plan for the protection of species and ecosystems. We propose and illustrate a methodology for identifying geographic locations where climate is expected to remain within the tolerances of conservation targets despite a generally warming climate. Using Generation 3 of the Canadian General Circulation Model and ClimateBC (a climate interpolation and downscaling tool), bioclimatic envelopes were developed for three examples of forest conservation targets. The geographic distribution of the resulting envelopes was projected for four timeslices, and then overlaid using ArcMap GIS software. The resultant intersection of points is presumed to indicate locations of persistent climate over the study’s timeframe. Next, a target’s current mapped distribution was overlaid with the distribution of climate expected to remain within its bioclimatic envelope; the intersection of these points is considered the target’s “temporal corridor.” Current locations with persistent climate are thus expected to provide climatic continuity over time, sufficient to sustain the conservation target. Whereas landscape corridors can provide connectivity in geographic space, temporal corridors are projected to provide continuity in climatic space and over time. The identification of such locations facilitates prioritization of sites for the acquisition or designation of protected areas, and provides guidance on where other current management policies and practices can persist. The projection and mapping of temporal corridors is conceptually simple, yet this can be a powerful tool with many potential applications to assist natural resources planners and managers in a rapidly changing environment.”

Effectiveness of a Semi-Immersive Virtual Environment in Understanding Human-Environment Interactions

In Environmental Science, GIScience, Social Science, Visualization on March 23, 2010 at 6:35 am

Cartography and Geographic Information Science, Volume 36, Number 4, October 2009 , pp. 367-384(18)

Edsall, Robert M.; Larson, Kelli L.

“Virtual environments and related technology generate interest and excitement. Their power is strengthened with empirical evidence of their utility for scientific inquiry and decision-making. This paper reports on a study to evaluate the effectiveness of virtual environment (VE) presentations about issues typical of those facing decision makers in a rapidly growing urban area. The presentations consisted of the explanation and visualization of two phenomena—groundwater overdraft and the urban heat island. The virtual environment utilized in this study, Arizona State University’s Decision Theater, is purported to help policy makers and the larger community visualize complex model output and make decisions about scientific issues. To begin to assess these claims, we carried out a user test during which a group of research participants were given two surveys, one before the presentations, to determine a priori understanding, and a second afterwards, with the same questions. This methodology allowed us to carry out within-subjects tests concerning contrasting phenomena, in order to assess two primary hypotheses: (1) knowledge and perceptions of environmental phenomena will change after the viewing, and (2) understanding will vary based on the phenomena in the presentations. Our analysis shows at least some level of support for the hypotheses, with evidence that the virtual environment positively influenced understanding, and that there may be important differences in insight generation based on characteristics of the phenomena represented. Finally, we outline critical areas of future research to further knowledge about the impact of visual VE settings on understanding and decision making.”

Web-based Visualization and Analysis of NASA Ecological Data

In Environmental Science, Spatial Analysis, Visualization on March 22, 2010 at 9:28 am

Where 2.0 Conference, 30 March – 01 April 2010, San Jose, CA

Sam Hiatt and Andrew Michaelis

“The Terrestrial Observation and Prediction System (TOPS) at NASA Ames Research Center’s Ecological Forecasting Lab generates a suite of gridded data products in near real-time that are designed to enhance management decisions related to droughts, forest fires, human health, as well as crop, range, and forest production. Our data products hold great potential for supporting research and real-world applications. In order to provide enhanced access to our data and to promote multidisciplinary collaboration we implement web-based tools for visualization and analysis.”

Space and Gang Crime: Modeling Social Processes in the Spatial Autocorrelation Matrix

In Social Science, Spatial Analysis, Statistics on March 22, 2010 at 8:24 am

Symposium: Using GIS and Spatial Analysis To Better Understand Patterns and Causes of Violence

AAAS Annual Meeting, 22 February 2010

George E. Tita

“Criminologist often implicate urban street gangs as agents of contagion by which crime spreads throughout a geographic region. However, prior studies of the spatial distribution of crime have not explicitly modeled the social networks along with the geography of the gangs (i.e., “turf). by including the “socio-spatial” dimensions of gangs, this study is able to demonstrate that gangs are responsible for the diffusion/distribution of crime in Hollenbeck Policing Area of the City of Los Angeles.”

Using Spatial Analysis to Prioritize Pedestrian Safety Interventions and Describe Geographic Trends in Pedestrian Safety

In Geography, Spatial Analysis on March 22, 2010 at 8:18 am

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2010, Paper #10-4049

“This paper illustrates the application of several geospatial and analytical tools to the problem of prioritizing pedestrian and other safety improvements in New York City, describes the process used to analyze crashes in New York City, then describes the application of spatial analysis to the problem of contextual project evaluation. An analysis was conducted of the change in pedestrian crashes from the 1992-1996 period to the 2002-2006 period using the kernel density technique. Pedestrian crashes in New York City were found to have decreased in severity and frequency from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, but these changes were not evenly distributed across New York City Low-density residential and commercial areas did not experience consistent improvements, except at the locations of major NYCDOT safety implementations, e.g. Queens Boulevard.”

Understanding Statistics in GIS: An Interview with Dr. Lauren Scott

In GIS on March 22, 2010 at 8:09 am

In the March 2010 issue of GeoSpatial Today magazine, I interview Dr. Lauren Scott about statistics in GIS. An excerpt:

“Matt Artz (MA): We hear about statistics, spatial statistics, geostatistics…can you please explain the difference between these terms?

“Dr. Lauren Scott (LS): Traditional (non-spatial) statistics are trying to address two different kinds of questions. In first case, we have a large set of values and we use descriptive statistics to try to summarize those data values. In the second case, we have a thousand samples; how reflective are those thousand samples of the broader population? Those types of statistics use probability theory.”

A Spatial Approach to Select Pilot Counties for Programs to Correct the Biased Sex Ratio at Birth in Shandong Province, China

In GIS, Social Science, Spatial Analysis, Statistics on March 22, 2010 at 7:17 am

International Journal of Geographical Information Science, Volume 24, Issue 3 March 2010 , pages 403 – 416

Kun Zhang; Shawn William Laffan; Songlin Zhang

“The highly skewed sex ratio at birth (SRB) in China has stimulated numerous studies. However, the geographic distribution of SRB is seldom investigated, particularly at the county level. The need for an understanding at this level has increased since the Chinese government initiated its ‘Care for Girls’ campaign to improve the survival rate of females. This campaign has been initiated in a set of pilot counties. In this article we assess the effectiveness of the set of pilot counties in Shandong province and propose two alternate configurations. To do this, we first assess the spatial distribution of the SRB values by county in Shandong, expressed as a z-score (zSRB) after correcting for the biologically expected SRB value and population size of zero-aged children. A local Moran’s Ii analysis of the zSRB values indicates a significant high-high cluster in the southwest of the province. The Ii, zSRB and female deficit (the difference of the observed from biologically expected number of zero-aged females) were then used to define two alternate configurations for the pilot counties. A comparison of the current and alternate configurations against a Monte Carlo randomisation analysis shows that the current configuration is significantly different from a random selection (p < 0.05) for the two criteria of maximising the aggregate female deficit and maximising the zSRB. Although this is a good result, both alternate configurations were more significant (p < 0.001), and therefore represent potentially better configurations for the campaign given the criteria used. The spatial analysis approach developed here could be used to improve the effectiveness of the Care-for-Girls campaign in Shandong province, and elsewhere in China.”

Determinants of Floodplain Forest Development Illustrated by the Example of the Floodplain Forest in the District of Leipzig

In Environmental Science, GIS on March 22, 2010 at 7:15 am

Forest Ecology and Management, 258 (5), p.887-894, Aug 2009

Haase, D. / Glaser, J.

“This paper discusses determinants of the historical and current spatial extent of the floodplain forest in Leipzig as well as its tree species composition using a GIS-data based delineation model and historical forest inventories for the floodplain forest in the district of Leipzig in Germany from the 19th to the 20th century. We found that the spatial extent of the floodplain forest remained considerably stable in spite of an overall decline in the entire floodplain area from the period where the city first experienced industrialisation in the 19th century to now. However, with river regulations and the alteration of forest management from coppice-with-standards forest to high forest in the 19th century, major changes can be found in the tree species composition of the floodplain forest. Comparing these findings with references from other European floodplain forests we discuss the impact of historical and current forest management as well as the city location’s influence on the extent and tree species composition of urban floodplain forests. For urban forest management in particular there is a great need to integrate biophysical, historical and forestry knowledge when predicting future developmental trends.”

GIS Helps Assessment of Climate Change Impacts on Sugarcane in Swaziland

In Climate Change, GIS on March 22, 2010 at 7:08 am

Agricultural Systems, Volume 103, Issue 2, February 2010, Pages 63-72

J.W. Knox, J.A. Rodríguez Díaz, D.J. Nixon, and M. Mkhwanazi

“The spatial and temporal impacts of climate change on irrigation water requirements and yield for sugarcane grown in Swaziland have been assessed, by combining the outputs from a general circulation model (HadCM3), a sugarcane crop growth model and a GIS. The CANEGRO model (embedded with the DSSAT program) was used to simulate the baseline and future cane net annual irrigation water requirements (IRnet) and yield (t ha−1) using a reference site and selected emissions scenario (SRES A2 and B2) for the 2050s (including CO2-fertilisation effects). The simulated baseline yields were validated against field data from 1980 to 1997. An aridity index was defined and used to correlate agroclimate variability against irrigation need to estimate the baseline and future irrigation water demand (volumetric). To produce a unit weight of sucrose equivalent to current optimum levels of production, future irrigation needs were predicted to increase by 20–22%. With CO2-fertilisation, the impacts of climate change are offset by higher crop yields, such that IRnet is predicted to increase by 9%. The study showed that with climate change, the current peak capacity of existing irrigation schemes could fail to meet the predicted increases in irrigation demand in nearly 50% of years assuming unconstrained water availability.”

Urban Forest Landscape Patterns in Ma’anshan City, China

In Environmental Science, GIS, Social Science on March 22, 2010 at 6:59 am

International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology, 1745-2627, Volume 16, Issue 5, 2009, Pages 346 – 355

Yuan Wang; Ze-Min Wu; Xiang-Rong Wang

“The landscape pattern of Ma’anshan City was analyzed based on theories and methodologies of landscape ecology, remote sensing, global positioning, and a geographic information system (GIS). The study area encompassed the entire built-up area of 63.88 km2; a north-south transect 3-km wide and 13-km long was established along the long axis of the city. Five major landscape elements were assessed: urban land, urban forest, agriculture, water, and grass. Urban land was the dominant land cover type, and occupied 67% of total land area; while patches of urban forest occupied 16%, with a landscape element dominance of 0.42. Urban forest was classified according to land-use category and location into six types: scenic forest, yard forest, recreational forest, roadside forest, shelter forest, and nurseries. There were 2464 urban forest patches, the largest being 185.1 ha, with an average of 0.43 ha. The low nearest neighbor index and high patch density indicated that urban forest patches tend to be aggregated and have a high degree of fragmentation. This study also demonstrated that the spatial pattern of urbanization could be quantified using a combination of landscape metrics and gradient analysis. Urban forest has distinct spatial characters that are dependent on specific landscape metrics along the urbanization gradient. “

Meet the GeoDesigner: GIS and Data-Enriched Design

In Design, ESRI, GIS on March 19, 2010 at 11:13 am

…in Architect magazine…

“Earlier this year, nearly 200 people—planners, engineers, developers (of both software and real estate), architects, and academics—gathered in Redlands, Calif., at the corporate headquarters of ESRI. Founded as the Environmental Systems Research Institute in 1969 by Jack Dangermond, the company is the market leader in GIS (geographic information system) technologies; its ArcGIS is the most widely used software of its kind, with versions that can be used online and on mobile phones. ESRI was hosting the first-ever GeoDesign Summit: three days of sessions and workshops geared to map out the future impact of GIS on design.

“Loosely defined as the integration of geographic analysis and tools into the design process, the term “geodesign,” while not proprietarily linked to ESRI, is viewed as part of the company’s lexicon by the geospatial community, broadly composed of urban planners, cartographers, geographers and other social scientists, and emergency response and military analysts, among others. Geodesign, as Dangermond sees it, is shorthand for the complex interrelationship of spatial data and architecture. It is the interface between land use, census blocks, traffic patterns, air quality tables, and any other data set, on the one hand, and the process of building—site planning, conceptual design, programming, and construction drawings—on the other.

“Dangermond, who has a master’s degree in landscape architecture from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, is as much resident philosopher as company president, and he draws his ideas about GIS and design from landscape architect Ian McHarg’s 1969 book Design With Nature. McHarg’s book spelled out the connections between environmental impact, social factors, and appropriate development. Holistic planning may seem commonsensical now, but at the time, it was part of a growing backlash against Modernism’s sweeping gestures. The GeoDesign Summit expressly set out to explore technological advances, but its goals were no less lofty than to save the Earth.”

