Water resources information in Albania is very scarce. The country does not have a consolidated monitoring network to collect hydrological and other related data and the quantity and quality of the carried out measurements carried out is limited. The water institutions are very fragmented and the monitored and collected data are being stored in different databases, and non-standardized formats, making it hard for the data to be easily retrieved and exchanged. This thesis explores the available water resources and related data that there is in Albania, and also in the European and Global level. The thesis provides some recommendations as to a way of establishing a water resources geodatabase for Albania focusing on some relevant guidelines from the European Commission and the World Meteorological Organization. In the second part of the thesis, a mean annual precipitation map is compiled as a demonstration of one of the uses of a geodatabase. / text

The Potchefstroom Campus of the North West University contains old water pipelines that are not well documented. Many of the newer water pipelines are not well documented either. A central data storage system that could contain the information with ease of access to update and retrieve information of these waterlines is lacking. There is a need to find a way that existing potable water network data could be represented and stored with GIS. The solution would contribute to the management of the water system on Campus. The aim of this study is to create a seamless geodatabase as a pilot project for the potable water infrastructure at the Potchefstroom Campus of the North West University. The pilot project focuses on buildings E4 and E6. ArcGIS 10 was selected to serve as the key software system that would be applied as a medium to solve and represent the problem. ArcGIS geodatabase serves as a container to store spatial data with. Data with regard to the potable water system was collected from various sources of which available electronic and hard copy CAD data was the general format. A file geodatabase was created in ArcCatalog with a standard co-ordinate system as reference to the data. ArcMap was applied for 2D editing and georeferencing of the CAD drawings which were followed by a composition of attribute data for the created features. The end result was represented in ArcScene for 3D visualization and 3D analysis. It also provided ease of access to the attribute information and relationships and the capability to perform the shortest route analysis. / Thesis (M.Sc. (Geography and Environmental Studies))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012

The Potchefstroom Campus of the North West University contains old water pipelines that are not well documented. Many of the newer water pipelines are not well documented either. A central data storage system that could contain the information with ease of access to update and retrieve information of these waterlines is lacking. There is a need to find a way that existing potable water network data could be represented and stored with GIS. The solution would contribute to the management of the water system on Campus. The aim of this study is to create a seamless geodatabase as a pilot project for the potable water infrastructure at the Potchefstroom Campus of the North West University. The pilot project focuses on buildings E4 and E6. ArcGIS 10 was selected to serve as the key software system that would be applied as a medium to solve and represent the problem. ArcGIS geodatabase serves as a container to store spatial data with. Data with regard to the potable water system was collected from various sources of which available electronic and hard copy CAD data was the general format. A file geodatabase was created in ArcCatalog with a standard co-ordinate system as reference to the data. ArcMap was applied for 2D editing and georeferencing of the CAD drawings which were followed by a composition of attribute data for the created features. The end result was represented in ArcScene for 3D visualization and 3D analysis. It also provided ease of access to the attribute information and relationships and the capability to perform the shortest route analysis. / Thesis (M.Sc. (Geography and Environmental Studies))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012

The Mariana Islands are a volcanic island chain in the western Pacific Ocean composed of Eocene volcanic cores with a carbonate mantle. Others have classified the cave and karst features into the cave types described in the CIKM, but no comprehensive GIS has been developed. For this project, a comprehensive GIS of the cave and karst features was developed. The cave and karst features were divided by cave type, physiographic province, and island. The karst features in the GIS were hyperlinked to a series of HTML pages, one for each island, and a set of HTML navigation pages mirroring the GIS layers were also created. LANDSAT images and Digital Raster Graphics were draped over the Digital Elevation Models for visualization. Attempts were made to remotely sense the vegetation and exposed soils and rocks from the LANDSAT images with the goal of producing a theoretical subsurface limestone/volcanic contact. Although the overall remote sensing aspect was unsuccessful, the GIS inventory was a success.

This project presents the development and design of a comprehensive interface coupled with a geodatabase (ArcGISwat 2003), for the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). SWAT is a hydrologically distributed, lumped parameter model that runs on a continuous time step. The quantity and extensive detail of the spatial and hydrologic data, involved in the input and output, both make SWAT highly complex. A new interface, that will manage the input/output (I/O) process, is being developed using the Geodatabase object model and concepts from hydrological data models such as ArcHydro. It also incorporates uncertainty analysis on the process of modeling. This interface aims to further direct communication and integration with other hydrologic models, consequently increasing efficiency and diminishing modeling time. A case study is presented in order to demonstrate a common watershed-modeling task, which utilizes SWAT and ArcGIS-SWAT2003.

The Online Transportation Option System (OTOS) is a Geographic Information System (GIS) that addresses many of the limitations associated with traditional dynamic ridematching applications. The main improvements are in the areas of trip scheduling and match searching. OTOS is unique in its ability to accept trips with schedules that can not be expressed in terms of a regular weekly trip. OTOS also distinguishes itself in its use of spatial analysis techniques to locate matches. Specifically, the use of a shortest path solver enables the ridematching algorithm to perform a search along the path of a users trip, in addition to the customary radial search around the endpoints. The shortest path solver is also used to calculate the driving distance between the user and a match. This provides a more accurate measurement than the straight-line distance used by other algorithms, especially in the presence of barriers.

