Day: April 6, 2010

Grid-enabling Geographically Weighted Regression: A Case Study of Participation in Higher Education in England

/ Matt Artz

Transactions in GIS, Volume 14 Issue 1, Pages 43 – 61, Published Online 17 Jan 2010

Richard Harris, Alex Singleton, Daniel Grose, Chris Brunsdon, Paul Longley

“Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) is a method of spatial statistical analysis used to explore geographical differences in the effect of one or more predictor variables upon a response variable. However, as a form of local analysis, it does not scale well to (especially) large data sets because of the repeated processes of fitting and then comparing multiple regression surfaces. A solution is to make use of developing grid infrastructures, such as that provided by the National Grid Service (NGS) in the UK, treating GWR as an “embarrassing parallel” problem and building on existing software platforms to provide a bridge between an open source implementation of GWR (in R) and the grid system. To demonstrate the approach, we apply it to a case study of participation in Higher Education, using GWR to detect spatial variation in social, cultural and demographic indicators of participation.”

China’s Spatial-temporal Pattern of Population and Energy

/ Matt Artz

International Journal of Global Energy Issues, 2009 – Vol. 31

Xiao-Wei Ma

“Irregular development among regions is one of the fundamental realities of China, especially in social and economic progress. Moreover, there is no exception in the development of population and energy. In this paper, we explore the characteristics of the seven most prominent patterns of regional population–energy development distribution. Furthermore, analysis is made of problems associated with sustainable population–energy development. The concluding section identifies policy implications for sustainable regional population–energy development.”

Isolation and Identification of Airborne Fungi that can Cause Asthma: A Case Study from Eastern Puerto Rico

/ Matt Artz

International Journal of Environmental Technology and Management, 2009 – Vol. 10, No.3/4 pp. 243 – 259

Christian Velez, Antonio Gonzalez, and Alberto Rivera Rentas

“Asthma is a growing worldwide chronic disease increasing in both prevalence and exacerbations throughout the late 20th century. The US. Centre for Disease Control reports showed that Puerto Rico had a higher overall prevalence of lifetime (19.6%) and current (11.6%) asthma. The central eastern region of the island has the highest prevalence in the age range of 0-17. The goal of this study was to isolate and identify airborne fungi that can contribute to asthma incidence in this part of the island. Air was sampled from 11 communities in the municipality of Caguas. A total of 514 isolates were identified to genus and spatial distribution of the identified fungi was completed using Geographic Information Systems to address potential geomorphologic and anthropogenic contributors for their presence. Four of the top six locations sampled with the highest number of colonies were classified as urban. These sites are developed areas and have moderate to high vehicular traffic. This work revealed the presence of fungal allergens that can be potential asthma triggers and establishes a rationale for future research in this area.”

The Mapping of Soil Attributes of Volcanic Ash Soils Using a GIS and Remote Sensing-Based Approach

/ Matt Artz

Paper accepted for presentation at the 2010 European Space Agency Living Planet Symposium, Bergen, Norway, 28 June to 2 July 2010:

Kýlýç, Kenan; Doðan, Hakan Mete; Bilim, Mehmet

“The mapping of soil attributes of volcanic ash soils is very important for land use and agricultural practices. An extensive survey was conducted in the soils formed on parent materials erupted from the Erciyes strato volcano, using a systematic sampling strategy with a sampling density of total 192 sampling points. Following the determination of soil variability with geographical information system (GIS), soil maps and geologic maps, soil samples were taken from three different depths (0-30 cm, 30-60 cm and 60-90 cm soil depths) for each sampling location. The maps of soil attributes (Organic matter, pH, calcium carbonate content, cation exchange capacity, exchangeable cations, clay content, silt content and sand content) were produced based on GIS and remote sensing (RS) technologies. A significant spatial relationship was found between soil attributes and soil parent materials using GIS and RS-based analysis.”