Urban Transmission of American Cutaneous Leishmaniasis in Argentina: Spatial Analysis Study

In GIS, Science, Spatial Analysis, Statistics on March 19, 2010 at 7:32 am

American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 2010 Mar;82(3):433-40

Gil JF, Nasser JR, Cajal SP, Juarez M, Acosta N, Cimino RO, Diosque P, Krolewiecki AJ

“We used kernel density and scan statistics to examine the spatial distribution of cases of pediatric and adult American cutaneous leishmaniasis in an urban disease-endemic area in Salta Province, Argentina. Spatial analysis was used for the whole population and stratified by women > 14 years of age (n = 159), men > 14 years of age (n = 667), and children < 15 years of age (n = 213). Although kernel density for adults encompassed nearly the entire city, distribution in children was most prevalent in the peripheral areas of the city. Scan statistic analysis for adult males, adult females, and children found 11, 2, and 8 clusters, respectively. Clusters for children had the highest odds ratios (P < 0.05) and were located in proximity of plantations and secondary vegetation. The data from this study provide further evidence of the potential urban transmission of American cutaneous leishmaniasis in northern Argentina.”

Female Breast Cancer Mortality Clusters within Racial Groups in the United States

In GIS, Science, Spatial Analysis, Statistics on March 19, 2010 at 7:05 am

Health and Place, 16 (2), p.209-218, Mar 2010

Nancy Tian, J. Gaines Wilson, and F. Benjamin Zhan

“Although breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths among women in the Unites States, to date there have been no nationwide studies systematically analyzing geographic variation and clustering. An assessment of spatial–temporal clusters of cancer mortality by age and race at the county level in the lower 48 United States indicated a primary cluster in the Northeast US for both younger (RR=1.349; all RR are p≤0.001) and older (RR=1.283) women in the all-race category. Similar cluster patterns in the North were detected for younger (RR=1.390) and older (RR=1.292) white women. The cluster for both younger (RR=1.337) and older (RR=1.251) black women was found in the Midwest. The clusters for all other racial groups combined were in the West for both younger (RR=1.682) and older (RR=1.542) groups. Regression model results suggest that lower socioeconomic status (SES) was more protective than higher status at every quartile step (Medium-high SES, OR=0.374; Medium-low, OR=0.137; Low, OR=0.061). This study may provide insight to aid in identifying geographic areas and subpopulations at increased risk for breast cancer.”

Using a GIS to Enhance Grain Size Trend Analysis

In Environmental Science, GIS on March 19, 2010 at 7:04 am

Environmental Modelling and Software, 25 (4), p.513-525, Apr 2010

Poizot, E. / Mear, Y.

“This paper introduces GisedTrend, a plugin of the QGIS geographical information system that implements the Grain Sized Trend Analysis (GSTA) method. It is advantageous to incorporate the GSTA method in a GIS since it can directly access: (i) environmental information such as bathymetry, coastline, etc., (ii) spatial analysis tools available in such working environments, (iii) input/output data management; all these features are provided by standard GIS software. The paper also presents two case studies: the first case is based on an artificial dataset to focus on effects of obstacles on GSTA computed vector fields. The second case is based on a dataset acquired in the western part of the NW Mediterranean sea (Gulf of Lions, France). In this area, rocky formations, more or less continuous, outcrop directly on the seafloor, modifying the local hydrographic context and thus the sedimentary dynamic.”

The Use of Immersive Real-time 3D Computer Graphics for Visualisation of Dilution of Precision in Virtual Environments

In GIS, Visualization on March 19, 2010 at 6:35 am

International Journal of Geographical Information Science, Volume 24, Issue 4 April 2010 , pages 591 – 605

Jing Li; Claire H. Jarvis; Chris Brunsdon

“Dilution of precision (DOP) is a fundamental concept in satellite navigation and surveying. A deeper understanding of this concept can be achieved through the means of 3D immersive visualisation. In this article, we present a method for visualising and exploring the spatial variation of DOP and discuss its presentation within an immersive virtual environment. The work demonstrates a real-time simulation of global positioning system (GPS) satellite geometry, modelled and visualised within a virtual representation of the university campus. The number of satellites visible to the receiver is modelled in real time as a user walks through the university campus. During this process, the changing satellite geometry is visualised in both 3D and aerial views. Various DOP values update to the screen against a pseudo-realistic building backdrop as the user travels. Both the aerial views and the changing volumes of the tetrahedra drawn in 3D provide an effective way of interpreting why exceptionally large or small horizontal DOP and vertical DOP values can occur in an urban context. Because the factors affecting DOPs are inherently 3D, communicating the spatial uncertainty of global positioning system coordinates within an immersive stereo environment has been viewed as a particularly powerful communication tool by both undergraduate and postgraduate students studying GI Science.”

Investigation of Aggregation Effects in Vegetation Condition Monitoring at a National Scale

In Environmental Science, GIS, Imagery on March 19, 2010 at 6:35 am

International Journal of Geographical Information Science, Volume 24, Issue 4 April 2010 , pages 507 – 521

T. K. Alexandridis;  T. Katagis;  I. Z. Gitas;  N. G. Silleos;  K. M. Eskridge; G. Gritzas

“Monitoring vegetation condition is an important issue in the Mediterranean region, in terms of both securing food and preventing fires. Vegetation indices (VIs), mathematical transformations of reflectance bands, have played an important role in vegetation monitoring, as they depict the abundance and health of vegetation. Instead of storing raster VI maps, aggregated statistics can be derived and used in long-term monitoring. The aggregation schemes (zonations) used in Greece are the forest service units, the fire service units, and the administrative units. The purpose of this work was to explore the effect of the modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP) in vegetation condition monitoring at the above-mentioned aggregation schemes using 16 days Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) composites acquired by the moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer satellite sensor. The effects of aggregation in the context of MAUP were examined by analyzing variance, from which the among polygon variation (objects’ heterogeneity) and the within polygon variation (pixels’ homogeneity) were derived. Significant differences in objects’ heterogeneity were observed when aggregating at the three aggregation schemes; therefore there is a MAUP effect in monitoring vegetation condition on a nationwide scale in Greece with NDVI. Monitoring using the fire service units has significantly higher pixels’ homogeneity; therefore there is indication that it is the most appropriate for monitoring vegetation condition on a nationwide scale in Greece with NDVI. Results were consistent between the two major types of vegetation, natural and agricultural. According to the statistical validation, conclusions based on the examined years (2003 and 2004) are justified.”

Extending the Qualitative Capabilities of GIS: Computer-Aided Qualitative GIS

In GIS, GIScience on March 19, 2010 at 6:28 am

Transactions in GIS, Volume 14 Issue 1, Pages 63 – 87, Published Online 17 Jan 2010

Jin-Kyu Jung, Sarah Elwood

“A number of approaches for integrating GIS and qualitative research have emerged in recent years, as part of a resurgence of interest in mixed methods research in geography. These efforts to integrate qualitative data and qualitative analysis techniques complement a longstanding focus in GIScience upon ways of handling qualitative forms of spatial data and reasoning in digital environments, and extend engagements with ‘the qualitative’ in GIScience to include discussions of research methodologies. This article contributes to these emerging qualitative GIS methodologies by describing the structures and functions of ‘computer-aided qualitative GIS’ (CAQ-GIS), an approach for storing and analyzing qualitative, quantitative, and geovisual data in both GIS and computer aided data analysis software. CAQ-GIS uses modified structures from conventional desktop GIS to support storage of qualitative data and analytical codes, together with a parallel coding and analysis process carried out with GIS and a computer-aided data analysis software package. The inductive mixed methods analysis potential of CAQ-GIS is demonstrated with examples from research on children’s urban geographies.”

SAM: A Comprehensive Application for Spatial Analysis in Macroecology

In Environmental Science, Spatial Analysis, Statistics on March 18, 2010 at 9:48 am

Ecography, Volume 33 Issue 1, Pages 46 – 50, Published Online: 4 Mar 2010

Thiago F. Rangel, Jose Alexandre F. Diniz-Filho and Luis Mauricio Bini

“SAM (Spatial Analysis in Macroecology) is a freeware application that offers a comprehensive array of spatial statistical methods, focused primarily on surface pattern spatial analysis. SAM is a compact, but powerful stand-alone software, with a user-friendly, menu-driven graphical interface. The methods available in SAM are the most commonly used in macroecology and geographical ecology, and range from simple tools for exploratory graphical analysis (e.g. mapping and graphing) and descriptive statistics of spatial patterns (e.g. autocorrelation metrics), to advanced spatial regression models (e.g. autoregression and eigenvector filtering). Download of the software, along with the user manual, can be downloaded online at the SAM website: <www.ecoevol.ufg.br> (permanent URL at <http://purl.oclc.org/sam/>).”

Ensemble Extraction for Classification and Detection of Bird Species

In Environmental Science, Imagery, Temporal Analysis on March 18, 2010 at 9:42 am

Ecological Informatics, In Press, Accepted Manuscript, Available online 1 March 2010

Eric P. Kasten, Philip K. McKinley, Stuart H. Gage

“Advances in technology have enabled new approaches for sensing the environment and collecting data about the world. Once collected, sensor readings can be assembled into data streams and transmitted over computer networks for storage and processing at observatories or to evoke an immediate response from an autonomic computer system. However, such automated collection of sensor data produces an immense quantity of data that is time consuming to organize, search and distill into meaningful information. In this paper, we explore the design and use of distributed pipelines for automated processing of sensor data streams. In particular, we focus on the detection and extraction of meaningful sequences, called ensembles, from acoustic data streamed from natural areas. Our goal is automated detection and classification of various species of birds.”

Clustering of Unhealthy Outdoor Advertisements around Child-serving Institutions in Austin, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia

In GIS, Social Science, Statistics on March 18, 2010 at 7:10 am

Health & Place, Volume 15, Issue 4, Pages 935-945 (December 2009)

Amy Hillier, Brian L. Cole, Tony E. Smith, Antronette K. Yancey, Jerome D. Williams, Sonya A. Grier, William J. McCarthy

“Using GPS devices and digital cameras, we surveyed outdoor advertisements in Austin, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. GIS and hot spot analysis revealed that unhealthy ads were clustered around child-serving institutions in Los Angeles and Philadelphia but not in Austin. Multivariate generalized least square (GLS) regression models showed that percent black (p<0.04) was a significant positive predictor of clustering in Philadelphia and percent white (p<0.06) was a marginally significant negative predictor of clustering in Los Angeles after controlling for several land use variables. The results emphasize the importance of zoning and land use regulations to protect children from exposure to unhealthy commercial messages, particularly in neighborhoods with significant racial/ethnic minority populations.”

Using GIS in Constructing Area-based Physical Deprivation Index in Cairo Governorate, Egypt

In GIS, Social Science on March 18, 2010 at 7:08 am

Habitat International, 34 (2), p.264-272, Apr 2010

Khadr, Z. / Nour el Dein, M. / Hamed, R.

“A worldwide consensus on poverty has acknowledged slums and the living conditions of slum dwellers as a major challenge faced by humanity. Formulation of appropriate policies and intervention programs to improve the living conditions and secure the well being of slum dwellers requires a strong knowledge base that clearly defines, identifies, and signifies the main points of commonalities and diversities among these slum areas which are commonly unavailable in many cities in developing countries. The current research provides an overview of slum challenge in Cairo governorate, Egypt. It further develops a physical deprivation index that allows the ranking of small geographic areas accordingly to their levels of physical deprivation. Using four of the basic GIS layers for the governorate of Cairo and the principle component analysis, an index of physical deprivation for these small areas “mantiqas” is constructed. The proposed index is a composite index of four main dimensions characterizing physical attributes, sources of pollutions, available services and security of each mantiqa. Validation tests of the index revealed the ability of the proposed index to capture slums identified by the current governmental official list of slums in addition to other areas that were as equally deprived but not included in the official list of slums.”

A GIS-based Approach to Evaluate Biomass Potential from Energy Crops at Regional Scale

In Climate Change, Environmental Science, GIS, Spatial Analysis on March 18, 2010 at 7:01 am

Environmental Modelling and Software, 25 (6), p.702-711, Jun 2010

Fiorese, G. / Guariso, G.

“The aim of the paper is to propose a method to maximize energy production from arboreous and herbaceous dedicated crops given the characteristics of the local environment: geo-morphology, climate, natural heritage, current land use. The best energy crops available in the Italian panorama are identified and the problem of maximizing the bioenergy production over an entire regional area is formulated. Each cultivar is thus assigned to the suitable land accounting for sensitive parameters that characterize it and taking into account current land use. The assumption made here is that marginal land and set-asides can be converted to energy crops without altering current practices and cash crops’ production. The method is based on the integration of GIS data (spatially continuous) with data derived from the agricultural census (spatially discrete). We carry out the analysis for Emilia-Romagna, in Northern Italy. The sustainable growth of energy crops, with an optimized network of conversion facilities distributed in the territory, may significantly contribute to the local energy supply and to climate change mitigation.”

GIS Assessment of Solar Energy Resource in Europe

In Environmental Science, GIS, Spatial Analysis on March 17, 2010 at 9:20 am

“A solar radiation database of Europe has been computed within the GRASS GIS software. The database provides monthly and yearly averages of global irradiation on horizontal and inclined surfaces, as well as climatic parameters needed for an assessment of the potential photovoltaic electricity generation. The database is available on-line by means of a set of dynamic web applications. In the first application, a user may browse solar radiation and other maps and query the selected climatic parameters. The second application provides daily profiles of irradiance for a chosen month and for a selected surface inclination and orientation. The third application provides estimates of solar electricity generation.”

