Inclusion of local knowledge in decision-making is recognized as important for land-use planning. However, this is prevented by communication constraints. Increasingly local communities throughout the world are using community mapping and simple Geographic Information Technologies (GIT) to communicate information about traditional lands to decisionmakers. This corresponds to the trend, primarily in North America, for practitioners to apply Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technologies in public participation settings. Claims have been made that use of Public Participation Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS) by disadvantaged groups can be empowering. However, others claim that PPGIS is disempowering due to the cost and complexity of the technologies, inaccessibility of data, restrictive representation of local geographic information, and the low level of community participation. The research described in this thesis sets out to contribute to the debate regarding PPGIS and empowerment. Participatory Geographic Information and Multimedia Systems (PGIMS) technologies were developed for this project in an attempt to overcome the weaknesses of PPGIS described above. A PGIMS project was introduced into two communities in West Kutai, Indonesia. The PGIMS technologies enabled local communities to gather information using a digital camera and video camera, and store, manage and access it. A participatory process ensured that communities made all decisions related to the project and were trained in the necessary technical skills. Functional PGIMS were created in both participating villages. These PGIMS were relevant to the communities’ needs to record information for future generations and communicate information about boundaries and land use to outsiders. The research question addressed in this thesis was: How does the PGIMS project empower or disempower local communities? The author developed a working definition of empowerment to enable evaluation: empowerment is an increase in social influence or political power. Furthermore the author determined that empowerment is achieved through a combination of internal changes in an individual or community as well as external factors. These are defined as changes in ‘empowerment capacity’. This thesis presents a framework to structure an analysis of empowerment. It enabled the author to examine how four catalysts related to the PGIMS project empowered and disempowered, as well as increased and decreased empowerment capacity of the individual and community. Catalysts included the information contained within the PGIMS, the participatory process used, the technological skills acquired and the tools applied to develop the PGIMS. Qualitative data were gathered in the field using participant observation, semi-structured interviews and questionnaires. Data were categorised into indicators of increased or decreased empowerment and empowerment capacity. These indicators were sorted into the relevant cells of the framework. The empowerment framework offered a logical structure to categorize the data and enable an analysis of how different components of the PGIMS project impacted individuals and communities. It was also useful for differentiating between empowerment and empowerment capacity impacts. There were weaknesses with the methods and framework. These included the inability to determine the extent to which the PGIMS project contributed to the observed indicators relative to other influences; the difficulty of interpreting the data to create indicators, and the difficulty of measuring some indicators or defining their relative importance in the framework. This research concluded that the PGIMS project empowered participating individuals and communities, and also increased their empowerment capacity, but it is difficult to determine how lasting or significant this is. It also disempowered individuals and communities. Individuals were more empowered by skills and processes, while communities more empowered by information and tools. The benefits of individual empowerment can conflict with community empowerment. Empowerment in the PGIMS project was highly influenced by pre-existing conditions in individuals and communities. / Graduate

<p> The explosion of web-based GIS technologies and the opening up of mapping technologies to common citizens in the past decade have resulted in a whole range of VGI communities like OpenStreetMap, Ushahidi and Wikimapia, that are used to assist emergency management operations on a large scale. However, most crowd sourced systems currently being used for disaster recovery have multiple obstacles like accessibility, ease of use, dependency on social media and requirement of special skill sets on the part of the public participants that serve as limitations to the fulfillment of the democratization potential of VGI.</p><p> Hence an improved Android mobile application was developed which is much more accessible, usable, reliable without any dependency on social media like Facebook to collect and transmit data, thus not only ensuring participation equality but also universal accessibility to quality and timely geographic information during emergency situations.</p>

<p> Women entrepreneurs are on the rise and their numbers have grown at one and a half times the rate of small enterprises generally over the last 15 years. In spite of this, women are underrepresented in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Women face additional barriers when forging careers within these fields and obtaining startup capital. This study examines female business ownership within the fields of hi-tech and biotech, and the factors that support startups by women throughout the state of California. As both of these industry sectors are known to cluster geographically around sources of venture capital, university research and development (R&amp;D) investment, and skilled labor, the study explored how these factors influence women entrepreneurs through two methods of analysis, specifically, a quantitative GIS analysis using exploratory geo-statistical tools, and a qualitative analysis using semi-structured interviews of twenty women business leaders. Results from the study demonstrated that factors that encourage hub formation are prone to cluster geographically, that women receive less venture capital than their male counterparts, biotech as a sector is more open than hi-tech to women&rsquo;s participation, high numbers of women starting businesses alongside their alma mater, and a high participation of women in business accelerators and incubators.</p>

<p> The objectives of this study were to test the degree to which anthropogenic factors impact surface water geochemistry by evaluating the connections between the built environment and selected chemical parameters in the storm water runoff system for Lafayette Parish, Louisiana. An approach that combines geospatial modeling and geochemical data collected on samples from natural and concrete lined coulee drainage channels in the parish was utilized to examine (1) the distribution and interactions of different water sources (e.g. surface runoff, alternating drainage flow pathways, groundwater, etc.); and (2) the effect of impervious and agriculture land cover on water chemistry in the engineered drainage network. </p><p> Chemical compositions were analyzed for trace and major cations using an Inductively Coupled Plasma &ndash; Optical Emission Spectrometer (ICP-OES). Anion concentrations were analyzed using an Ion Chromatograph (IC). Other variables, such as dissolved oxygen, temperature, conductivity, salinity, pH, and turbidity, were measured in situ using a YSITM sonde meter. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software was used to model drainage boundaries at each site. Impervious cover and agricultural surface layers were created from the 2010 National Land Cover database and clipped to each microwatershed drainage area such that zonal statistics could be used to calculate total area and percentages of these land coverage types in each microwatershed. </p><p> Potential groundwater interactions were evidenced to occur near the Francois Coulee Lafayette. When urban and non-urban samples were analyzed together, impervious surface cover was significantly correlated to specific conductivity (&micro;S/cm) and the dissolved ionic species: Ca and SO4 in the microwatershed drainage areas. The exact amount of remedial acreage needed to return runoff waters to a normal baseline was calculated for targeted microwatershed drainage areas using a statistically derived coefficient estimate that suggested a 5.9 (&micro;S/cm) increase in specific conductivity concentrations for every 1% increase in impervious surface cover.</p>

