<p>The Puna Plateau is the second highest continental plateau on Earth and is bordered by the Eastern Cordillera to the east. The growth of this plateau in a non-collisional tectonic setting is not well understood and requires an understanding of the deformation mechanisms and kinematics of its margins, notably the Eastern Cordillera. Deformation in the Eastern Cordillera is characterized by basement-involved folding and reverse faulting during the Tertiary and Quaternary. However, the orientation and kinematics of first-order structural elements of the Eastern Cordillera are not well known. This is addressed in this thesis by a comprehensive structural analysis of three key areas, La Poma, Southern Luracatao Valley and Cachi, in the Eastern Cordillera. Specifically, my structural analyses encompassed (1) field mapping and remote sensing of first-order fold structures and faults, (2) 3D modelling of these structures and (3) a detailed analysis of small-scale brittle shear faults (828 faults at 79 stations). Examination of first-order structures revealed that the Eastern Cordillera was affected by two deformation regimes: Non-cylindrical deformation, i.e., doming of upper crust, followed by cylindrical deformation, notably formation of km-scale folds with straight hinge lines in the hanging walls of orogen-parallel thrust and reverse faults. 3D modelling of these faults at La Poma and Luracatao Valley in the Eastern Cordillera revealed that west-dipping faults are consistently shallower than east-dipping ones. Displacement on shallow « 15°) west-dipping thrust faults in the La Poma area amounts to 2.4 kn1 and likely exceeds displacement magnitudes on east-dipping reverse faults. Analysis of brittle shear faults indicates that doming occurred during E-W shortening. This was followed by NE-SW -shortening on west-dipping thrust and reverse faults and later by NW-SE shortening on east-dipping reverse faults, which induced also a component of left-lateral displacement on N-S striking reverse faults. Brittle fault analysis indicates that shortening directions vary greatly in space and time and seem to depend rather on the local kinematic regime of first-order structures (domes, thrusts and reverse faults) than on far-field stresses related to plate boundary forces. Collectively, the structural analysis suggests that deformation was controlled by the local structural complexity of upper crust, including higher-order, pre-Andean mechanical anisotropies (such as aplitic dikes, foliation surfaces and cretaceous normal faults).</p> / Master of Science (MS)

<p>Despite the many individual and community benefits to cycling, commuter cycling rates across Canada are relatively low. This research seeks to understand how this can be changed by examining the motivations and cycling behaviour of cyclists residing in Hamilton, Ontario, a mid-sized Canadian city with below average levels of commuter cycling. This thesis is divided into two separate studies of commuter cycling behaviour. The first study employs a multiple logistic regression model to explore how the perceived availability of cycling facilities influences commuter cycling. The second study uses cluster analysis to classify respondents into groups based on the factors that motivate them to cycle. This research highlights the importance of bicycle-friendly workplaces and the need for municipalities to focus on creating areas of high density, mixed-use development in order to encourage cycling. This research also discusses the potential to promote cycling by targeting specific people with positive messages about cycling that are relevant to them. The researcher argues that, in addition to encouraging non-cyclists to start cycling, municipalities need to focus on getting recreational cyclists to start commuting by bicycle and encouraging existing cyclists to cycle continuously throughout their lives. The data for this study was obtained through a revealed preference survey that was designed and administered by the researcher.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>Canada's rising aging population in addition to the de-institutionalization of palliative care services to the community-level has placed increased pressure on employed family members to provide care. Canada's federal government has responded through the creation of the Compassionate Care Benefit (CCB), enacted in 2004 with the goal of providing family caregivers with job-secured time away from work as well as six weeks of employment insurance (El) benefits of up to 55% of their average earnings while they take leave to provide care to a dying loved one. Individual workplaces have been aware for years of the need to accommodate their employees' family needs through the adoption of Family Friendly Work Policies (FFWPs). Traditionally, these policies have been associated with assisting female employees with maternity and childcare supports. With the rising elderly population and emphasis on family care giving, more workers will have the dual role of being a worker and a caregiver to a loved one, which suggests that workforces need to be prepared by offering suitable supports to accommodate their workforces who are also terminal caregivers. The