Climate Change Sessions at the 2010 ESRI International User Conference in July

In GIS on March 17, 2010 at 8:07 am

Climate Change Science

Tue, Jul 13, 10:15AM – 11:30AM, Room 31 A
Learn how experts are using GIS and related technologies to conduct cutting edge scientific research to assess climate change and its effects.
Papers:
Buffering Parcels: GIS Based Method for GHG Emission Analysis
Raef Porter, SACOG
Like many of the 18 MPO’s in California, Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) is developing the technical capacity needed to implement SB375, which is part of AB32, the State’s greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction policy. SACOG creates and analyzes land use and transportation at parcel level to quantify transportation-related GHG emissions. Parcels are used, as opposed to zones, because they better capture the relationship between land use and transportation. In place of zones, SACOG buffers parcel/point land use data, and the resulting buffered files are used in the travel demand model. Once modeled, outputs are mapped to show where emissions are highest. In the Sacramento region, these maps show a correlation between the built environment (e.g. distance from employment centers) and GHG emissions. SACOG hopes similar GIS and modeling techniques are integrated into planning processes in other regions around California to help implement GHG reduction policies.

Measuring Greenhouse Gas Emissions with a Sustainability Tool
Jung A Uhm, SCAG
Frank Wen, Southern California Association of Governments
Hsi-Hwa Hu, Southern California Association of Governments
Simon Shoi, Southern California Association of Governments
With the recent passage of California Senate Bill No. 375, the need for an analytical tool that helps local planners in land use decisions is greater than ever. This presentation aims to introduce a Sustainability Tool and its use for the development of sustainable communities in Southern California region. A Sustainability Tool developed by Southern California Association of Governments is an ArcGIS based modeling and evaluation tool scripted by Python that enables users to visualize and evaluate the impacts of different land use scenarios on vehicle use and Greenhouse Gas emissions in real time. By demonstrating the benefits of sustainable land use strategies in reducing vehicle use and emissions, the tool is expected to play a central role in creating a sustainable land use strategy for the region through participation and consensus building.

Climate Change and Sustainable Communities

Wed, Jul 14, 8:30AM – 9:45AM, Room 31 A
GIS is helping municipalities, indigenous communities, and policy makers identify their sustainability goals and take practical steps to achieve these objectives. Learn how a variety of organizations are applying GIS to deal with the changing climate and plan sustainable communities.
Papers:
Planning For Climate Change – ClimateWise
Richard Nauman, National Center for Conservation Science and Policy
Our ClimateWise program uses GIS to incorporate climate modeling data in community-based climate change adaptation planning. Modeling efforts have produced a series of large, spatially explicit datasets projecting future climatic conditions. The volume of information produced by these efforts coupled with the technical difficulty of accessing the data, processing it, and displaying it in a GIS environment has limited their usefulness for non-technical audiences. We have developed Python scripts that use the built-in geoprocessing functionality of ArcGIS to access these files and produce cartographic and tabular output used in climate adaptation planning processes. When incorporated into a facilitated series of forums, these data have proven valuable communities creating climate change adaptation plans at the river basin scale. Our process integrates the needs of cultural, ecological, economic, social, and built sectors of communities and results in robust action plans that build resistance and resilience in human and natural systems.

Local Climate Change GIS-databased Visioning Tools for Community Decision-Making
Olaf Schroth, CALP/UBC
Philip Paar, Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum für Informationstechnik Berlin (ZIB)
Climate change has become the key topic in urban and landscape planning because today, planners have to decide on the mitigation and adaptation measures that future will bring into action. However, there is a gap between the state of research and its current consideration in planning. The reasons are the complexity of climate change impact and the uncertainties that are linked to it. In this context, GIS is a potential tool for capacity building. With regard to international case studies, GIS is used to identify the potential spatial consequences of different adaptation and mitigation scenarios. Especially, the model builder allows varying alternative scenarios, considering the impact of different adaptation and mitigation measures. The visualization using the globe metaphor illustrates the global context of local action.

Using GIS in Community Design Charrettes: Lessons from a Japan–U.S. collaboration in Earthquake Recovery and Mitigation Planning for Kobe

In Design, GIS on March 17, 2010 at 7:29 am

Habitat International, Volume 33, Issue 4, October 2009, Pages 310-318

Takahiro Tanaka, Daniel Benjamin Abramson, and Yoshito Yamazaki

“Charrettes have become popular in the urban design field, especially for use among multidisciplinary teams of professionals and non-professional community stakeholders seeking to incorporate a rich array of expertise in short visioning activities. Geographic Information Systems are among the technologies with potential to provide sophisticated spatial information to charrette participants efficiently. This article reports on a charrette carried out jointly by teams from Kobe University and the University of Washington, Seattle, USA, using GIS to inform urban design in three neighborhoods affected by the Great Hanshin–Awaji Earthquake of 1995 in Kobe, Japan. The article describes the charrette itself, and discusses the utility of GIS, given the challenges of disaster recovery in a context of undeveloped institutions for public participation, and with participants of different linguistic and educational backgrounds. In combination with electronically storable drawing technology, GIS proved useful in enlarging the multidisciplinary and cross-cultural reach of urban design; in incorporating new layers of pre-prepared expert data, and in combining such data with dynamically-generated “advice maps” and design ideas. For GIS-based charrettes to become more widely useful in community-scale design in Japan, however, additional property-scale data need to be available.”

Spatio-temporal Analysis of Fire Events in India: Implications for Environmental Conservation

In Environmental Science, Spatial Analysis, Statistics, Temporal Analysis on March 17, 2010 at 7:15 am

Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, Volume 51, Issue 6 November 2008 , pages 817 – 832

Krishna Prasad Vadrevu; K. V. S. Badarinath; Anuradha Eaturu

“Information on fires in different geographic regions of India is relatively scarce. This study quantifies spatial and temporal patterns in fire occurrences covering different states and districts in India. Two important scientific questions are answered in this study: (1) how are the fire events distributed across different geographical regions? (2) are there any specific districts where fire events clustered across space and time? To address these questions, Along Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR) derived satellite fire counts from 1997-2006 were used and the datasets were analysed using spatial scan statistic. Spatial scan statistic provides a test statistic for most likely ‘hotspot’ spatial clusters, based on the likelihood ratio test and Monte Carlo simulation. Results from geographical analysis based on state boundaries suggested Maharastra state had the highest number of fires followed by Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Orissa, etc., during the 10-year period. Among the several districts, the spatial scan statistic identified the most likely cluster of fire events in Dausa, Karauli, Sawai Madhopur, Bharatpur and Alwar in addition to several other secondary clusters, with high statistical significance. These results are based on a large sample of cases, and they provide convincing evidence of spatial clustering of fire events in the Indian region. Results relating to hotspot areas of fire risk can guide policy makers towards the best management strategies for avoiding damages to forests, human life and personal property in the ‘hotspot’ districts.”

Small Area Estimation of Sparse Disease Counts using Shared Component Models

In GIS, Geography, Modeling, Spatial Analysis on March 17, 2010 at 6:58 am

Health & Place, In Press, Accepted Manuscript, Available online 25 February 2010

Arul Earnest, John Beard, Geoff Morgan, Douglas Lincoln, Richard Summerhayes, Deborah Donoghue, Therese Dunn, David Muscatello, and Kerrie Mengersen

“In the field of disease mapping, little has been done to address the issue of analysing sparse health datasets. We hypothesised that by modelling two outcomes simultaneously, one would be able to better estimate the outcome with a sparse count. We tested this hypothesis utilising Bayesian models, studying both birth defects and caesarean sections using data from two large, linked birth registries in New South Wales from 1990 to 2004. We compared four spatial models across seven birth defects: spina bifida, ventricular septal defect, OS-atrial septal defect, patent ductus arteriosus, cleft lip and or palate, trisomy 21 and hypospadias. For three of the birth defects, the shared component model with a zero-inflated Poisson (ZIP) extension performed better than other simpler models, having a lower Deviance Information Criteria (DIC). With spina bifida, the ratio of relative risk associated with the shared component was 2.82 (95% CI: 1.46-5.67). We found that shared component models are potentially beneficial, but only if there is a reasonably strong spatial correlation in effects for the study and referent outcomes.”

A Country Level Spatial Assessment of Landslide Susceptibility in Romania

In Environmental Science, GIS, Spatial Analysis on March 17, 2010 at 6:36 am

Geomorphology, In Press, Accepted Manuscript, Available online 11 March 2010

Dan Bălteanu, Viorel Chendeş, Mihaela Sima, Petru Enciu

“The paper proposes a brief spatial analysis of landslides in Romania, completed by a landslide susceptibility model. Landslides constitute a very common geomorphic hazard in this country, mainly in the hilly regions which occupy around 30% of the Romanian territory. The landslide susceptibility assessment at national level was accomplished using a Landslide Susceptibility Index (LSI) computed in GIS, which considers and weights the main factors that control landslide activity: lithology, slope gradient, maximum rainfall in 24 hrs, land use, seismicity and local relief. Each factor was classified into 7-18 classes which were rated from 1 to 10 by means of expert judgement. A formula was devised to compute Landslide Susceptibility Index over each 100 m × 100 m pixel and the resulting values were ranked into 5 landslide susceptibility classes. This synthetic method of landslide susceptibility assessment, applied to the whole country of Romania, is an useful tool to evaluate the distribution of landslide-prone areas, as well as to validate and to enhance some results obtained in previous studies based on field research and map interpretation. The most landslide prone areas correspond to the Subcarpathians (an outer fringe of hilly terrain accompanying the Carpathians), as well as to the Moldavian Plateau in the east. The semi-quantitative approach has been validated with satisfactorily results in a particular sector using independent cartographic landslide inventories.”

Quantifying Rooftop Solar Photovoltaic Potential for Regional Renewable Energy Policy

In Environmental Science, GIS on March 17, 2010 at 6:27 am

Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, Article in Press, 2010

L.K. Wiginton, H.T. Nguyen, and J.M. Pearce

“Solar photovoltaic (PV) technology has matured to become a technically viable large-scale source of sustainable energy. Understanding the rooftop PV potential is critical for utility planning, accommodating grid capacity, deploying financing schemes and formulating future adaptive energy policies. This paper demonstrates techniques to merge the capabilities of geographic information systems and object-specific image recognition to determine the available rooftop area for PV deployment in an example large-scale region in south eastern Ontario. A five-step procedure has been developed for estimating total rooftop PV potential which involves geographical division of the region; sampling using the Feature Analyst extraction software; extrapolation using roof area-population relationships; reduction for shading, other uses and orientation; and conversion to power and energy outputs. Limitations faced in terms of the capabilities of the software and determining the appropriate fraction of roof area available are discussed. Because this aspect of the analysis uses an integral approach, PV potential will not be georeferenced, but rather presented as an agglomerate value for use in regional policy making. A relationship across the region was found between total roof area and population of 70.0 m2/capita ± 6.2%. With appropriate roof tops covered with commercial solar cells, the potential PV peak power output from the region considered is 5.74 GW (157% of the region’s peak power demands) and the potential annual energy production is 6909 GWh (5% of Ontario’s total annual demand). This suggests that 30% of Ontario’s energy demand can be met with province-wide rooftop PV deployment. This new understanding of roof area distribution and potential PV outputs will guide energy policy formulation in Ontario and will inform future research in solar PV deployment and its geographical potential.”

Augmented Reality and Photogrammetry: A Synergy to Visualize Physical and Virtual City Environments

In Imagery, Visualization on March 17, 2010 at 6:01 am

ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Volume 65, Issue 1, January 2010, Pages 134-142

Cristina Portalés, José Luis Lerma, Santiago Navarro

“Close-range photogrammetry is based on the acquisition of imagery to make accurate measurements and, eventually, three-dimensional (3D) photo-realistic models. These models are a photogrammetric product per se. They are usually integrated into virtual reality scenarios where additional data such as sound, text or video can be introduced, leading to multimedia virtual environments. These environments allow users both to navigate and interact on different platforms such as desktop PCs, laptops and small hand-held devices (mobile phones or PDAs). In very recent years, a new technology derived from virtual reality has emerged: Augmented Reality (AR), which is based on mixing real and virtual environments to boost human interactions and real-life navigations. The synergy of AR and photogrammetry opens up new possibilities in the field of 3D data visualization, navigation and interaction far beyond the traditional static navigation and interaction in front of a computer screen.

“In this paper we introduce a low-cost outdoor mobile AR application to integrate buildings of different urban spaces. High-accuracy 3D photo-models derived from close-range photogrammetry are integrated in real (physical) urban worlds. The augmented environment that is presented herein requires for visualization a see-through video head mounted display (HMD), whereas user’s movement navigation is achieved in the real world with the help of an inertial navigation sensor. After introducing the basics of AR technology, the paper will deal with real-time orientation and tracking in combined physical and virtual city environments, merging close-range photogrammetry and AR. There are, however, some software and complex issues, which are discussed in the paper.”

Cloud Computing, GeoDesign, and ArcGIS 10 Top the List at the ESRI User Conference

In GIS on March 16, 2010 at 9:47 am

Registration now open for the 2010 ESRI International User Conference

The ESRI International User Conference (ESRI UC) is a weeklong event that energizes, educates, and inspires the geographic information system (GIS) community. The conference connects industry peers, thought leaders, and technology experts on the topics that matter most—from cloud computing and GeoDesign to the release of ArcGIS 10. Attendees have access to cutting-edge GIS technology, expert advice, demonstrations, and training.

The 30th annual ESRI UC is scheduled for July 12–16, 2010, at the San Diego Convention Center in California. The registration deadline is May 21, 2010, and special rate hotel rooms can be booked for a limited time. More conference information, including participation and a customizable letter of attendance justification, is available at www.esri.com/uc.