This project presents the development and design of a comprehensive interface coupled with a geodatabase (ArcGISwat 2003), for the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). SWAT is a hydrologically distributed, lumped parameter model that runs on a continuous time step. The quantity and extensive detail of the spatial and hydrologic data, involved in the input and output, both make SWAT highly complex. A new interface, that will manage the input/output (I/O) process, is being developed using the Geodatabase object model and concepts from hydrological data models such as ArcHydro. It also incorporates uncertainty analysis on the process of modeling. This interface aims to further direct communication and integration with other hydrologic models, consequently increasing efficiency and diminishing modeling time. A case study is presented in order to demonstrate a common watershed-modeling task, which utilizes SWAT and ArcGIS-SWAT2003.

During the past two decades, University of Kentucky researchers have been acquiring seismic refraction/reflection data, as well as seismic downhole data, for characterizing the seismic velocity models of the soil/sediment overburden in the central United States. The dataset includes densely spaced measurements for urban microzonation studies and coarsely spaced measurements for regional assessments. The 519 measurements and their derivative products often were not in an organized electronic form, however, limiting their accessibility for use by other researchers. In order to make these data more accessible, this project constructed a database using the ArcGIS 9.1 software. The data have been formatted and integrated into a system serving a wider array of users. The seismic shear-wave velocity models collected at various locations are archived with corresponding x-, y-, and z-coordinate information. Flexibility has been included to allow input of additional data in the future (e.g., seismograms, strong ground-motion parameters and time histories, weak-motion waveform data, etc.). Using the completed database, maps of the region showing derivative dynamic site period (DSP) and weighted shear-wave velocity of the upper 30 m of soil (V30) were created using the ArcGIS 9.1 Geostatistical Analyst extension for examination of the distribution of pertinent dynamic properties for seismic hazard assessments. Both geostatistical and deterministic techniques were employed. Interpolation of V30 data yielded inaccurate predictions because of the high lateral variation in soil layer lithology in the Jackson Purchase Region. As a result of the relatively uniform distribution of depths to bedrock, the predictions of DSP values suggested a high degree of accuracy.

Accelerated soil erosion and the subsequent decline in soil depth has negative environmental, and consequently financial, impacts that have implications across all land cover classifications and scales of land management. Ironically, although attempts to quantify soil erosion nationally have illustrated that soil erosion can occur in the UK, understanding whether or not the UK has a soil erosion problem still remains a question to be answered. Accurately quantifying rates of soil erosion requires capturing both the volumetric nature of the visible, fluvial pathways and the subtle nature of the less-visible, diffuse pathways, across varying spatial and temporal scales. Accordingly, as we move towards a national-scale understanding of soil erosion in the UK, this thesis aims to explore some of the multiple techniques available for developing an understanding of soil erosion in the UK. The thesis first explored the information content of existing UK-based soil erosion studies, ascertaining the extent to which these existing data and methodological approaches can be used to develop an empirically derived understanding of soil erosion in the UK. The second research chapter then assessed which of two proximal sensing technologies, Terrestrial Laser Scanning and Structure-from-Motion Multi-view Stereo (SfM-MVS), is best suited to a cost-effective, replicable and robust assessment of soil erosion within a laboratory environment. The final research chapter built on these findings, using both Rare Earth Oxide tracers and SfM-MVS to elucidate retrospective information about sediment sources under changing soil erosion conditions, also within a laboratory environment Given the biased nature of the soil erosion story presented within the existing soil erosion research in the UK, it is impossible to ascertain if the frequency and magnitude of soil erosion events in the UK are problematic. However, this study has also identified that without ‘true’ observations of soil loss i.e. collection of sediment leaving known plot areas, proxies, such as the novel techniques presented in the experimental work herein and the methods used in the existing landscape scale assessments of soil erosion as included in the database chapter, are not capable of providing a complete assessment of soil erosion rates. However, this work has indicated that despite this limitation, each technique can present valuable information on the complex and spatially variable nature of soil erosion and associated processes, across different observational environments and scales.

An emerging trend in GIS is the adoption of object oriented concepts for both logical and physical design phases. Extensive research has been conducted on logical design of GIS and several conceptual models have been proposed. Classical data models like the relational data model have proven to be insufficient for the conceptual modeling of spatial data. Therefore among other object oriented modeling tools, a new modeling language, Unified Modeling Language (UML) has also become a popular modeling tool in the GIS domain due to its wide acceptance in industry. In this thesis ArcInfo UML Model, which is an extension of UML and proposed by ESRI is utilized to create analysis pattern of Sanliurfa Harran Plain within the scope of GAP (In Turkish, G&uuml / neydogu Anadolu Projesi). The proposed analysis pattern mainly characterize the irrigation drainage system, social environment and irrigation management activities of the Sanliurfa Harran Plain and incorporate the interactions between, and among, features of the system. At the implementation phase ESRI&#039 / s geodatabase model is used. This is an object relational spatial database utilizing the full functionalities of the underlying relational DBMS. This hybrid approach claims to be the most promising approach to deal with the complex data types found in GIS applications and allows the storage of spatial and non-spatial data together. Besides many advantages of geodatabase, ability to implement it in a multi-user environment is the most remarkable one. In this thesis both the personal and multi-user approaches, in which the underlying DBMSs are MS access and Oracle, are tested. The multi-user geodatabase is built in three-tier architecture with ESRI&#039 / s ArcSDE (Spatial Database Engine) as the middleware.