The purpose of this study is to develop a tool that will assist in the development of traffic control plans. Using information from TxDOT Dallas District and several other sources, a GIS-based map has been assembled that combines data from many different formats into one user-friendly environment. The capability provided in the tool includes geometric properties of all TxDOT-controlled freeway segments, as well as daily and hourly demand data and capacity information specific to both general and HOV lanes. By selecting a segment on the map and opening the tool, the user can easily navigate through the collection of data in just seconds, which will significantly reduce the amount of time required by the traffic engineer to gather site-specific information when analyzing temporary traffic control. / text

Flooding is an increasing problem in metropolitan Seoul and the management of floods and floodplains is a neglected priority for urban planning. The causes of flooding are triggered by heavy rain, or tropical storms, especially under conditions where soils are already saturated. Rivers overflow into surrounding built-up areas, bringing death and injury to people as well as considerable damage to buildings. Among the residents of Seoul, flooding is most often attributed to failure of the pumping system that is the city’s chief line of defense against inundation. However, other analysts believe that a major reduction in the amount of green open spaces is contributing to increased flood risks. The impacts of these events encompass tragic loss of life, damage to built and natural environments, and massive disruption to the lives of affected populations in the short term. In the longer term, the recovery and post-recovery phases can also cause distress, disruption, health problems, and financial hardship lasting many years. This professional report tries to focus the impact of flood on environment along Han River and Seoul, Korea’s flood prone area. Furthermore, this report prepares maps and its output that can be used during flood emergency in inundated areas. Arc GIS 10 software is used to analyze impact of flood in Seoul, Korea. / text

This thesis is about how Umea Municipality is working with environmental sensitivity maps. Surveys have been sent to the environmental office, fire department and Lantmäteriet. A literature study has been done in order to found out why it’s important for the fire department to take into account the environment. The starting point for this study has been the environmental sensitivity map that was made for the municipality of Umea in 1998 for accidents where firefighting water and chemicals are involved. Fires can cause many environmental problems. A substance that can spread in the environment when a fire happens is cadmium which can make it difficult for animals to absorb nutrients in the food they eat. The firewater can contain many substances that are harmful to the environment for ex. volatile organic compounds (VOC). A groundwater map from the geological survey of Sweden (SGU) and Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) for the fire department in Umea municipality was made in 2007. The groundwater map is used in the fire trucks in a GPS system. They can see directly on the GPS a map for the area where the accident has happened. It’s used when there is a chemical leaking for example from a truck that has gone off the road. The map that shows environmental sensitive areas is used by the fire department in Umea municipality and the environmental office. Firefighters have to call the fire station or the environmental office to get information from the map. The bad thing is that the map for environmentally sensitive areas is not updated.

Sustainable Built Environments Senior Capstone / The study is on non-profit organizations use of data to analyze and plan projects. It looks at Geographical Information Systems as a tool that could benefit organizations in their data management, project creation, and community collaboration. Case study research was used to analyze three different tree maps created by non-profit organizations. The case studies looked specifically at the organizations’ use of GIS in the data management, project creation, and community collaboration aspects of the maps. By looking at these aspects, it was concluded that GIS is a beneficial tool for non-profit organizations, even on the most basic level. As the organizations become more financially able to afford better software, the GIS capabilities become more beneficial. Non-profits should try to incorporate GIS at any level into their organization.

Conflicts over the optimal allocation of water resources are no longer just a concern but political reality. Increasing population and demands, competing uses, as well as uncertainty over scientific processes all add to the complexity of water management and in turn can lead to complex, difficult, and long standing water conflicts. This research employs Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to evaluate water conflict in interstate settings and examines the relationship between commonly held conceptions of water conflict and actual events. Results reveal a low number of observations in each of the examined basins. Each basin has a unique relationship with the evaluated variables and the use of GIS reveals distinct spatial relationships for conflicts. However, the modifiable unit areal problem presents a real concern for continued application. Results also reveal that generalizing indicators of conflict across basins loses the inherent variability and nuanced relationships that are seen through a basin-by-basin analysis.