“GIS users continue to inspire us with the powerful work they do to make a real difference in the world, and the ESRI UC is their forum for fostering creativity and sharing successful ideas,” said ESRI president Jack Dangermond. “The ESRI UC provides everything users need, whether it’s help with a project or understanding what the latest GIS technology can do for their organization.”

Advantages of attending include

  • More than 70 hours of learning, training, and networking opportunities focusing on topics such as GeoDesign, cloud computing, Web 2.0, and green government
  • The latest news on ArcGIS 10, including modern interfaces, mapmaking time-savers, easier data creation and management, enhanced editing and sharing capabilities, and new ways to perform analysis and modeling
  • Opportunities to connect with peers, thought leaders, and ESRI staff and business partners eager to share their guidance and motivation
  • Exposure to practical and proven applications and methods through 600 user presentations, 275 technical workshops, and 100 Special Interest Group (SIG) or Regional User Group (RUG) meetings

The ESRI UC offers a comprehensive agenda including user presentations, technical workshops, and GIS concept and industry-focused sessions. Highlights include the Plenary Session, with engaging keynote speakers and a special youth presentation; a Map Gallery collection of illustrative maps from more than 100 countries; and more than 300 sponsors in the extensive exhibit hall.

Attendees can enrich their conference experience by playing an active part in it. User videos, screen shots, and images are woven into the plenary presentation. The conference Map Gallery and Virtual Map Gallery highlight paper and digital maps created by users. Lightning Talks—new to the ESRI UC last year—are innovative, informal presentations given in five minutes. Plus, attendees can host SIG and RUG meetings, ideal for collaborating with peers of the same interest, industry, or region.

For more information

  • Visit www.esri.com/uc.
  • Follow ESRI on Twitter: @ESRIUC.
  • Visit ESRI UC on Facebook.
  • Read the UC Insider blog.

[Source: ESRi press release]

Classifying Historical Remotely Sensed Imagery Using a Tempo-spatial Feature Evolution (T-SFE) Model

In Imagery, Modeling, Spatial Analysis, Temporal Analysis on March 16, 2010 at 8:45 am

ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Volume 65, Issue 2, March 2010, Pages 182-190

Yichun Xie, Zongyao Sha, Yongfei Bai

“Large and growing archives of orbital imagery of the earth’s surface collected over the past 40 years provide an important resource for documenting past and current land cover and environmental changes. However uses of these data are limited by the lack of coincident ground information with which either to establish discrete land cover classes or to assess the accuracy of their identification. Herein is proposed an easy-to-use model, the Tempo-Spatial Feature Evolution (T-SFE) model, designed to improve land cover classification using historical remotely sensed data and ground cover maps obtained at later times. This model intersects (1) a map of spectral classes (S-classes) of an initial time derived from the standard unsupervised ISODATA classifier with (2) a reference map of ground cover types (G-types) of a subsequent time to generate (3) a target map of overlaid patches of S-classes and G-types. This model employs the rules of Count Majority Evaluation, and Subtotal Area Evaluation that are formulated on the basis of spatial feature evolution over time to quantify spatial evolutions between the S-classes and G-types on the target map. This model then applies these quantities to assign G-types to S-classes to classify the historical images. The model is illustrated with the classification of grassland vegetation types for a basin in Inner Mongolia using 1985 Landsat TM data and 2004 vegetation map. The classification accuracy was assessed through two tests: a small set of ground sampling data in 1985, and an extracted vegetation map from the national vegetation cover data (NVCD) over the study area in 1988. Our results show that a 1985 image classification was achieved using this method with an overall accuracy of 80.6%. However, the classification accuracy depends on a proper calibration of several parameters used in the model.”

Review of Methods for Space-time Disease Surveillance

In Science, Spatial Analysis, Temporal Analysis on March 15, 2010 at 8:33 am

Spatial and Spatio-temporal Epidemiology, In Press, Accepted Manuscript, Available Online 20 February 2010

Colin Robertsona, Trisalyn A. Nelsona, Ying C. MacNabb and Andrew B. Lawsonc

“A review of some methods for analysis of space-time disease surveillance data is presented. Increasingly, surveillance systems are capturing spatial and temporal data on disease and health outcomes in a variety of public health contexts. A vast and growing suite of methods exists for detection of outbreaks and trends in surveillance data and the selection of appropriate methods in a given surveillance context is not always clear. While most reviews of methods focus on algorithm performance, in practice, a variety of factors determine what methods are appropriate for surveillance. In this review, we focus on the role of contextual factors such as scale, scope, surveillance objective, disease characteristics, and technical issues in relation to commonly used approaches to surveillance. Methods are classified as testing-based or model-based approaches. Reviewing methods in the context of factors other than algorithm performance highlights important aspects of implementing and selecting appropriate disease surveillance methods.”

GIS-based Modeling of Drought and Historical Population Change on the Canadian Prairies

In GIS, Geography, Modeling, Social Science on March 15, 2010 at 7:51 am

Journal of Historical Geography, Volume 36, Issue 1, January 2010, Pages 43-56

Robert McLemana, Sam Herolda, Zoran Reljica, Mike Sawadaa, and Daniel McKenney”

This article describes the development of a GIS-based model of historical drought and population change in western Canada, designed to support qualitative field research into drought adaptation and migration. The model combines digitized census data and recently available modeled historical climate data at a 10 km2 grid cell scale and can be used to generate maps of ‘hotspots’ where historical declines in rural populations may be associated with extended periods of heat and lack of precipitation. The results suggest a promising avenue for expanding and refining GIS-based modeling of historical human–climate interactions to support qualitative research and to potentially serve as a stepping stone toward forecasting future risk areas of drought-related migration in continental dryland areas.”

Assessing the Context of Health Care Utilization in Ecuador: A Spatial and Multilevel Analysis

In Geography, Spatial Analysis, Statistics on March 15, 2010 at 7:39 am

BMC Health Services Research, 2010, 10:64

Daniel F Lopez-Cevallos and Chunhuei Chi

“Background: There are few studies that have analyzed the context of health care utilization, particularly in Latin America. This study examines the context of utilization of health services in Ecuador; focusing on the relationship between provision of services and use of both preventive and curative services.

“Methods: This study is cross-sectional and analyzes data from the 2004 National Demographic and Maternal & Child Health dataset. Provider variables come from the Ecuadorian System of Social Indicators (SIISE). Global Moran’s I statistic is used to assess spatial autocorrelation of the provider variables. Multilevel modeling is used for the simultaneous analysis of provision of services at the province level with use of services at the individual level.

“Results: Spatial analysis indicates no significant differences in the density of health care providers among Ecuadorian provinces. After adjusting for various predisposing, enabling, need factors and interaction terms, density of public practice health personnel was positively associated with use of preventive care, particularly among rural households. On the other hand, density of private practice physicians was positively associated with use of curative care, particularly among urban households.

“Conclusions: There are significant public/private, urban/rural gaps in provision of services in Ecuador; which in turn affect people’s use of services. It is necessary to strengthen the public health care delivery system (which includes addressing distribution of health workers) and national health information systems. These efforts could improve access to health care, and inform the civil society and policymakers on the advances of health care reform.”

Natural Earth: Free Vector and Raster Map Data at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110m Scales

In GIS, Geography on March 15, 2010 at 7:20 am

“Natural Earth is a public domain map dataset available at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110m scales. Featuring tightly integrated vector and raster data, with Natural Earth you can make a variety of visually pleasing, well-crafted maps with cartography or GIS software.

“Natural Earth was built through a collaboration of many volunteers and is supported by NACIS (North American Cartographic Information Society), and is free for use in any type of project.”

Call for Papers: Workshop On Linked Spatiotemporal Data 2010

In Conferences, GIS, GIScience, Spatial Analysis, Temporal Analysis on March 15, 2010 at 6:56 am

Workshop On Linked Spatiotemporal Data 2010 (http://stko.psu.edu/lstd2010/)

In conjunction with the 6th International Conference on Geographic Information Science (GIScience 2010)

Zurich, 14-17th September, 2010; the workshop will be held on the 14th September 2010.

Workshop Description & Scope

Whilst the Web has changed with the advent of the Social Web from mostly authoritative towards increasing amounts of user generated content, it is essentially still about linked documents. These documents provide structure and context for the described data and easy their interpretation. In contrast, the upcoming Data Web is about linking data, not documents. Such data sets are not bound to a specific document but can be easily combined and used outside of the original context. With a growth rate of millions of new facts encoded as RDF-triples per month, the Linked Data cloud allows users to answer complex queries spanning multiple sources. Due to the uncoupling of data from its original creation context, semantic interoperability, identity resolution, and ontologies are central methodologies to ensure consistency and meaningful results. Space and time are fundamental ordering relations to structure such data and provide an implicit context for their interpretation. Prominent geo-related Linked Data hubs include Geonames.org as well as the Linked Geo Data project which provides a RDF serialization of Open Street Map. Furthermore, myriad other Linked Data sources contain location-based references. This workshop aims at introducing the GIScience audience to the Linked Data Web and discuss the relation between the upcoming Linked Data infrastructures and existing OGC services-based Spatial Data Infrastructures. The workshop results will directly contribute to the ongoing work of the NeoGeo Semantic Web Vocabularies Group, an online group focused on the construction of a set of lightweight geospatial ontologies for Linked Data. Overall, the workshop should help to better define the data, knowledge representations, reasoning methodologies, and additional tools needed to link locations seamlessly into the Web of Linked Data. Subsequently, with the advent of “Linked Locations” in Linked Data, the gap between the Semantic Web and the Geo Web will begin to narrow.

Topics of interest for the Linked Spatiotemporal Data workshop include (but are not limited to):

Application of Linked Spatiotemporal Data

  • Linked Data and the Sensor Web Enablement
  • Linked Data and mobile applications
  • Linked Data gazetteers and points of interest
  • Linked Data in the domain of cultural heritage research

Retrieving and Browsing of Linked Spatiotemporal Data

  • Mining Linked Spatiotemporal Data from existing sources
  • Spatiotemporal indexing of Linked Data
  • Harvesting Linked Data from heterogeneous sources
  • Spatial extensions to query languages such as SPARQL (e.g., GeoSPARQL)
  • Visualizing and browsing through the Linked Spatiotemporal Data cloud

Integration and Interoperation of Linked Spatiotemporal Data

  • Ontologies and vocabularies to support interoperability
  • Identity assumptions and resolution for data fusion and integration
  • The role of space and time to structure Linked Data
  • Versioning of spatio-temporal data
  • Semantic annotation and microformats
  • Adding contextual information to Linked Data

Linked Data and Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI)

  • Spatiotemporal Aspects of Data Quality, Trust, and Provenance in Linked Data
  • Tag and Vocabulary recommendations for annotating VGI
  • Maintenance of links

More information

Spatial-temporal Analysis of Gummosis in Three Cashew Clones at Northeastern Brazil

In Spatial Analysis, Temporal Analysis on March 15, 2010 at 6:52 am

Journal of Phytopathology, Published Online: Mar 11 2010

Alex Q. Cysne, José E. Cardoso, Aline de Holanda N. Maia, and Fabio C. Farias

“The cashew gummosis caused by the fungus Lasiodiplodia theobromae is one of the most important disease of cashew in the northeast of Brazil. The lack of studies about method of early detection, pathogen dissemination, host predisposition, mechanisms of attack and defence and efficient control measures assures this disease as a limiting factor as to growing of cashew under semi-arid conditions. Therefore, the characterization of spatial patterns of gummosis development under commercial orchards may provide important insights into the mechanisms involving in dissemination and disease progress of this disease, as well as in the understanding of dynamic of host, pathogen and environmental interactions for this pathossystem. This work aimed to characterize gummosis temporal and special dynamics in three commercial orchards of cashew clones of cashew with different levels of susceptibility by studying the special arrangement of diseased plants. Disease incidence and severity, quantified determined by a descriptive scale in clones BRS 226 (resistant), Embrapa 51 (slightly resistant) and Faga 11 (susceptible) in a commercial orchard located in Pio IX district (Piaui state, Brazil), were monitored and mapped. Data were collected within three blocks of 90 plants for each clone. Indices of dispersion were estimated to study the spatial dynamic. The dynamics and structure of gummosis foci were also analysed. As expected, data showed different degrees of gummosis incidence and severity for the three clones. Even under different levels of disease, a random dispersion pattern model of dispersion could be observed at the beginning of epidemic for all clones. However, as disease develops, a clustered model is likely to fit. The increase in disease incidence resulted from the increasing in both focus number and size.”

