Day: September 8, 2010

From Beats to Tracts: A Remote Sensing Approach to the Interpolation of Crime Data

/ Matt Artz

International Journal of Applied Geospatial Research, Vol. 1, Issue 2, 2010

Gang Gong

“In this article, the author addresses the spatial incompatibility between different types of data that is commonly faced in crime analysis research. Socioeconomic variables have been proved valuable in explaining crime behaviors and in predicting crime activities. However, socioeconomic data and crime statistics are usually collected and aggregated at different spatial zonations of geographical space, making the integration and analysis of these data difficult. Simple areal weighting interpolation technique, although frequently employed, often leads to unsatisfactory results due to the fact that most types of crime do not distributed evenly across space. Using 2007 burglary crime in Houston, Texas, as an example, the author illustrates a remote sensing approach to interpolating crime statistics from police beat enumeration district used by Houston Police Department to census tract defined by the U.S. Bureau of the Census.”

Food Security and Seasonal Climate Information: Kenyan Challenges

/ Matt Artz

Sustainability Science, Volume 5, Number 1, 2010, 99-114

Marie Rarieya and Kim Fortun

“This article examines challenges to food security in areas especially vulnerable to the effects of climate variability and change, and the potential contribution of seasonal climate forecasting. Drawing on long-term study of the way environmental information is developed and circulates, and on recent fieldwork in Western Kenya, the article describes how climate variability exacerbates food insecurity; the kinds of climate information that are now being developed; and the kinds of technologies, organizations, and expertise that will be needed if new forms of climate information are to benefit vulnerable populations. Findings indicate that new forms of expertise need to be developed at all scales, and that linkage among stakeholders and between organizations functioning at different scales will be a considerable challenge.”

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The Unbuilding of Historic Neighbourhoods in Post-Katrina New Orleans

/ Matt Artz

Journal of Urban Design, Volume 14, Issue 3 August 2009 , pages 257 – 277

Stephen Verderber

“New Orleans’s recovery from Hurricane Katrina (2005) remains slow and arduous. Eighty per cent of the city flooded in the hurricane’s aftermath. A second catastrophe unfolded in Katrina’s aftermath—a pattern of widespread demolition of thousands of 19th- and early-to-mid-20th-century residential dwellings and civic structures across the city. This post-disaster condition involves a complex, bifurcated labyrinth of local, state, and federal agencies and organizations in the governmental and the private sector. Neighbourhood preservation organizations and grassroots activists are fighting to save the city’s endangered historic fabric. An overview of historic preservation in New Orleans is outlined, followed by an analysis of the geographic pattern of demolitions in the 2005-2008 period, a significant number of which occurred without proper review by duly authorized city or federal agencies. The analysis illustrates the scope and the ramifications of a public policy of rebuilding frequently through the unbuilding of New Orleans’s delicate fabric of historic residential architecture and neighbourhoods at a time when the city continues to experience an acute shortage of affordable housing.”

New Program Helps Nonprofits Get Started with Mapping and GIS

/ Matt Artz / 1 Comment

Today, Esri president Jack Dangermond announced a new program that helps qualified nonprofit organizations acquire and get started with ArcGIS geographic information system (GIS) software. The program is intended to make it much easier and more affordable for these organizations to incorporate spatial analysis, mapping, and geographic data management into their local and global efforts.

Dangermond, who made the announcement at the Gov 2.0 Summit in Washington, D.C., said, “Countless nonprofit organizations with many different levels of hardworking staff and volunteers are trying to make our world a better place. With this flexible program, we hope to give these organizations the tools they need to better visualize and analyze spatial information so that they can accomplish their various missions.”

The program allows qualified nonprofit organizations to request up to 75 seats of ArcGIS Desktop and 2 seats of ArcGIS Server software per organization. Alternatively, organizations can choose from four levels of a special nonprofit organization enterprise license agreement (ELA) designed to meet the needs of larger operations. Both ArcGIS Desktop and ArcGIS Server software include all extensions.

To learn more about qualifying for the program, visit www.esri.com/nonprofit.

[Source: Esri press release]

Spatial Analysis of Kents Cavern Cave Bear Remains using GIS

/ Matt Artz

2010 Geological Society of America (GSA) Denver Annual Meeting, 31 October –3 November 2010

LUNDBERG, Joyce; MIHAI, Sorin; and MCFARLANE, Donald

“During his extensive 19th century excavations of Kents Cavern, Devon, UK, William Pengelly collected many thousands of palaeontological and archaeological remains. However, spatial analysis of the remains has not previously been possible because they are now widely dispersed between museums, and the specimen numbers assigned by Pengelly could not easily be related to the cave survey. We have now assembled available museum records into a single database. The unique location codes that Pengelly devised allowed us to build a GIS system based on our previously reconstructed Pengelly excavation map. This thus facilitates previously impossible spatial analyses of fossils and artifacts throughout the cave. An excellent property of the GIS is that we can now easily, visually pick out potential problems of recording or curation in the original data. We report here on the first use of the system on the distribution of cave bear remains. The maps demonstrate that Ursus deningeri entered the cave through a now-sealed High Level Chamber entrance at the back of the cave in the middle Pleistocene, whereas U. arctos accessed the cave in the late Pleistocene through the now-sealed Northeast Gallery entrance. The denning areas are reconstructed as Labyrinth/Bear’s Den for U. deningeri and Vestibule/Great Chamber for U. arctos. Considerable post-mortem redistribution of the remains of both species is indicated.”

A Spatial Analysis of Ethnic Self-Employment in Metropolitan Atlanta

/ Matt Artz

Southeastern Geographer, Volume 50, Number 3, Fall 2010, pp. 323-345

Qingfang Wang and Susan Walcott

“The increased ethnic and racial diversification in North American cities have offered promising breeding places for new business activities of individuals with various ethnic origins. Using data derived from the 2000 Decennial Census and spatial regression modeling, this study examines the geographic patterns of self-employed labor force in metropolitan Atlanta, a region with increasing population diversity fueled by employment opportunities. Different from most place-based small case studies, this work adopts a comparative framework to investigate spatial effects on entrepreneurship across ethnic groups from the geography of both ethnic residence and local business concentrations in a rapidly diversifying metropolis in the U.S. South.”