objectives of this thesis are twofold. First, it attempts to uncover the expectations and realities that employers and HR professionals had of the CCB, specific to how it meets their employees' needs, how it meets the informational needs of the workplace, and its ability to be incorporated within existing features. The second objective specifically focuses on palliative or end-of-life (P/EoL) care giving situations in the workplace through addressing how workplace size and employee characteristics determine how 'family caregiver friendly' a given workplace can be. Five focus group discussions occurred in British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador with employers/human resources (RR) professionals in an effort to gain input from diverse employers representing various workplace sizes and sectors. All focus groups were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and thematically analyzed.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>URM-MicroSim is a prototype system for a micro simulation model of urban residential mobility. It is developed for the city of Mytilene, Greece. However, it is only a prototype and fails to meet the requirements of practical use, especially with regard to execution time. Therefore, a comprehensive analysis is first presented to fully understand the required improvements to the existing system. These are divided into functional and non-functional requirements, which are discussed separately. On the basis of the analysis, several functions (such as user interface and logging system) have been implemented and the time consuming functions were indentified and revised without affecting the simulation results. The revised system was tested for consistency in performance, and the results were convincing.</p> <p>Within this context, URM-MicroSim is calibrated for the city of Hamilton. The calibration methods include identifying the probabilities of demographic events and rebuilding the immigration sub-model. After URM-MicroSim is applied for Hamilton, simulation results from the system are validated against census data from Statistics Canada. Results from the validation provide evidence that URM-MicroSim is able to capture the overall trend of residential mobility at both aggregate and disaggregate levels. Lastly, some directions for future research are indicated, that focus on reducing system execution time and broadening the scope of the model.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>The design of policies for increasing public transit ridership is integral for strategies leading to sustainable transportation in large metropolitan areas. Assessing the availability of public transit (i.e. supply) as a viable mode of transportation can help in the design of such policies. In this respect, this study examines transit service intensity at the census tract level by assembling and analyzing a suitable GIS database for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA). This research utilizes an improved version of the 'Local Index of Transit Availability' (LITA), which derives service levels based on the coverage, capacity, and frequency of the transit system. Transit service levels as measured by LITA, are linked to a number of socio-economic and spatial characteristics via a simultaneous auto-regressive (SAR) model. Results indicate that the core areas of municipalities were not necessarily well serviced by public transit. Suburban peripheral tracts and those adjacent to the shoreline were characterized by average transit service at best, and tracts adjacent to municipal borders indicated discontinuity in transit service. Furthermore, previous studies often overlooked the impact of spatial effects by utilizing the conventional OLS regression modeling technique. The use of the SAR model in this study corrected for that and enhanced the overall explanatory power of the modeled data. The estimation results indicate that variables such as population density, income, percentage of recent immigrants, percentage of young adults and percentage of elderly population are key variables to explain transit availability in the GTHA.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>The form of many Canadian cities has dramatically evolved over the past six decades due to urban sprawl. Several patterns can characterize this evolution including unlimited horizontal expansion of the city, scattered, leapfrog, and power center retail development. Hamilton, Ontario is an example of a Canadian city that has experienced such patterns of development. The evolution of urban form is mainly dliven by the land development process. Since land developers are the drivers of such process, their behaviour is an important factor contributing to the spatial configuration of urban areas. However, our knowledge of the residential development process and the behaviour of land developers is still limited. This thesis has two objectives. First, it explores the spatiotemporal patterns of the land development process in Hamilton between 1950 and 2003. Second, it explains the major locational factors affecting the behaviour of land developers with respect to the choice of the housing type when they develop a site for residential