Measuring Potential Spatial Access to Primary Health Care Physicians Using a Modified Gravity Model

In Modeling, Spatial Analysis on March 12, 2010 at 7:34 am

Canadian Geographer / Le Géographe canadien, Volume 54 Issue 1, Pages 29 – 45, March 2010

NADINE SCHUURMAN, MYRIAM BÉRUBÉ, and VALORIE A. CROOKS

“Ensuring equity of access to primary health care (PHC) across Canada is a continuing challenge, especially in rural and remote regions. Despite considerable attention recently by the World Health Organization, Health Canada and other health policy bodies, there has been no nation-wide study of potential (versus realized) spatial access to PHC. This knowledge gap is partly attributable to the difficulty of conducting the analysis required to accurately measure and represent spatial access to PHC. The traditional epidemiological method uses a simple ratio of PHC physicians to the denominator population to measure geographical access. We argue, however, that this measure fails to capture relative access. For instance, a person who lives 90 minutes from the nearest PHC physician is unlikely to be as well cared for as the individual who lives more proximate and potentially has a range of choice with respect to PHC providers. In this article, we discuss spatial analytical techniques to measure potential spatial access. We consider the relative merits of kernel density estimation and a gravity model. Ultimately, a modified version of the gravity model is developed for this article and used to calculate potential spatial access to PHC physicians in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. This model incorporates a distance decay function that better represents relative spatial access to PHC. The results of the modified gravity model demonstrate greater nuance with respect to potential access scores. While variability in access to PHC physicians across the test province of Nova Scotia is evident, the gravity model better accounts for real access by assuming that people can travel across artificial census boundaries. We argue that this is an important innovation in measuring potential spatial access to PHC physicians in Canada. It contributes more broadly to assessing the success of policy mandates to enhance the equitability of PHC provisioning in Canadian provinces.”

Biodiverse: A Tool for the Spatial Analysis of Diversity

In Environmental Science, Spatial Analysis, Statistics, Visualization on March 12, 2010 at 7:27 am

“Biodiverse is a tool for the spatial analysis of diversity using indices based on taxonomic, phylogenetic and matrix-based (e.g. genetic distance) relationships, as well as related environmental and temporal variations.

“Biodiverse supports four processes:

  1. linked visualisation of data distributions in geographic, taxonomic, phylogenetic and matrix spaces;
  2. spatial moving window analyses including richness, endemism, phylogenetic diversity and beta diversity;
  3. spatially constrained agglomerative cluster analyses; and
  4. randomisations for hypothesis testing.”

Jack Dangermond Explains the Need for GeoDesign

In Design, ESRI, GIS on March 12, 2010 at 6:31 am

In the January/February 2010 issue of GEO Informatics magazine, editor Eric van Rees interviewed Jack Dangermond.  The last question in the interview covers the concept of GeoDesign.

“Eric van Rees: Can you please tell me something about the GeoDesign Concept?

“Jack Dangermond: My original field of study was landscape architecture and that is probably the mother profession of GeoDesign. GeoDesign is about integrating design with geographic and science-based information. In the early days of ESRI, I always expected that people would apply GIS to design-based problem solving and finding the best location for something. I have been a little disappointed that didn’t happen as rapidly or as naturally as I thought it would. My motivation for emphasizing it in the last year has been in part to make people aware that there’s a huge opportunity to move in this direction to make a better world. I also found that there have been tools missing in GIS, so we’ve been developing new software capabilities that support the GeoDesign process.

“In January we will host the first GeoDesign Summit. It will bring people from both the GIS and design fields together and have them share their work and get a conversation going. I’m not totally sure what the outcome is going to be, but I’m hoping a new profession or direction will emerge. I think we need this kind of mixing at this point to bring these two fields together; people who design the world with people who design the future. Today, geography lives very well in its world and designers live very well in their world, but there’s not this cross-mixing. I believe the outcome will be much enlightened ways to do development; ways that bring science into how we design things: cities, the environment, highways, everything that we do. Today we certainly see the need for this all the way from global warming to designing more livable and sustainable cities. We need more geographic thinking in the way we make decisions. GeoDesign is an attempt to try to do something about that.”

Submission Deadlines Approaching for GSDI 12 World Conference, 19-22 October 2010 in Singapore

In Conferences, GIS, SDI on March 11, 2010 at 8:11 am

GSDI 12 World Conference
Singapore
19-22 October 2010

Theme: Realizing Spatially Enabled Societies

http://www.gsdi.org/gsdi12

GSDI 12 invites presentations covering the full range of practice, development and research experiences that advance the spatial enablement of society and the practice and theory of spatial data infrastructure development.

The Call for Papers may be found at http://www.gsdi.org/gsdi12/papers.html

Due to numerous requests, we are extending the deadline for full papers to be considered for the book. The deadlines for the refereed outlets are now as follows:

SUBMISSION DEADLINES

Abstract Deadline for All Submissions: 01 April 2010

Full Paper Deadline (if author wants submission considered for a refereed chapter in the Conference Book or refereed paper in the Proceedings): 01 April 2010

Full Paper Deadline (if author wants submission considered for inclusion in the Refereed IJSDIR Special Issue or in the non-refereed portion of the proceedings): 01 July 2010

FOR DETAILS AND FULL RANGE OF TOPICS OF INTEREST, SEE THE FULL CALL FOR PAPERS http://www.gsdi.org/gsdi12/papers.html

GSDI 12 will support three primary forms of publication:

  1. a normal conference proceedings with abstracts and full articles (non-refereed and refereed), published on a CD,
  2. a pre-conference published book of fully refereed articles, and
  3. a post-conference special edition of the International Journal of Spatial Data Infrastructures Research (IJSDIR) with full articles selected from the proceedings and then fully refereed and revised after the conference.

New Release of ESRI ArcGIS Explorer Provides Improved Access to Geoprocessing Services

In ESRI, GIS, Visualization on March 10, 2010 at 12:11 pm

Improvements Include New Analysis Gallery and Updated ArcGIS Online Basemaps

The new release of ESRI ArcGIS Explorer builds on its intuitive design, improving access to geoprocessing services and expanding available maps in the Basemap Gallery. ArcGIS Explorer is a free, downloadable globe viewer with geographic information system (GIS) functionality.

The release features a new Analysis Gallery that allows users to directly connect to and use geoprocessing services. To use advanced analytic tools, users can click the tool in the new gallery. Additionally, the Basemap Gallery has been updated to offer new ArcGIS Online imagery as well as topographic and street maps. Finally, Bing Maps services (Aerials, Hybrid, and Roads) are built right into ArcGIS Explorer and are ready to use with no registration required.

The Basemap Gallery has been improved with the new Manage My Basemaps option. Users can now customize the Basemap Gallery by adding or removing basemaps from it or even changing the thumbnail image associated with each basemap. The new release also supports enhanced layer package properties, improved feature labels, and the ability to fly along user-defined paths.

To learn more about or download the new release of ArcGIS Explorer, visit www.esri.com/arcgisexplorer.

[Source: ESRI press release]

Epidemiologic Mapping of Florida Childhood Cancer Clusters

In GIS, Geography, Science, Spatial Analysis, Statistics, Temporal Analysis on March 9, 2010 at 7:58 am

Pediatric Blood & Cancer, Volume 54 Issue 4, Pages 511 – 518, 2010

Raid Amin, PhD, Alexander Bohnert, Laurens Holmes, PhD, DrPH, Ayyappan Rajasekaran, PhD, and Chatchawin Assanasen, MD

“Background: Childhood cancer remains the leading cause of disease-related mortality for children. Whereas, improvement in care has dramatically increased survival, the risk factors remain to be fully understood. The increasing incidence of childhood cancer in Florida may be associated with possible cancer clusters. We aimed, in this study, to identify and confirm possible childhood cancer clusters and their subtypes in the state of Florida.

“Methods: We conducted purely spatial and space-time analyzes to assess any evidence of childhood malignancy clusters in the state of Florida using SaTScanTM. Data from the Florida Association of Pediatric Tumor Programs (FAPTP) for the period 2000-2007 were used in this analysis.

“Results: In the purely spatial analysis, the relative risks (RR) of overall childhood cancer persisted after controlling for confounding factors in south Florida (SF) (RR = 1.36, P = 0.001) and northeastern Florida (NEF) (RR = 1.30, P = 0.01). Likewise, in the space-time analysis, there was a statistically significant increase in cancer rates in SF (RR = 1.52, P = 0.001) between 2006 and 2007. The purely spatial analysis of the cancer subtypes indicated a statistically significant increase in the rate of leukemia and brain/CNS cancers in both SF and NEF, P < 0.05. The space-time analysis indicated a statistically significant sizable increase in brain/CNS tumors (RR = 2.25, P = 0.02) for 2006-2007.

“Conclusions: There is evidence of spatial and space-time childhood cancer clustering in SF and NEF. This evidence is suggestive of the presence of possible predisposing factors in these cluster regions. Therefore, further study is needed to investigate these potential risk factors.”

Using Imputation to Provide Location Information for Nongeocoded Addresses

In GIS on March 9, 2010 at 7:46 am

PLoS ONE 5(2): e8998. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0008998

Frank C. Curriero1, Martin Kulldorff, Francis P. Boscoe, and Ann C. Klassen

“Background: The importance of geography as a source of variation in health research continues to receive sustained attention in the literature. The inclusion of geographic information in such research often begins by adding data to a map which is predicated by some knowledge of location. A precise level of spatial information is conventionally achieved through geocoding, the geographic information system (GIS) process of translating mailing address information to coordinates on a map. The geocoding process is not without its limitations, though, since there is always a percentage of addresses which cannot be converted successfully (nongeocodable). This raises concerns regarding bias since traditionally the practice has been to exclude nongeocoded data records from analysis.

“Methodology/Principal Findings: In this manuscript we develop and evaluate a set of imputation strategies for dealing with missing spatial information from nongeocoded addresses. The strategies are developed assuming a known zip code with increasing use of collateral information, namely the spatial distribution of the population at risk. Strategies are evaluated using prostate cancer data obtained from the Maryland Cancer Registry. We consider total case enumerations at the Census county, tract, and block group level as the outcome of interest when applying and evaluating the methods. Multiple imputation is used to provide estimated total case counts based on complete data (geocodes plus imputed nongeocodes) with a measure of uncertainty. Results indicate that the imputation strategy based on using available population-based age, gender, and race information performed the best overall at the county, tract, and block group levels.

“Conclusions/Significance: The procedure allows for the potentially biased and likely under reported outcome, case enumerations based on only the geocoded records, to be presented with a statistically adjusted count (imputed count) with a measure of uncertainty that are based on all the case data, the geocodes and imputed nongeocodes. Similar strategies can be applied in other analysis settings.”

A Spatial Analysis of Residential Land Prices in Belgium: Accessibility, Linguistic Border and Environmental Amenities

In Social Science, Spatial Analysis on March 9, 2010 at 7:42 am

…from the Social Science Research Network…

GATE Working Paper 09-29, December 2009

Florence Goffette-Nagot, Isabelle Reginster, and Isabelle Thomas

“This paper explores the spatial variation of land prices in Belgium. The originality of the methodology is threefold : (1) to work at the spatial extent of an entire country, (2) to compute several accessibility measures to all jobs and several representations of the environmental amenities and, more importantly, (3) to test the hypothesis that jobs influence land prices only in the same linguistic region. Spatial autocorrelation is accounted for by estimating spatial models. The results show that the linguistic border acts as a strong barrier in the spatial pattern of land prices and that environmental variables have no significant effect at this scale of spatial analysis.”

California Science Center Opens New Ecosystems Experience

In Environmental Science, Science on March 8, 2010 at 2:44 pm

New Permanent Exhibition Wing Features Innovative Exhibits Combined with Live Habitats

The California Science Center will unveil a new permanent exhibition wing, Ecosystems, at a ribbon-cutting ceremony on March 25, 2010. The major expansion nearly doubles the volume of exhibition space at the Science Center and features an unprecedented blend of live animals, and hands-on science exhibits in 11 immersive environments – unique among science centers in the United States. From walking through a living kelp forest to experimenting on a polar ice wall, explorers will investigate some of the Earth’s most fascinating ecosystems. Highlights include a 188,000-gallon kelp tank populated with more than 1,500 live fish, kelp and other marine life; a desert flash flood; and a special gallery dedicated to the urban ecology of Los Angeles. Ecosystems occupies 45,000 square feet and contains more than 250 species of plants and animals. This new destination is the centerpiece of Phase II of the Science Center’s Master Plan.

“Ecosystems will give our guests an appreciation for how the living world and physical world are interconnected as well as how scientists use the key principles of ecology to explain ecosystem processes. We believe that Ecosystems will provide guests with the knowledge to become better stewards of the environment,” said Jeffrey N. Rudolph, President & CEO of the California Science Center.

The journey begins as guests enter an introductory gallery that surrounds them with the sights and sounds of the environments featured in Ecosystems. Once inside, here’s a sample of what they will find:

Kelp Tank

Walk through a 24-foot long transparent acrylic tunnel and see the life that exists in our coastal Kelp Forests. “Rain Forests of the Sea,” the 188,000 gallon kelp habitat illustrates the incredible diversity existing in our sea forests. The exhibit demonstrates how kelp forests depend on four basic factors: a rocky substrate, sunlight, moving water and high nutrient levels. Horn sharks, swell sharks, giant sea bass, wolf eels and bat rays will be among the more than 1,500 fish seen in this habitat.

River Ecosystem

See how the Steelhead trout’s body has adapted to swimming in a current. The River Zone lets visitors discover the power and impact of currents. Interactive wind machines illustrate how air currents create rippling patterns on a wall of sequins. The same currents under water affect how plants and animals adapt to their habitats and the physical shape of the ocean floor. Explorers will also learn how the flow of lava, glaciers, wind and water distribute nutrients and change the face of landscapes through erosion.

Island Ecosystem

Imagine cruising off to a remote island to observe the flora and fauna. Darwin, on his voyage to the Galapagos Islands off the Pacific coast of South America, noticed that isolated species evolve to fill empty niches in their habitats. Hands-on exhibits in the Island Zone will let visitors see the difficulties species face getting to an island, how bird beak size and shape can offer a window on the evolutionary process of adaptive radiation, and how isolation can foster characteristics such as dwarfism and gigantism. Anole lizards and indigenous tropical Hawaiian fish are featured in this ecosystem.

