The seaways appear to have been a prevalent means of travel in the past as observed in the evidence of contact and trade between regions. The Irish Sea between Britain and Ireland was part of a maritime network traditionally termed the Atlantic Seaways that linked these islands and the Continent. Communication across the North Channel between Western Scotland and northern part of Ireland may have been demonstrably easier during the later prehistoric period than movement looking eastwards across the Central Highlands of Scotland. Thus, these areas possibly developed into a ‘North Channel’ region as opposed to the sea creating a cultural divide. This idea is explored through a series of comparisons between sites either side of the North Channel. Three specific areas are targeted for the overall research, Argyll, the coastline of Northern Ireland and Co. Donegal. Both the individual architectural features and site distributions in relation to their locations within the landscape are investigated through an integrated approach. Firstly, a fine scale examination of the morphology of settlement sites using a common classification scheme explores the degree of structural comparability between these areas. The second approach is at a broader scale that statistically tests the distribution of site types with regards to specific landscape variables, including elevation, slope and aspect to identify spatial patterns. The third approach statistically tests the location of sites with regards to visibility to determine whether or not the locations of sites have particular visibility features and the comparability between the three study areas. This technique uses the Viewshed tool available in GIS software. It is argued that broad comparisons exist between Scotland and Ireland in site classifications, their distributions and vistas, which illustrate the degree of communication occurring between the study areas. Sites dating to the 1st millennium BC in Argyll and Co. Donegal exemplify similar distributions with regards to vistas and to a lesser extent the environmental variables. A few general structural features are similar between sites in Northern Ireland and Co. Donegal during this period; however, interpretations on the former also indicate that possible influences are also coming from outside the study region. Around the turn of the millennium to the beginning of the 1st millennium AD, communication links between Co. Donegal and Argyll appear to dwindle and the number of sites in Northern Ireland begins to increase. Around mid 1st millennium AD, sites in Co. Donegal illustrate features and distributions comparable to both Argyll and Northern Ireland, suggesting communication links are re‐established during this period.

This paper presents OpenStreetMap and closely related software as a resource for spatial economic research. The paper demonstrates how information can be extracted from OpenStreetMap, how it can be used as a geographical interface in web-based communication, and illustrates the value of the tools by use of a specific application, the WU campus GIS. (author's abstract)

Environmental controls are becoming more and more expensive to implement, so environmental management is becoming more technologically advanced and efficient through the adoption of new techniques and models. This paper reviews the potential for storm water runoff for the city of Denton, Texas and with the main objective to perform storm water runoff analyses for three different land use datasets; each landuse dataset created with a different methodology. Also analyzed was the difference between two North Central Texas Council of Governments land use datasets and my own land use dataset as a part of evaluating new and emerging remote sensing techniques. The results showed that new remote sensing techniques can help to continually monitor changes within watersheds by providing more accurate data.

Terroir combines the physical landscape of the vineyard with the grapevines and the methods and techniques used to produce wine from the grapes. This study used a GIS to identify the characteristics of the physical landscape in Pottawattamie, Mills, Montgomery, Fremont, and Page counties in southwestern Iowa. The components were combined in the GIS using a weighted linear index to identify areas suitable for vineyard development and to identify the general characteristics of the area. Vineyard owners were interviewed to help determine the weighting system to use in the GIS and to determine their perceptions of how the physical landscape impacts their vineyards, as well as to determine what grape varieties they plant in their vineyards and their decisions on making wine from these grapes. This information was collected to identify whether the vineyard owners had developed a sense of place for their vineyards and how this sense might aid them in the development of a terroir for their wines. The resulting perceptions about the individual wineries were then considered in conjunction with the results from the GIS modeling to understand how the physical landscape influences the concepts of sense of place and terroir in southwest Iowa. The physical landscape of southwest Iowa was fairly uniform, as were the grape varietals planted in the vineyards. This created a measure of similarity among the wineries, while individuality between wineries was then created by the wine-makers as they used different techniques to produce wine from the grapes. This allows each winery to develop a sense of place, yet be part of a larger sense of place that encompasses multiple wineries within the area.

No description available.

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) play an important role in environmental management solutions, and they are being used with increasing frequency in environmental studies. The use of GIS technology in environmental studies provides a better way to manage, analyze, display and share the information. In this thesis, I automated a process for constructing GIS maps of odor complaints and inspections that have been used to study odor complaints in the vicinity of three landfills in Jefferson Parish. I provided an application that integrates daily environmental observation and monitoring data into a GIS and publishes the resulting maps through the Internet. The user's interaction with the web-based maps does not require any GIS expertise. A Webapplication was also implemented for managing the list of the constructed maps. The maps are deleted or updated through the manager application, a friendly interface application that does not require users to have any GIS technology knowledge.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

<p>The purpose with the work is to study Fortums activities with hydro power plants, dams and reservoirs mainly in a premise jurisdictional perspective and to show how GIS would be a helpful tool for the future.</p><p>A great deal of the information that the Generation Hydro-division at Fortum are managing have a spatial element. That means that it is possible to spatially join this information to a geographical polygon, line or point. This information is today gathered from several different sources, such as files, paper maps and digital data of several kinds. A Geographic Information System (GIS), as and aid besides the ordinary tools should be an effective support in the everyday work with questions of a premise jurisdictional nature.</p><p>The goal of this work is to account for how to organize, present and analyse geographic information. We will show how to link from the map to traditional tools such as calculation- and register programs. Linking to documents of different formats and to pictures will also be demonstrated.</p><p>Gathered and processed data in different formats and from different sources will result in a GIS-application overlooking two separate control areas. For the lower parts of the river Ljusnan in the municipalities of Bollnäs and Söderhamn it will be accounted for the handling of hydro power plants. The other area includes the municipalities of Arvika and Eda in the county of Värmland, in which the handling of dams and reservoirs also will be incuded. In the attempt to give suggestions of different solutions the two areas diverge somewhat in the matter of drawing manners and scales.</p> / <p>Syftet med examensarbetet är att studera Fortums verksamhet med kraftstationer, dammar och regleringsmagasin ur i första hand ett fastighetsrättsligt perspektiv att visa hur GIS kan vara ett lämpligt hjälpmedel i den framtida verksamheten.</p><p>En betydande del av den information, som hanteras av avdelningen Generation Hydro på Fortum, har en geografisk anknytning. Det innebär att den går att koppla till en yta, en linje eller en punkt i geografin. Idag hämtas sådan information från flera olika källor, däribland pärmar, papperskartor och i olika former av dataformat. Ett geografiskt informationssystem, GIS, som hjälpmedel vid sidan av befintliga hjälpmedel bör vara ett effektivt stöd i det vardagliga arbetet med fastighetsrättsliga frågor.</p><p>Målsättningen med examensarbetet är dels att redovisa hur man kan organisera, presentera och analysera geografisk information. Dels ska redovisning göras av hur man länkar från kartan till traditionella verktyg och information i form av kalkyl- och registerprogram samt dokument i olika format och länkningar till bilder. Användningen av kartor i olika format ska visas.</p><p>Utifrån diverse data i olika format från olika källor tas förslag på GIS-lösningar fram över två testområden. För Ljusnans nedre del i Bollnäs och Söderhamns kommuner redovisas hantering av kraftstationer. Det andra området innefattar Arvika och Eda kommuner i Värmland, i vilka även hantering av dammar och regleringsmagasin innefattas. För att ge exempel på olika lösningar skiljer sig utformningen av förslagen av de två områdena något vad gäller ritmanér och skalområden.</p>