use. For the first objective, a number of spatial statistics techniques, namely kernel estimation and K-function estimation, are used to examine the locational patterns of urban land development. The study is based on parcel level data for the period 1950 - 2003. The findings indicate that sprawl and suburbanization have been evolving Hamilton's urban form from monocentric to polycentric over the study period. Furthennore, time lagged co-clustering between the locational patterns of commercial and residential land development is pronounced in the 1990's. For the second objective, several Multinomial Logit Models that explain the housing-type choice behaviour of land developers are estimated. Four alternative type-choices facing developers are modeled: detached, semi-detached, row-link, and condominium housing. The specification of the four utilities includes road infrastructure, residential amenities, and general site characteristics variables. The results suggest that developers supply detached, row-link, and semidetached houses at locations that exhibit suburban characteristics. However, semidetached development is attracted to locations in suburban municipalities at sites that have more urbanized characteristics. In addition, the row-link housing type is attracted to suburban locations that enjoy very high levels of mobility and accessibility to amenities and road infrastructure. Finally, the condominium housing type is attracted to locations that exhibit the most urbanized features.</p> / Master of Science (MS)

<p><strong>BACKGROUND:</strong> Canada's population is rapidly aging. This process of demographic change is expected to increase the demand for health care services in general, and blood products in particular. Relatively little is known about the blood supply and usage trends in a Canadian context, or the Canadian donor pool, which prompts an investigation of the province of Ontario to accomplish two objectives. 1) Produce a supply and demand forecast to the year 2036. 2) Find population-level demographic correlates of blood donorship in the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area.</p> <p><strong>STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS:</strong> A provincial forecast for Ontario was created using the Ministry of Finance Reference Scenario as a basis for population change through 2036. Multiple linear regression analysis of the proportion of donors per Dissemination Area within the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) will find possible neighborhood socio-demographic correlates of donation.</p> <p><strong>RESULTS:</strong> Potential shortfalls of supply related to demand are forecasted to occur as soon as 2014. The multiple linear analyses revealed that population-level socio-economic factors and immigrant status appear to be the largest drivers of blood donation rates in the Toronto CMA.</p> <p><strong>CONCLUSION:</strong> Important age and gender differences in blood donation and usage patterns are identified for the province of Ontario, with the forecast highlighting potential shortfalls as soon as 2012. The regression analyses highlight demographic and socioeconomic differences in blood donation patterns, allowing for better informed future research and policy development.</p> <p><strong>ABBREVIATIONS:</strong> CBS = Canadian Blood Services, HQ = Héma-Québec, WB = Whole Blood, RBC = Red Blood Cell, FT = First Time (Donor), CMA = Census Metropolitan Area, DA = Dissemination Area, CT = Census Tract, ClHl = Canadian Institute for Health Information, MTRP = McMaster Transfusion Research Program, DAD = Discharge Abstract Database, NACRS = National Ambulatory Care Reporting System</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>Over the last several decades, overweight and obesity have reached epidemic proportions in many developing countries, including Canada. These conditions have been identified as major risk factors for chronic disease and disability in many different contexts. Further, overweight and obesity have become a public health problem in and of themselves. The various symptoms and co-morbidities associated with these chronic conditions place a great deal of stress on the Canadian health care system, generating great economic concern.</p> <p>This research takes a population health approach to the study of obesity, examining the complex relationships between individual behaviours and characteristics, human biology, and aspects of the local social and physical environment. To achieve these ends, a subset of the national Canadian Heart Health Surveys (CHHS, 1986-1992) specific to the province of Ontario was linked to neighbourhood-level data from the 1991 Canadian Census. Following this linkage multilevel analyses were applied to these hierarchical data. Preliminary findings indicate substantial area-level variation in body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC), and an important role for neighbourhood level variables even after adjustment for individual demographic, socioeconomic, and behavioural characteristics.