Extreme Zone

Switch from one radically different environment to another in the Extreme Zone, a series of 4 different ecosystems —the Desert, Rocky Shore, Poles and Deep Ocean Vents. The Extreme Zone shows how environmental factors test the limits of plants and animals—and how they have adapted to flourish.

Rocky Shore: The surface of the Kelp Forest in the area where the ocean meets the air and land is where visitors will meet the Rocky Intertidal Zone. The view from the top will showcase the rich and varied life that thrives between high and low tides. Artificial waves are created using a wave machine. A touch tank with starfish, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, snails and more will let explorers learn first-hand about how different organisms have adapted to this extreme environment.

Desert and Flash Flood: Explorers will hear the sounds of the desert and discover how this ecosystem abounds with life by watching a variety of creatures including tortoises, chuckwallas, scorpions and more. The harsh conditions of extreme heat during the day, and cold nights combined with limited water have resulted in some impressive adaptations. A 3,500 gallon flow of water will roar through a desert canyon every 10 minutes to illustrate how powerful a flash flood can be upon an arid landscape. Guests can use an infrared camera to see how the body temperatures of reptiles change as they move around their habitat. They can also see the differences between reptiles and their warm-blooded observers.

Deep Ocean Vents: Discovered only 30 years ago, life in Deep Ocean Vents springs from the process of chemosynthesis. Ambient temperatures can be up to 760 degrees Fahrenheit and sunlight is non-existent in the depths of the Deep Ocean Vents. Visitors will learn how organisms have adapted to this harsh climate by using the Earth’s own internal heat to replace sunlight, and other adaptations. Real preserved specimens collected from Vents, including shrimp, tubeworms and crabs, are on view.

Poles: Organisms, including humans, have adapted to the cold and windy deserts of the Poles. On a large cold ice wall, explorers get to try out different mittens simulating how animal fur and feathers provide insulation to keep warm. Displays also illustrate how humans from indigenous peoples to more recent arrivals developed clothing to withstand the severe climate.

Rot Room

Discover how the continuity of life depends upon the processes of rot and decomposition. Through interactive exhibits and time-lapse video, guests will discover how rot and decay cycle nutrients and energy back into the environment. On view will be live animal and plant decomposers including maggots, flesh-eating beetles, camel crickets, sow bugs, millipedes and roaches at work in a rotting log.

Global Zone

Travel around the world via one of the largest and the first ever internal projection high definition Magic Planet® exhibit. Six feet in diameter, the Magic Planet® projects images onto its global map from within the sphere itself. This interactive exhibition lets visitors discover how the Earth transfers matter and energy across the globe through ocean currents, atmospheric circulation and the carbon and water cycles. L.A. Zone Pan around the Los Angeles Basin using a multi-touch map to see weather patterns, wind currents, geologic make-up and more in the L.A. Zone. Find your house and other landmarks on a gigantic floor map spanning the gallery. Help a bobcat cross the city to a wilderness area in a marble maze. Interactive exhibits invite guests to explore how cities function as ecosystems, but with unique challenges in the issues of energy, water, waste and wildlife.

Family Discovery Room

Learn how conditions we create in our homes make ideal habitats for other creatures. The Family Discovery Room makes ecology approachable for young learners by linking it to an environment they recognize: the Home. Visual and interactive exhibits showcase worms in a backyard garden compost pile and mice munching on crumbs in the kitchen. Families can contrast these unwanted residents with tropical fish that get special care in their own monitored environment. Books, toys, puppets and crafts will reinforce the learning-fun connection.

In addition to the new Ecosystems exhibits, Phase II also expands the World of Life exhibition hall, and provides new administrative offices and animal care facilities, making the California Science Center one of the largest science centers in the country.

Since opening in 1998, the Science Center averages 1.4 million visitors annually, including 400,000 youth on field trips. In 2007, ForbesTraveler.com ranked the Science Center among the 15 most-visited museums in the U.S., and in the August 2008 Parenting magazine, it was cited as one of the Top 10 science centers in the country. The Science Center is one of the first learning institutions in the nation to house an innovative family-based science center with interactive exhibits, an IMAX 3D theater, a neighborhood science-focused elementary school and a professional development resource center for teachers, parents and community organizations – all at one location.

The California Science Center has become a national model for successful public/private partnerships. A comprehensive $165 million Campaign is still underway to help support the construction of Ecosystems. The Campaign is led by five exceptional community and business leaders: Wallis Annenberg, G. Bradford Jones, Melanie Lundquist, Margo Leonetti O’Connell and John Sussman. As of February 2010, $136.3 million has been raised with the support of individuals, foundations and corporations.

Ecosystems Info: Admission to Ecosystems exhibits is free; however, to provide a quality guest experience, entry will be regulated with a timed ticket which can be acquired online, by phone or in person at the Box Office. A service or convenience fee will apply. There will also be a “standby” line for those who do not wish to purchase an entry ticket. Priority entry to Ecosystems will be available with an IMAX ticket purchase or for Science Center members. For details, please visit our website at www.californiasciencecenter.org or phone (213) 744-2019.

General Info: The California Science Center and IMAX Theater are located in historic Exposition Park just west of the Harbor (110) Freeway at 700 Exposition Park Drive, Los Angeles. Open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., except on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day. For recorded information, including IMAX show times, call 323.SCIENCE (323.724- 3623). IMAX ticket prices range from $5.00 to $8.25. For advance ticket purchases, group rates, or to make reservations for any visiting group of 15 or more (required), call 213.744-2019. Parking is available in the guest lot at Figueroa and 39th / Exposition Park Drive at $8 per car, $10 for school buses and $25 for commercial buses or oversize vehicles. Both the Science Center and IMAX Theater are wheelchair accessible. For further information, please visit our website at www.californiasciencecenter.org.

[Source: California Science Center press release]

Call for Presentations: GeoDesign Idea Lab at the ESRI Developer Summit, 22-25 March, 2010, Palm Springs, California

In Conferences, Design, ESRI, GIS on March 8, 2010 at 9:02 am

GeoDesign integrates geographic science with design, resulting in a systematic methodology for geographic planning and decision making.  Share your GeoDesign experiences with the ESRI Developer community in the GeoDesign Idea Lab, moderated by James Fee from WeoGeo and Eric Wittner of ESRI.  Email your Lightning Talk (10 minutes maximum) abstract by Friday, March 12th to geodesign_devsum@esri.com to be considered.

Ant Communities on Small Tropical Islands: Effects of Island Size and Isolation are Obscured by Habitat Disturbance and ‘Tramp’ Ant Species

In Environmental Science, GIS on March 8, 2010 at 7:34 am

Journal of Biogeography, Volume 37, Issue 2, February 2010, Pages: 229-236

Akhmad Rizali, David J. Lohman, Damayanti Buchori, Lilik Budi Prasetyo, Hermanu Triwidodo, Merijn M. Bos, Seiki Yamane, and Christian H. Schulze

“Aim: Comparisons among islands offer an opportunity to study the effects of biotic and abiotic factors on small, replicated biological communities. Smaller population sizes on islands accelerate some ecological processes, which may decrease the time needed for perturbations to affect community composition. We surveyed ants on 18 small tropical islands to determine the effects of island size, isolation from the mainland, and habitat disturbance on ant community composition.

“Location: Thousand Islands Archipelago (Indonesian name: Kepulauan Seribu) off Jakarta, West Java, Indonesia.

“Methods: Ants were sampled from the soil surface, leaf litter and vegetation in all habitat types on each island. Island size, isolation from the mainland, and land-use patterns were quantified using GIS software. The presence of settlements and of boat docks were used as indicators of anthropogenic disturbance. The richness of ant communities and non-tramp ant species on each island were analysed in relation to the islands’ physical characteristics and indicators of human disturbance.

“Results: Forty-eight ant species from 5 subfamilies and 28 genera were recorded from the archipelago, and approximately 20% of the ant species were well-known human-commensal ‘tramp’ species. Islands with boat docks or human settlements had significantly more tramp species than did islands lacking these indicators of anthropogenic disturbance, and the diversity of non-tramp species decreased with habitat disturbance.

“Main conclusions: Human disturbance on islands in the Thousand Islands Archipelago promotes the introduction and/or establishment of tramp species. Tramp species affect the composition of insular ant communities, and expected biogeographical patterns of ant richness are masked. The island with the greatest estimated species richness and the greatest number of unique ant species, Rambut Island, is a forested bird sanctuary, highlighting the importance of protected areas in preserving the diversity of species-rich invertebrate faunas.”

Spatial Analysis of Notified Cryptosporidiosis Infections in Brisbane, Australia

In Science, Spatial Analysis on March 5, 2010 at 10:50 am

Annals of Epidemiology, Volume 19, Issue 12, Pages 900-907 (December 2009)

Wenbiao Hu, Kerrie Mengersen, and Shilu Tong

“This study explored the spatial distribution of notified cryptosporidiosis cases and identified major socioeconomic factors associated with the transmission of cryptosporidiosis in Brisbane, Australia.

“We obtained the computerized data sets on the notified cryptosporidiosis cases and their key socioeconomic factors by statistical local area (SLA) in Brisbane for the period of 1996 to 2004 from the Queensland Department of Health and Australian Bureau of Statistics, respectively. We used spatial empirical Bayes rates smoothing to estimate the spatial distribution of cryptosporidiosis cases. A spatial classification and regression tree (CART) model was developed to explore the relationship between socioeconomic factors and the incidence rates of cryptosporidiosis.

“Spatial empirical Bayes analysis reveals that the cryptosporidiosis infections were primarily concentrated in the northwest and southeast of Brisbane. A spatial CART model shows that the relative risk for cryptosporidiosis transmission was 2.4 when the value of the social economic index for areas (SEIFA) was over 1028 and the proportion of residents with low educational attainment in an SLA exceeded 8.8%.

“There was remarkable variation in spatial distribution of cryptosporidiosis infections in Brisbane. Spatial pattern of cryptosporidiosis seems to be associated with SEIFA and the proportion of residents with low education attainment.”

Mapping Data Shape Community Responses To Childhood Obesity

In GIS, Geography, Social Science on March 5, 2010 at 8:22 am

Health Affairs, 29, no. 3 (2010): 498-502

William M. Sage, Matthew Balthazar, Steven Kelder, Susan Millea, Stephen Pont, and Mohan Rao

“ Geographic information system (GIS) mapping can help communities visualize the health of their neighborhoods and identify opportunities for improvement. In Austin, Texas, Children’s Optimal Health, a nonprofit association, used GIS to map the prevalence of obesity among middle school children and to identify contributory factors. The maps indicated that obesity is a problem in all Austin middle schools. Two neighborhoods outside downtown Austin have particularly high concentrations of overweight and obese students. Maps also showed that the neighborhoods have different proportions of fast-food outlets, grocery stores selling fresh produce, green recreation space, and students failing cardiovascular testing. The mapping exercise spurred community groups to propose obesity interventions tailored to each neighborhood.”

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Insight into an Island Radiation: The Tarentola Geckos of the Cape Verde Archipelago

In Environmental Science, GIS on March 5, 2010 at 8:07 am

Journal of Biogeography, February 2010

Raquel Vasconcelos, Salvador Carranza, and D. James Harris

“Aim: To reassess the relationships between Tarentola geckos from the Cape Verde Islands by including specimens from all islands in the range. To determine the variation within forms by sequencing over 400 specimens, thereby allowing the discovery of cryptic forms and resolving some of the issues raised previously. This extensive sampling was also used to shed light on distributions and to explain genetic diversity by comparing the ages and ecological and geological features of the islands (size, elevation and habitat diversity).

“Location: The Cape Verde Islands: an oceanic archipelago belonging to the Macaronesian biogeographic region, located around 500 km off Senegal.

“Methods: A total of 405 new specimens of Tarentola geckos were collected from nine islands with very different geological histories, topography, climate and habitats. Mitochondrial cytochrome b (cyt b) gene and 12S rRNA partial sequences were obtained and analysed using phylogenetic methods and networks to determine molecular diversity, demographic features and phylogeographic patterns.

“Results: The phylogenetic relationships between all known forms of Cape Verdean Tarentola specimens were estimated for the first time, the relationships between new forms were assessed and previously hypothesized relationships were re-examined. Despite the large sample size, low intraspecific diversity was found using a 303-bp cyt b fragment. Star-like haplotype networks and statistical tests suggest the past occurrence of a rapid demographic and geographical expansion over most of the islands. Genetic variability is positively correlated with size, elevation and habitat diversity of the islands, but is not linearly related to the age of the islands. Biogeographical patterns have, in general, high concordance with phylogenetic breaks and with the three eco-geographical island groups. Volcanism and habitat diversity, both tightly linked with island ontogeny, as postulated by the general dynamic model of oceanic island biogeography, as well as present and historical size of the islands appear to be the main factors explaining the genetic diversity of this group.

“Main conclusions: The Tarentola radiation was clarified and is clearly associated with the geological and ecological features of the islands. Two factors may account for the low intraspecific variation: (1) recent volcanic activity and high ecological stress, and (2) poor habitat diversity within some islands. More studies are needed to align taxonomy with phylogenetic relationships, whereas GIS modelling may help to predict precise species distributions.”

