Houston is one of the fastest growing metropolis’ in the country. Driving this growth is the oil and gas industry and also the Texas Medical Center, the world’s largest medical center. With such growth comes various problems. One of the leading problems according to its citizens in 2014 was traffic and the lack of access to public transportation. This project aims to help find solutions to this problem by locating areas that could help improve public transportation access and take a look at Houston’s accessibility via roadways. Using datasets from various Houston agencies such as the City of Houston and the Houston-Galveston Area Council, overlay analysis was used to help find prime areas that could be improved. Using ESRI ArcMap, models were completed in order to automate the analysis process. Tools such as raster conversion, Euclidean distance, zonal stats as table, and reclassify were used. In order to analyze Houston accessibility via the roadways, ArcGIS Online was used. Several Proximity analyses were run in order to view various types of dating dealing with the accessibility of Houston using roadways. The results show areas that do not currently have access to public transportation and areas that would be suitable locations for improvements based on different criteria. For roadway access, the results show average commute times, drive-time accessibility, and freeway access. This will allow for the accessibility of Houston to be shown whether it is by public transportation or by roadway.

As population increases and urbanization occurs, watershed management will be critical in the protection of water resources in North Central Texas. By 2040, Denton County will nearly double its 2010 population. The Upper Hickory Creek Watershed lies west of Denton and empties into Lake Lewisville. Lake Lewisville provides drinking water for Denton, Dallas, and other neighboring cities. Mitigation of non-point source pollutants as a result of urban and agricultural practices is essential to protecting Lake Lewisville water resources. A common best management practice used to mitigate pollutants is the protection of riparian ecotones that occupy river corridors; however, recent agricultural and urban practices are diminishing these ecosystems and their services. In this paper, the riparian buffer delineation equation (RBDE) is used to assess the current state of Upper Hickory Creek Watershed to aid in the monitoring of the riparian buffers along stream corridors. While the RBDE was used as pre-assessment tool for the riparian buffer effectiveness in the watershed, a new form of the equation was used to evaluate riparian buffer improvement potential (BP) in conjunction with Denton County parcel data to provide insights into buffer effectiveness and identify areas for improvement on a landowner scale.