</p> <p>For example, living in areas with lower average dwelling values was associated with a higher BMI (2.728 kg/m²) for women in comparison to areas with a high average dwelling value. These findings provide evidence that the underlying mechanism driving the increasing prevalence of overweight and obesity may be an environment that promotes high risk behaviours and lifestyles. The findings from this study provide support to the notion that at-risk individuals and at-risk neighbourhoods (low socioeconomic status) should both be targeted when designing and implementing health promotion policy.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>Incorrect specification of destination choice sets and changes in scale or unit definition can lead to biased parameter estimates and predictions as well as influence findings in statistical tests. Through an empirical study, this thesis evaluates bias as a result of unconstrained destination choice sets and scale effects. Given the deficiency of most current destination choice models, which is the lack of integration of spatio-temporal constraints in generating destination choice sets, the activity-based approach is proposed as a solution by taking into consideration both spatial and temporal constraints in the generation process. Standardized industrial classification (SIC) codes adjoined to shopping opportunities are used to facilitate the discrimination of different shopping types and the classification of shopping stores in order to better understand shopping behaviour.</p> <p>Analytical results obtained by techniques sensitive to scale effects or zomng effects are likely to change as the aggregation level or area boundary varies. Traffic analysis zones (TAZ) as predefined analysis unit in transportation-related research may not be an optimal choice in the context of destination choice behaviour. Documenting the results on model estimations at different scales and zoning levels is important to investigate the modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP) effects and critically assess the reliability of the estimates. Sensitivity of parameter estimations and model goodness-of-fit between the TAZ system and 10 randomly generated grid systems show remarkable differences. Under a series of criteria, the best zoning system is recommended with certain conditions applied. Our results support the suspicion on the suitability of predefined analysis units like TAZ and suggest grid systems could be a potential substitution.</p> <p>The study area in this research spans seven counties of the Louisville MSA. Three primary data sources are used in our analysis: (1) a travel diary survey conducted in 2000 for seven counties of the Louisville MSA; (2) a 2002 Dynamap/Transportation 4.0 network produced by Geographic Data Technology Inc. (GDT); and (3) an urban opportunities data set for the Louisville MSA as geocoded from a database obtained from ReferenceUSA.</p> <p>A time geography perspective, constrained destination choice set, discrimination of grocery and nongrocery shopping and MAUP effects on destination choice model characterize the contributions of this research to the literature.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>My initial reason for choosing this topic was that I thought I had found some deficiencies in Trovato and Halli's papers (1983, 1990), in which they used "ethnic effects" to explain the differences in geographic mobility levels among 7 major ethnic groups in Canada, using the PUMFs (Public Use Microdata Files) of the 1971 and 1981 censuses. They reported some inconsistencies between their expectations based on the "ethnic effect" hypothesis and their empirical findings, especially for Ukrainians, who were expected to have a lower propensity to make long-distance migration than average, but appeared to be more migratory. Originally I thought that the inconsistencies were due to the fact that they did not control for the general effects of the major regional differences in the spatial economy of Canada and the specific economic situation during the period of 1976-1981 on the propensities to make interptovincial migration.</p> <p>However, as I tried to reproduce their empirical work, I realized that although the spatial and temporal factors are important for the study of internal migration in Canada, the omission of them was not the main fault of the work. The real problem was not what Trovato and Halli failed to incorporate in their models, but how they interpreted their multivariate results.</p> <p>Taking this discovery as one of the major findings, much more empirical work was then done to get a better sense of the real migration situation for the ethnic groups in not only 1976-81 but also 1981-86 and 1996-2001. The finding of the low mobility levels ofItalians and Jews led to the further step of testing the economic niche theory. When using the long-form records of2001 census, the notice of the existence of new information made me carry out some additional work for the second-generation immigrants as well.</p> <p>What needs to be clarified here is that Chapter 3 in this thesis is co-authored with Dr. Kao-Lee Liaw. The author's contributions include analysis of the data, development of tables, and the writing of the first draft as well as many discussions with Dr. Liaw.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)