Managing Uncertainty when Aggregating from Pixels to Objects: Habitats, Context-sensitive Mapping and Possibility Theory

In GIScience, Imagery, Statistics on March 5, 2010 at 7:42 am

International Journal of Remote Sensing, Volume 31, Issue 4 April 2010 , pages 1061 – 1068

Alexis Comber; Katie Medcalf; Richard Lucas; Peter Bunting; Alan Brown; Daniel Clewley; Johanna Breyer; Steve Keyworth

“Object-oriented remote sensing software provides the user with flexibility in the way that remotely sensed data are classified through segmentation routines and user-specified fuzzy rules. This paper explores the classification and uncertainty issues associated with aggregating detailed ‘sub-objects’ to spatially coarser ‘super-objects’ in object-oriented classifications. We show possibility theory to be an appropriate formalism for managing the uncertainty commonly associated with moving from ‘pixels to parcels’ in remote sensing. A worked example with habitats demonstrates how possibility theory and its associated necessity function provide measures of certainty and uncertainty and support alternative realizations of the same remotely sensed data that are increasingly required to support different applications.”

Risks to Southern U.S. Forests Highlighted on New Online Mapping System

In ESRI, Environmental Science, GIS on March 4, 2010 at 7:01 pm

A new online system that maps a rich trove of environmental data of southern U.S. forests onto satellite images from the past 35 years was launched today by the World Resources Institute (WRI).

The system, located at SeeSouthernForests.org, highlights risks to these forests such as pest and pathogen outbreaks, active wildfires, potential climate change impacts, and forest conversion to suburban development – the leading cause of southern U.S. forest loss in recent decades. The system also maps other features such as the region’s protected areas and forest ownership.

“SeeSouthernForests.org is a first-of-its-kind one-stop shop for map-based information about southern forests,” said Craig Hanson, director of WRI’s People & Ecosystems Program. “We have pulled together the power of GoogleEarth, Microsoft’s Bing Maps, NASA satellite images, ESRI technology, and a wide variety of forest data to raise awareness about the benefits of southern forests and the challenges they face.”

The system is the first step in a multiyear WRI project, Southern Forests for the Future, aimed at helping landowners, conservation organizations, and others ensure the ability of these forests to continue providing a range of benefits – called “ecosystem services” – to people.

“At a time when the world is concerned about climate change, freshwater availability, the economy and jobs, southern forests are part of the answer,” said Jonathan Lash, president of WRI. “The pattern of forest cover loss in this region has been acres here and acres there. Continuous but dispersed change often goes unnoticed. This new online system addresses that.”

Stretching from Texas to Virginia and from Kentucky to Florida, the southern U.S. forests are among the world’s most biologically diverse temperate forests. Though they comprise just two percent of the planet’s forest cover, they underpin hundreds of thousands of jobs and produce more pulp for paper by volume than any single nation – other than the entire United States.

In addition, they supply other ecosystem services, such as watershed protection, recreation, and carbon storage.

“A lot of focus in global climate change discussions to date has been on tropical rainforests,” said Susan Minnemeyer, a WRI senior associate. “But U.S. forests are important too. When domestic forest acreage declines, the nation’s carbon sink shrinks.”

The future of these forests mostly rests in the hands of private landowners. Approximately 27 percent of southern forest acreage is held by companies and financial institutions while another 60 percent is owned by individuals and families. But three-quarters of these family forests are owned by people 55 years of age and older. A generational transfer is on the horizon.

“In many ways, the next 20 years will shape the fate of southern forests,” said Todd Gartner, manager of Conservation Incentives at the American Forest Foundation. “Surveys indicate that most families want to pass their forests on to the next generation. However, with increasing development pressure, market-based incentives are needed to ensure that private forests remain as forests.”

WRI’s new online mapping system can help forest landowners in the South see the history of their forests through satellite images and better understand the forces of change affecting their properties. It also showcases examples of successful approaches for owners who want to retain their forests.

“SeeSouthernForests.org will be really helpful when engaging a community and working with local landowners regarding forest conservation and sustainable management,” said Tom Bancroft, chief scientist at the Audubon Society. “If a picture is worth a thousand words, satellite images and a good map are worth 10,000.”

“We hope the site will raise awareness about the economic and environmental benefits of southern forests and put important information at people’s fingertips,” said Patricia Pineda of Toyota, which is sponsoring WRI’s work as part of the company’s commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative.

“We were thrilled that Toyota and WRI committed to launch SeeSouthernForests.org at the Clinton Global Initiative’s Annual Meeting last year,” said Robert S. Harrison, CEO of the Clinton Global Initiative. “We hope this site will empower more and more people to appreciate southern forests and the benefits they provide to people in the region and beyond.”

[Source: World Resources Institute press release]

A Semantic Registry Using a Feature Type Catalogue Instead of Ontologies to Support Spatial Data Infrastructures

In GIScience on March 4, 2010 at 6:54 am

International Journal of Geographical Information Science, Volume 24, Issue 2 February 2010 , pages 231 – 252

Kristin M. Stock; Rob Atkinson; Chris Higgins; Mark Small; Andrew Woolf; Keiran Millard; David Arctur

“The use of a semantically rich registry containing a Feature Type Catalogue (FTC) to represent the semantics of geographic feature types including operations, attributes and relationships between feature types is required to realise the benefits of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs). Specifically, such information provides a more complete representation of the semantics of the concepts used in the SDI, and enables advanced navigation, discovery and utilisation of discovered resources. The presented approach creates an FTC implementation in which attributes, associations and operations for a given feature type are encapsulated within the FTC, and these conceptual representations are separated from the implementation aspects of the web services that may realise the operations in the FTC. This differs from previous approaches that combine the implementation and conceptual aspects of behaviour in a web service ontology, but separate the behavioural aspects from the static aspects of the semantics of the concept or feature type. These principles are demonstrated by the implementation of such a registry using open standards. The ebXML Registry Information Model (ebRIM) was used to incorporate the FTC described in ISO 19110 by extending the Open Geospatial Consortium ebRIM Profile for the Web Catalogue Service (CSW) and adding a number of stored queries to allow the FTC component of the standards-compliant registry to be interrogated. The registry was populated with feature types from the marine domain, incorporating objects that conform to both the object and field views of the world. The implemented registry demonstrates the benefits of inheritance of feature type operations, attributes and associations, the ability to navigate around the FTC and the advantages of separating the conceptual from the implementation aspects of the FTC. Further work is required to formalise the model and include axioms to allow enhanced semantic expressiveness and the development of reasoning capabilities.”

Spatial-Temporal Combination of Variables for Monitoring Changes in Metropolitan Areas

In Geography, Spatial Analysis, Temporal Analysis on March 4, 2010 at 6:54 am

Applied Spatial Analysis and Policy, Volume 3, Number 1 / March 2010

Gustavo Garcia Manzato and Antônio Nélson Rodrigues da Silva

“The objective of this exploratory study is to present a new method for monitoring the dynamic changes of functional urban regions (FURs) or metropolitan areas (MAs) boundaries throughout time. The suggested approach is based on two elements: the population density and an index of transportation infrastructure supply, which are analyzed in two ways. First, we carry out exploratory analyses of those variables separately. Next, the variables are combined using spatial analysis and spatial modeling techniques. A case study in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, shows that the proposed methodology can be particularly useful for urban and regional planning in developing countries, because it stresses the relationship between land-use and transportation supply. So, given the evidence that urban and regional development is strongly influenced by the level of transportation infrastructure supply, the approach can be further improved if considering other elements of transportation infrastructure, such as airports, railways, ports, as well as additional factors which may have effects on land use patterns such as distribution of services and jobs where data is available.”

LISFLOOD: A GIS-based Distributed Model for River Basin Scale Water Balance and Flood Simulation

In Environmental Science, GIS, GIScience, Modeling on March 3, 2010 at 7:34 am

International Journal of Geographical Information Science, Volume 24, Issue 2 February 2010 , pages 189 – 212

J. M. Van Der Knijff; J. Younis; A. P. J. De Roo

“In this paper we describe the spatially distributed LISFLOOD model, which is a hydrological model specifically developed for the simulation of hydrological processes in large European river basins. The model was designed to make the best possible use of existing data sets on soils, land cover, topography and meteorology. We give a detailed description of the simulation of hydrological processes in LISFLOOD, and discuss how the model is parameterized. We also describe how the model was implemented technically using a combination of the PCRaster GIS system and the Python programming language, and discuss the management of in- and output data. Finally, we review some recent applications of LISFLOOD, and we present a case study for the Elbe river.”

Estimation of Solar UV Radiation in Maritime Antarctica using a Nonlinear Model including Cloud Effects

In Modeling, Science on March 3, 2010 at 7:23 am

International Journal of Remote Sensing, Volume 31, Issue 4 April 2010 , pages 831 – 849

K. Láska; P. Prošek; L. Budík; M. Budíková; G. Milinevsky

“A new approach to the estimation of erythemally effective ultraviolet (EUV) radiation for all sky conditions that occur in maritime Antarctica is reported. The spatial variability of the total ozone content (TOC) and attenuation of the EUV radiation in the atmosphere are taken into consideration. The proposed nonlinear regression model of EUV radiation is described by a hyperbolic transmission function. The first results and the model validation for Vernadsky Station (formerly the British Faraday Station) during the period 2002-2005 show very good agreement with the measured values (R2 = 99.2). The developed model was evaluated using daily doses of EUV radiation with respect to solar elevation angle and cloudiness. The mean average prediction error (MAPE) for cloudy (4.1-7.0 oktas) and overcast skies (7.1-8.0 oktas) varied between 4.0% and 4.3%, while for partly cloudy days (0-4.0 oktas) with high variability of cloud types during a day, MAPE reached 5.9%.”

Spatial Modelling of Car Ownership Data: A Case Study from the United Kingdom

In Modeling, Spatial Analysis on March 3, 2010 at 7:05 am

Applied Spatial Analysis and Policy, Volume 3, Number 1 / March 2010

Stephen Clark and Andrew O. Finley

“In this paper a model is formulated to estimate the strength of the relationship between household car ownership and income using cross-sectional data. Whilst reports of such studies are not uncommon in the transport literature, this study is different in that it takes explicit account of the spatial distribution of the data. By incorporating this spatial element in the model formulation, the residual errors in the model are uncorrelated and hence allows for the estimation of parameters that are, in a statistical sense, the best available. These spatial models are fitted to a large data set provided by the United Kingdom Office for National Statistics, covering the area of England and Wales. The recommended model form is a Hierarchical Bayesian spatial regression model with the parameters in the model estimated using the technique of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). A common feature of all the spatial models is that the estimate of the elasticity of car ownership with respect to income is seen to be larger than that from a non-spatial model.”

Video: Marine Spatial Planning Tool – Flower Garden Banks

In ESRI, Environmental Science, GIS, Spatial Analysis, Video on March 3, 2010 at 7:04 am

“The Marine Spatial Planning Tool of the Flower Garden Banks is an on-line GIS application that allows the public to view data collected by the national marine sanctuary with data from other agencies.”

“Ocean Globe” Highlights Use of GIS in Mapping Ocean Floor

In Books, ESRI, Environmental Science, GIS, Geography on March 2, 2010 at 10:46 am

New Book from ESRI Press Details Advances in Bathymetry

Ocean Globe from ESRI Press examines bathymetry from its early history through today’s use of geographic information systems (GIS) and other technologies to map the ocean floor. With contributions from oceanographers, explorers, and historians, this new book is a valuable resource for those interested in coastal management, seafloor mapping, and marine biology.

The anthology addresses how recent developments in bathymetry and seafloor mapping are applied to animal migrations, coral reef growth, tsunami forecasts, coastal ecosystems, aquatic farming, whale habitats, and more. In addition, the book includes a special appendix on the history of seafloor mapping—from early line-and-sinker methods to multibeam sounding.

“Our perception of the ocean floor has expanded through the use of GIS tools and geospatial applications,” writes Joe Breman, editor of the anthology. “The more we know about the underwater environment, so seldom visited by most people, the more our lives will benefit above ground.”

The book also explains how advances in technology and mapping in a server-based GIS environment enable the improved collaboration and sharing of methods and data. In her foreword, oceanographer Dawn J. Wright notes that Ocean Globe will help reveal the ocean depths within the new paradigm of server-based GIS, “where we not only show maps and visualizations, but more importantly the actual data and methods used to create those maps.”

Ocean Globe (ISBN: 9781589482197, 294 pages, $64.95) is available at online retailers worldwide, at www.esri.com/esripress, or by calling 1-800-447-9778. Outside the United States, visit www.esri.com/esripressorders for complete ordering options or contact your local ESRI distributor. For a current distributor list, visit www.esri.com/distributors. Interested retailers can contact ESRI Press book distributor Ingram Publisher Services.

A Spatial Analysis of the Demographic and Socio-economic Variables Associated with Cardiovascular Disease in Calgary (Canada)

In Geography, Science, Spatial Analysis on March 2, 2010 at 8:03 am

Applied Spatial Analysis and Policy, Volume 3, Number 1 / March 2010

Stefania Bertazzon, Scott Olson, and Merril Knudtson

“The association between cardiovascular disease and a pool of demographic and socioeconomic variables is analyzed, for a large Canadian city, by means of multivariate spatial regression analysis. The analysis suggests that the spatial dependence observed in the disease prevalence is driven by the spatial distribution of senior citizens. A spatially autoregressive specification on a pool of solely socio-economic variables produces a model whose main predictors are family status, income, and educational attainments. This model can provide an effective analytical tool to support policy decisions, because it identifies a set of socioeconomic, not simply demographic predictors of disease. These socio-economic variables can be targeted by social policies much more effectively than demographic variables. A further analytical step recombines the significant explanatory variables based on their spatial patterns. Thus the model is used to identify areas of social and economic concern, and to enable the initiation of specifically localized preventative health measures. Owing to its generality, the method can be applied to other conditions and to analyze multivariate relationships involving not only socioeconomic variables, but also environmental factors.”