D.Phil. / This is a workbook to record the processes, responsible departments; current practices; business rules; inputs and outputs; and disconnects with regards to a “staple yourself to an order” exercise. This is done to establish problem areas within the supply chain and to provide guidance on improving the supply chain. This workbook should be used in conjunction with GISDataSCOR v1.0. and the results of the disconnect analysis. The “staple yourself to an order” exercise should start with SOURCE, MAKE, DELIVER, then followed by PLAN and RETURN.

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-01

Thesis (MPH.) -- University of Limpopo, 2016 / Introduction: During mid-November 2008, eleven acute watery diarrhoea cases with the suspicion of cholera like symptoms were detected by a diarrhoea surveillance system at Musina Hospital in Vhembe district - Limpopo Province, South Africa. These cases included eight Zimbabwean and three South African citizens. Laboratory test performed on stool specimens confirmed Vibrio cholerae serogroup 01 Ogawa as the causative pathogen for these reported acute watery diarrhoea cases. Within eight weeks of its onset, the outbreak spread to all the five districts of Limpopo. So far between 15 November 2008 and 01 June 2009, the cumulative number of cases of acute watery diarrhoea reported from five districts of Limpopo Province stands at 4634 including 30 confirmed cholera deaths with an overall case fatality rate of 0.65%. Of these reported cases, Vibrio cholerae has been laboratory confirmed in 656 samples. Methodology: A database was received from the Limpopo Department of Health having all reported cholera cases during the 2008 and 2009 outbreak in Limpopo Province. The data was analysed using STATA statistical software version 12 for windows (STATA Corporation, College Station, Texas). Results: The cholera affected all ages, but the geographic distribution of the disease was very heterogeneous in Limpopo Province. The highest and lowest numbers of cases were reported in Capricorn and Mopani districts, respectively. The majority of the cases 55% (N=2 542) were females. Children less than five years of age 14.2% (N=652) were less affected by the disease. About 73.8% of the cases were aged between O and 44 years. The first four weeks of cholera outbreak strictly included a day-to-day admixture of Zimbabweans and South Africans presenting in the health facilities. The outbreak then affected most South Africans after week five of the epidemic. Conclusion: The cholera outbreak has affected all the five districts of Limpopo Province in South Africa, and new cases continued to be reported until first week of June 2009. There was a link between the Zimbabwean and South African cholera outbreak in Limpopo province.

Nowadays a substantial trend occurs that vast amounts of geospatial data are supplied, managed, and processed over distributed GIS. It is important to provide users with the capability of visualising spatial data quality information in a meaningful way for distributed GIS, since it will significantly enhance user understanding of data quality and aid them in assessing the data fitness for their application requirements. This thesis investigates the issue of visualisation of spatial data quality for distributed GIS. Based on a review of core concepts associated with spatial data quality, metadata standards, and major research areas related to data quality, the limitations of current data quality presentation are highlighted. To overcome some of these limitations, the research topic of this thesis is proposed, namely, adding visualisation functionality to the presentation of spatial data quality to convey uncertainty information to users in an interactive and graphical manner. Based on a review of the theories on visualisation and the frameworks developed for visualisation of spatial data quality in literature, an extended framework is developed incorporating several aspects of visualisation such as contexts, contents, and techniques, where the hierarchical nature of data quality and error models are two main parts of the visualisation contents. A brief framework of visualisation of spatial data quality for distributed GIS is proposed, where data storage with quality information and web services for visualising data quality are two key components. To satisfy a series of requirements for representing spatial data quality, a new object-oriented data model is proposed based on the review of developments of data models. This data model can specifically deal with the hierarchical nature of data quality and error propagation, recognising data quality as a dynamic process. Further, The implementation of the data model using GML and SVG is discussed. The details of a web service for visualising spatial data quality are addressed. After proposing the requirements on building a system for spatial data quality visualisation for distributed GIS, the design of a prototype visualisation system for distributed GIS is addressed in detail. The prototype visualisation system for spatial data quality is developed and implemented with an example data set, where SVG and JavaScript are used to illustrate how various graphic methods such as animation, data quality filters, and colour gradients can be used for distributed GIS. In addition to the visualisation of positional accuracy at the feature level, in this pilot system, the hierarchical structure of data quality information is also presented. Limitations of the research in this thesis are also addressed. However, in general, this research is of great significance for the contributions made to a relatively new research area in terms of theories, procedures, and software developments.

Thesis (Ph.D.) in Spatial Information Science and Engineering--University of Maine, 2006. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 248-285).

Thesis (M.A.)--West Virginia University, 2001. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vi, 87 p. : ill. (some col.), maps (some col.). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 81-85).