Fler vegetationsbränder förväntas framöver i Sverige som följd av temperaturökning och förändrat nederbördsmönster. För att distribuera resurser effektivt vid ett släckningsarbete i vegetation kan information som tillgänglighet och brandbenägenhet vara önskvärt. Riskområden för personsäkerhet i samband med släckningsarbete bör granskas för att undvika onödiga risker. Syftet med studien var att undersöka hur brandbenägenhet, tillgänglighet och personskaderisk varierade geografiskt inom Arvika kommun. Med rasteranalys och weighted overlay beräknades brandbenägenhet med faktorerna: krontäthet, lutning, lutningsriktning, skogens utvecklingsfas och vegetation. Tillgängligheten beräknades med följande faktorer: avstånd till väg, avstånd till vatten, körtid, lutning, skogens utvecklingsfas och vegetation. Personskaderisken beräknades enligt följande faktorer: elektrifierad järnväg, förorenade områden, kraftledning, lutning och militära områden. Analysen visar att brandbenägenheten är mycket hög i ett fåtal områden, den största delen av studieområdet har brandbenägenhet mellan värde 4,1–6 av 10. Tillgängligheten är hög eller mycket hög i 98 % av studieområdet. Den lägsta tillgängligheten finns i studieområdets norra och södra delar. 92 % av studieområdet har en låg eller mycket låg personskaderisk med värde mellan 1–4 av 10. Brandbenägenhet, tillgänglighet och personskaderisk studerades på platser där bränder rapporterats åren 2008–2019. Bränder mellan år 2008–2017 med avbränd areal större än 1 hektar studerades igen. Den största faktorn för brandbenägenheten är lutningsriktning för dessa platser. Tillgänglighetens viktigaste faktorer är avstånd till väg och vegetation. Personskaderiskens största faktor är förorenade områden där bränderna var rapporterade. Brandbenägenheten inom studieområdet var störst vid lutning mot syd eller sydväst. Plana områden har generellt låg brandbenägenhet. Enligt analysen är tillgängligheten lägst i studieområdets yttre delar, speciellt dem sydligaste och nordligaste delarna. Områden i närhet av brandstationer har generellt en bättre tillgänglighet. Personskaderisken är koncentrerad till elektrifierad järnväg och kraftledning som medför direkt fara. Potentiellt förorenade områden finns spridda i hela studieområdet. Hur dessa påverkar människor är ovisst och varierar beroende på förorening. / In the future, more wildfires are expected in Sweden because of increasing temperature and changing precipitation. To being able to effectively distribute the resources of the firefighters, information about accessibility and fire tendency can come in handy. In order to avoid unnecessary risks, areas with potential hazard for the firefighters should be examined. The purpose of this study is to analyse how fire tendency, accessibility and personal injury risk varies in Arvika municipality, Sweden. Raster analysis and weighted overlay were applied in this study to examine fire tendency using the factors: crown closure, slope, aspect, the stage of stand development and vegetation. Accessibility was calculated including the following factors: distance to roads, distance to water, driving time, slope, the stage of stand development and vegetation. The personal injury risk was calculated by the following factors: electrified railways, polluted areas, power lines, slopes and military areas. The results show a high fire tendency in a few areas. Most of the areas have a fire tendency value between 4. 1–6 out of 10. Areas with a good or very good accessibility covers 98 % of the study area. Only a few spots have a very low accessibility. Areas with a low or very low personal injury risk covers 92 % of the study area. In the next part sites, with wildfires reported too MSB between 2008–2019 were studied. Wildfires larger than 10 000 square meters were studied again. Aspect was considered as a factor with a high impact on fire tendency. The major factor of the accessibility is distance to the road and the vegetation of those places. Polluted areas have the largest risk for extinguishing the fire in those places. Fire tendency shows its peaks in areas with slopes and aspect to the south or southwest thanks to the results. Flat areas receive a low risk of fire tendency. Accessibility is lowest in the outer parts of the study area, especially the southern and northern parts. Areas with risks for firefighter injury are concentrated to electrified railways and power lines, especially those that cross polluted areas. However, not all the polluted areas have been investigated in this study, therefore the effect of the pollution on the people’s health is uncertain.

Managed lanes are a form of congestion pricing that use occupancy and toll payment requirements to utilize capacity more efficiently. How socio-spatial characteristics impact users’ travel behavior toward managed lanes is the main research question of this study. This research is a case study of the conversion of a High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lane to a High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lane, implemented in Atlanta I-85 on 2011. To minimize the cost and maximize the size of the collected data, an innovative and cost-effective modeling framework for socioeconomic analysis of managed lanes has been developed. Instead of surveys, this research is based on the observation of one and a half million license plates, matched to household locations, collected over a two-year study period. Purchased marketing data, which include detailed household socioeconomic characteristics, supplemented the household corridor usage information derived from license plate observations. Generalized linear models have been used to link users’ travel behavior to socioeconomic attributes. Furthermore, GIS raster analysis methods have been utilized to visualize and quantify the impact of the HOV-to-HOT conversion on the corridor commutershed. At the local level, this study conducted a comprehensive socio-spatial analysis of the Atlanta I-85 HOV to HOT conversion. At the general scale, this study enhances managed lanes’ travel demand models with respect to users’ characteristics and introduces a comprehensive modeling framework for the socioeconomic analysis of managed lanes. The methods developed through this research will inform future Traffic and Revenue Studies and help to better predict the socio-spatial characteristics of the target market.

This project is about studying geographic information system ArcGIS. It focuses on possibilities of extending ArcGIS by custom extensions and method of their programming. Furthermore some basic tools of raster analysis are ilustrated. This project's main objective is to design and implement custom implementation of ArcGIS extension, which provides a set of tools for raster analysis. Design is inspired by an existing extension - Spatial Analyst developed by ESRI.