New GIS Best Practices e-Book: 125 Years of Topographic Mapping at USGS

In ESRI, GIS, GIScience, Geography on March 2, 2010 at 7:50 am

Download the free e-book [PDF]

Impact of Sports Arenas on Land Values: Evidence from Berlin

In Geography, Social Science, Spatial Analysis on March 2, 2010 at 7:47 am

The Annals of Regional Science, Volume 44, Number 2 / April, 2010

Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt and Wolfgang Maennig

“This paper develops a hedonic price model explaining standard land values in Berlin. The model assesses the impact of three multifunctional sports arenas situated in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg which were designed to improve the attractiveness of their formerly deprived neighbourhoods. Empirical results confirm expectations about the impact of various attributes on land values. Sports arenas have significant positive impacts within a radius of about 3,000 m. The patterns of impact vary, indicating that the effective impact depends on how planning authorities address potential countervailing negative externalities.”

Planning for Ecosystem Service Markets

In Environmental Science, Spatial Analysis on March 2, 2010 at 7:39 am

Journal of the American Planning Association, Volume 76, Issue 1 2010 , pages 59 – 72

Todd K. BenDor and Martin W. Doyle

“Problem: Market mechanisms are emerging as means of offsetting the environmental effects of growth. Unfortunately, formal regulation of ecosystem markets is often separated from broader planning for urban development, resulting in offsets that are unsustainable in the face of future urban growth.

“Purpose: We aimed to assess how 2008 federal regulations that actively promote aquatic resource markets and encourage watershed planning to restore wetlands and streams damaged during development will affect reputedly efficient existing wetland and stream ecosystem markets in North Carolina. We explore how coordination between regulators and planners can improve long-term viability of market-created resource offsets and improve the ability of markets to respond to rapid urban growth.

“Methods: We analyzed new state and federal regulations and watershed planning efforts and convened a stakeholder forum including representatives of state and federal agencies, land developers, environmental groups, aquatic restoration companies, and academia.

“Results and conclusions: Problems with aquatic ecosystem markets in North Carolina stem from poor communication among local and regional planners, federal regulators, and state agencies. Institutional barriers and poor coordination cause federal regulatory decisions made without knowledge of land use plans or urban development patterns, faulty projections of market demand for aquatic offsets, and local land use plans that do not provide long-term protection for the offsets. Although regulators consider current surrounding land uses, they do not consider future land uses. We conclude that local land use projections should be required components of ecosystem restoration site plans and that state environmental management agencies’ watershed plans should reflect urban development patterns.

“Takeaway for practice: Local planners should have input into the design of restoration sites providing environmental offsets as well as into state and regional ecosystem service market implementation plans. Federal, state, regional, and local agencies should facilitate and require information sharing, making planning and regulating ecosystem service markets part of the development process.

“Research support: This research was supported by the University of North Carolina’s Institute for the Environment.”

Restoring the Role of Fire to Ecosystems in Canadian National Parks

In Environmental Science, GIS on March 1, 2010 at 1:48 pm

…from Canada News Centre…

“Parks Canada is investing $90 million in a series of initiatives to help address pressing ecological concerns in national parks across Canada. These innovative, knowledge-based and partnership driven projects will protect and restore stressed ecosystems in Canada’s national parks while involving Canadians, positively enriching and changing lives.

“Leadership on the Landscape: Restoring the role of fire to ecosystems in Pukaskwa National Park and other National Parks in Ontario

“$926,000 Action on the Ground funding

“Fires burn unevenly across a landscape, which over time, creates a range of different ages and tree types, thereby creating a variety of habitats that support many insect, mammal, and bird species. Modern fire prevention measures prevent this essential and natural process in the boreal forest.

“Parks Canada will use an active fire management program to promote biodiversity in order to maintain, restore, monitor and manage the full complement of vegetation successional stages and species that would be expected as a result of natural processes in Pukaskwa National Park.

“Following ecological goals in collaboration with provincial and university experts, Parks Canada will investigate geospatial and temporal distribution of disturbance regimes throughout the greater park ecosystem while protecting visitors, values at risk, and stakeholder interests. This information will provide a stronger ecological basis for how, where and when fires occur on the landscape.

“Pukaskwa’s fire program will play a leadership role for Parks Canada in the Ontario bioregion, including providing technical and scientific support to Point Pelee National Park, Bruce Peninsula National Park, St. Lawrence Islands National Park, and Georgian Bay Islands National Park in the development of their fire management plans and ecosystem restoration strategies.”

Call for Nominations for the 2010 Ebbe Nielsen Prize: Excellence in Combining Biodiversity Informatics and Biosystematics Research

In Environmental Science on March 1, 2010 at 10:52 am

…from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility…

“The Ebbe Nielsen Prize will be awarded for the ninth time in 2010 to a person or small team that is demonstrating excellence in combining biodiversity informatics and biosystematics research. The Science Committee of the GBIF Governing Board seeks nominations for the Prize, which are due by 1 March 2010.”

GIS Analysis of Landslides in India

In Environmental Science, GIS, Spatial Analysis on March 1, 2010 at 8:34 am

Analisis GIS Terhadap Gerakan Tanah di Girimulyo, Kulonprogo, D.I. Yogyakarta, dan Kajian Faktor – Faktor Pengontrolnya

Abstract submitted to the 2010 International Geosciences Conference and Exposition

Yogi Saktyan Respati, Asnanto Multa Putranto, Azim Suwardi, Irien Akinina Fatkhiandari, and Salahuddin Husein

“There were several landslides had occurred at Girimulyo District, Kulonprogo Regency, Yogyakarta Special Province. These suggest that this area exhibits high potential of mass movement. This research is intended to map and analyze the mass movement potentail by using two methods, i.e. qualitative and quantitative, respectively. Direct observation is on site study for internal factors (e.g. lithologies and geologic structure) and external factors (e.g slope, vegetation, and landuses). Quantitative method utilizes Geographic Information System (GIS) spatial analysis on weighted parameters, i.e. slope, lithologies, geologic structures, and landuses. The research area is mainly composed of weathered lithologies of andesit breccia and breccia tuff covering steep slopes, whilst the rainfall rate reaches up to 2205 mm/y. Both factors are presumed to be the main trigger of mass movement. Result of this research is landslide susceptibility zonation which consist ot four levels which can be used as a basic information for hazard mitigation and regional planning. There were two types of mass movement exist at this area, fall movement were predominant in andesitic intrusion, whereas flow movement mainly took place in andesitic breccias, coralline limestones, and tuffaceous siltstones. This study suggests that more attention and awareness should be paid for areas with high and very high susceptibility levels such as Tanggulangin, Talunombo, and Giripurwo, particularly during high rainy sesason.”

Geostatistics and Multivariate Analysis as a Tool to Characterize Volcaniclastic Deposits: Application to Nevado de Toluca Volcano, Mexico

In Science, Spatial Analysis, Statistics on March 1, 2010 at 8:25 am

Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, Article in Press, Available online 25 January 2010

F. Bellotti, L. Capra, D. Sarocchi, and M. D’Antonio

“Grain size analysis of volcaniclastic deposits is mainly used to study flow transport and depositional processes, in most cases by comparing some statistical parameters and how they change with distance from the source.

“In this work the geospatial and multivariate analyses are presented as a strong adaptable geostatistical tool applied to volcaniclastic deposits in order to provide an effective and relatively simple methodology for texture description, deposit discrimination and interpretation of depositional processes.

“We choose the case of Nevado de Toluca volcano (Mexico) due to existing knowledge of its geological evolution, stratigraphic succession and spatial distribution of volcaniclastic units. Grain size analyses and frequency distribution curves have been carried out to characterize and compare the 28-ka block-and-ash flow deposit associated to a dome destruction episode, and the El Morral debris avalanche deposit originated from the collapse of the south-eastern sector of the volcano. The geostatistical interpolation of sedimentological data allows to realize bidimensional maps draped over the volcano topography, showing the granulometric distribution, sorting and fine material concentration into the whole deposit with respect to topographic changes. In this way, it is possible to analyze a continuous surface of the grain size distribution of volcaniclastic deposits and better understand flow transport processes.

“The application of multivariate statistic analysis (discriminant function) indicates that this methodology could be useful in discriminating deposits with different origin or different depositional lithofacies within the same deposit.

“The proposed methodology could be an interesting approach to sustain more classical analysis of volcaniclastic deposits, especially where a clear field classification appears problematic because of a homogeneous texture of the deposits or their scarce and discontinuous outcrops. Our study is an example of the strong versatility of geospatial analysis to provide an effective and relatively clear methodology for the characterization of volcaniclastic deposits.”

Applied Spatial Data Analysis with R

In Books, GIS, Geography, Spatial Analysis, Statistics on March 1, 2010 at 8:05 am

“Applied Spatial Data Analysis with R is divided into two basic parts, the first presenting R packages, functions, classes and methods for handling spatial data. This part is of interest to users who need to access and visualise spatial data. Data import and export for many file formats for spatial data are covered in detail, as is the interface between R and the open source GRASS GIS. The second part showcases more specialised kinds of spatial data analysis, including spatial point pattern analysis, interpolation and geostatistics, areal data analysis and disease mapping. The coverage of methods of spatial data analysis ranges from standard techniques to new developments, and the examples used are largely taken from the spatial statistics literature. All the examples can be run using R contributed packages available from the CRAN website, with code and additional data sets from the book’s own website.

“This book will be of interest to researchers who intend to use R to handle, visualise, and analyse spatial data. It will also be of interest to spatial data analysts who do not use R, but who are interested in practical aspects of implementing software for spatial data analysis. It is a suitable companion book for introductory spatial statistics courses and for applied methods courses in a wide range of subjects using spatial data, including human and physical geography, geographical information systems, the environmental sciences, ecology, public health and disease control, economics, public administration and political science.

“The book has a website where coloured figures, complete code examples, data sets, and other support material may be found: http://www.asdar-book.org.”

Spatial and Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Salmonella Infection in Dairy Herds in England and Wales

In Spatial Analysis, Statistics, Temporal Analysis on March 1, 2010 at 8:00 am

Epidemiology and Infection, Vol. 137, No. 6 (Jun., 2009), pp. 847-857

S. E. Fenton, H. E. Clough, P. J. Diggle, S. J. Evans, H. C. Davison, W. D. Vink and N. P. French

“Using data from a cohort study conducted by the Veterinary Laboratories Agency (VLA), evidence of spatial clustering at distances up to 30 km was found for S. Agama and S. Dublin (P values of 0·001) and borderline evidence was found for spatial clustering of S. Typhimurium (P = 0·077). The evolution of infection status of study farms over time was modelled using a Markov Chain model with transition probabilities describing changes in status at each of four visits, allowing for the effect of sampling visit. The degree of geographical clustering of infection, having allowed for temporal effects, was assessed by comparing the residual deviance from a model including a measure of recent neighbourhood infection levels with one excluding this variable. The number of cases arising within a defined distance and time period of an index case was higher than expected. This provides evidence for spatial and spatio-temporal clustering, which suggests either a contagious process (e.g. through direct or indirect farm-to-farm transmission) or geographically localized environmental and/or farm factors which increase the risk of infection. The results emphasize the different epidemiology of the three Salmonella serovars investigated.”

Enter the 2010 International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge

In Science, Visualization on March 1, 2010 at 7:46 am

“Some of science’s most powerful statements are not made in words. From the diagrams of DaVinci to Rosalind Franklin’s x-rays, visualization of research has a long and literally illustrious history. To illustrate is to enlighten.

“How many people would have heard of fractal geometry or the double helix or solar flares if they had been described solely in words? In a world where science literacy is dismayingly rare, illustrations provide the most immediate and influential connection between scientists and other citizens, and the best hope for nurturing popular interest. Indeed, they are now a necessity for public understanding of research developments.

“The National Science Foundation (NSF) and Science created the International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge to celebrate that grand tradition–and to encourage its continued growth. The spirit of the competition is for communicating science, engineering and technology for education and journalistic purposes.

“Judges appointed by the National Science Foundation and the journal Science will select winners in each of five categories: photographs, illustrations, informational graphics, interactive media and non-interactive media. The winners will be published in a special section of the journal Science and Science Online and on the NSF Web site. One of the winning entries will be on the front cover of Science. In addition, each winner will receive a free, one-year print and on-line subscription to the journal Science and a certificate of appreciation.

“We urge you and your colleagues to contribute to the next competition. Find out more about guidelines for submissions including entry forms.

“View a video highlighting past winners of the International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge.”

Photo: Jack Dangermond Opens the Space-Time Modeling and Analysis Workshop at Redlands GIS Week

In Conferences, ESRI, GIS, Science, Spatial Analysis, Temporal Analysis on March 1, 2010 at 7:34 am

Jack Dangermond opens the “Space-Time Modeling and Analysis Workshop” at the inaugural Redlands GIS Week, Monday, 22 February 2010.