Chacoan great houses have been described as providing "ritual" or "integrative" venues and as "monumental" in scale and in the amount of labor required for their construction. This study takes the approach that part of the function of community, monumental, or ritual structures is to transmit meaning and that an examination of visibility connections between these structures and small habitation sites in the surrounding community may provide information about the role of these messages in daily practice. Survey data from the Chacoan community at Kin Bineola, New Mexico is analyzed in a GIS environment using a model of visibility and distance developed for this project. The results show that, contrary to expectations, the great house is much less visible than a less monumental "Chacoan structure." Shrines, small structures interpreted as having a ritual function, are by far the most visible, suggesting a more complex relationship between monumentality and visibility.

This dissertation has two primary objectives. First, through an analysis of empirical data, it presents a systematic, in-depth analysis of how rural populations react and adjust to adversity within specific socio-economic and institutional contexts. The analysis applies a vulnerability framework to understand the complex relationships between households, communities, and larger environmental, socio-economic, and political factors and how they influence drought impacts on the population. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative data to look at issues of overall well-being, resource access, and livelihood and risk management strategies, the results provide insights into why most households are unable to successfully mitigate the impacts of drought. The analytical framework also provides a mechanism for making policy-relevant recommendations. In this vein, the dissertation explores the need for a new approach to the status quo of public policy making and presents an applied model for participatory planning to reduce drought vulnerability in Ceará. The pilot program, Projeto MAPLAN, is an effort, based on an empirical understanding of the public and private sides of vulnerability, to redefine the way that politics as usual are carried out. It challenges the way in which decisions are made by stimulating public participation and providing tools for accountability. On the public side it works to institutionalize effective participation through citizen input and governmental recognition of that input. On the private side the model works to increase the availability of resources and improve access to resources in order to expand the range of opportunities and strategies and to help households flourish in a semi-arid region.

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. 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. 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. 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. / 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. 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. 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. 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.

Information about roads system is one of application branches of geographical information system. In my work I have explored some programmes that are created in Lithuania and have the similar purpose. During this analysis there was cleared up that we don‘t obtain the desirable result with these systems. There were discussed GIS creation instruments and given reasons to choice AutoDesk programmes package. During this work there was created a project that functions meet the users’ requirements. There are pictured roads system and formed menu for laying out road constructions, generation of reports, withdrawal of co-ordinations to textual file. The external data base that can do analysis of roads and their constructions is connected to roads system. The experimental research of system shows that it works and could be used practically. For graphic data accuracy (error till 1.5 meter) we copy the information from a map and put it to GPS (global positioning system) equipment – in that way inventory and then analysis of roads and roads constructions are done. This project isn‘t completed. There is lack of information about attribute base of roads and roads constructions, so there is a need to improve attribution part. System functions could be developed by integrating it to „LAKIS“ (Lithuanian automobile roads information system) programme that was used in the work. That way would be a very important step forward but this part belongs to a lot of people wishes to collaborate... [to full text]

In the past few years, the study of critical infrastructures and the interdependencies amongst them in the context of an emergency situation has become a priority for many countries, including Canada. Governments, universities, and private companies all over the world are spending vast amounts of money and effort trying to better understand how infrastructures and humans react in the time stages before, during, and after a disruptive event. Analyzing complex systems such as those formed by infrastructure networks and decision makers is not a simple task and requires a multidisciplinary holistic approach. The field of research in infrastructure interdependencies is fairly new, and lies in the intersection of areas of knowledge such as emergency management, geography, simulation modeling, planning, and safety engineering. Analyzing interdependencies between infrastructure networks is not only a complex problem in terms of its formalization, but also in terms of the intricacy required to test and validate that formalization. Furthermore, identifying and having access to the data necessary to validate the formal system is probably an even more complicated issue to resolve. It is, however, only through the study of these interdependencies that certain failures or weaknesses in the systems can be discovered; weaknesses that could not be studied through the analysis of a single isolated system. Not only is it a challenging task to analyze the interconnections between infrastructure systems, but studying these at moments of stress, when the interdependencies become dynamic, is even more difficult. In this thesis I explore the intersection between three main themes: Critical infrastructure interdependencies, Emergency Management, and Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Furthermore, I analyze the different types of interdependencies between infrastructure systems, I describe some of the challenges that have to be dealt with when modeling interdependencies, and I explore the possibility of modeling and visualizing some of these interdependencies by constructing an Infrastructure Geographical Information System of the UBC campus.