The goals of this project were to: (1) combine the ARC/INFO Geographic Information System (GIS) software with the TIGER data files and tree inventory data files, (2) demonstrate GIS as a tool in street tree inventory management, (3) answer a management related question, specifically the identification of dead and hazardous trees within the city, with the use of the GIS tool, and (4) prepare an article based on the project for submission to the Journal of Arboriculture.Dead and hazardous trees located along a city street are a major accident liability to a city. It is vital, for both safety and aesthetic purposes, that a community know the location of dead and hazardous trees. As a management tool the GIS can utilize the inventory data to aid the urban forester in interpreting the urban forest by identifying these tree locations. Through the use of point-in-polygon analysis and choropleth maps, these specific management concerns can be highlighted throughout the city.The power to visually demonstrate certain parts of town with higher concentrations of work needed is one way that GIS can provide the management tools necessary for better care of our urban forests. / Department of Landscape Architecture

Using cluster analysis and a geographic information system (GIS), this study attempted to identify a settlement system in the Dingle Peninsula of Early Christian Ireland based on the morphological variability of ringforts. Cluster analysis was used to determine if an intuitive ringfort typological model created by the author had validity. Use of cluster analysis identified three distinct classes of univallate ringfort. Although these clusters have a higher variable mean than anticipated, they do appear to verify partial validity of the author's model. With the exception of Cluster 1, it appears that the assumption that as unvallate ringfort banks increase in elaboration, than so does their internal diameter.ARC/INFO, a GIS was used to help test the hypothesized relationship between ringfort clusters. It was assumed that the univallate ringforts with the smallest banks would be very close to and in the line of sight of bivallate and mulitvallate ringforts. Those with an intermediate bank size would tend to be farther away and not in the line of sight of bivallate and multivallate ringforts. These assumptions were determined to be invalid. / Department of Anthropology

This study has created a GIS model and comprehensive analysis of environmentally sensitive areas in Delaware County, Indiana. Values were assigned to environmentally sensitive areas for four categories, including woodlands, wetlands, floodplains, and threatened and endangered species. There was an inverse relationship between the size of an area and the environmental sensitivity of the area. These areas occupy twenty-three percent of the total county area. The distribution of these areas is almost equal throughout the county; however, a large portion is located along the banks of the White River and other water bodies. Forty two soil types were identified within environmentally sensitive areas. Poorly drained soils are slightly more represented in the environmentally sensitive areas, and somewhat poorly drained soils are under-represented compared with soils in other drainage classes. / Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management

This thesis examines transportation planning at the University of Manitoba Fort Garry campus with the view to improving efficiency, equity and reducing economic loss. Through a broad approach of Transportation Demand Management (TDM) a number of avenues are explored including a comprehensive literature review of sustainable transportation planning; the documentation of selected university TDM programs including University of Colorado, University of British-Columbia and the University of Ottawa; a University of Manitoba commuter web survey, and key informant interviews. Cost-benefit analysis, geographical information systems and key informants interviews are used. Twelve key recommendations are outlined in the concluding chapter. The research suggests optimal solutions can be reached if there is strong leadership from the University of Manitoba central administration in Transportation Demand Management (TDM) including a more collaborative approach to transportation and land use planning, as well as working closely with its stakeholders in reforming current practices. A series of incremental changes can give higher priority to walking, cycling, transit, and car pooling ahead of those driving alone resulting in a more equitable and efficient transportation system and leading to a healthier population and a healthier environment for the University of Manitoba community. The author can be contacted by email at tompearce@hotmail.com

The distribution of real-time GIS (Geographic Information System) data among users is now more important than ever as it becomes increasingly affordable and important for scientific and government agencies to monitor environmental phenomena in real-time. A growing number of sensor networks are being deployed all over the world, but there is a lack of solutions for their effective monitoring. Increasingly, GIS users need access to real-time sensor data from a variety of sources, and the data must be represented in a visually-pleasing way and be easily accessible. In addition, users need to be able to collaborate with each other to share and discuss specific sensor data. The real-time acquisition, analysis, and sharing of sensor data from a large variety of heterogeneous sensor sources is currently difficult due to the lack of a standard architecture to properly represent the dynamic properties of the data and make it readily accessible for collaboration between users. This thesis will present a JEE-based publisher/subscriber architecture that allows real-time sensor data to be displayed collaboratively on the web, requiring users to have nothing more than a web browser and Internet connectivity to gain access to that data. The proposed architecture is evaluated by showing how an AJAX-based and a Flash-based web application are able to represent the real-time sensor data within novel collaborative environments. By using the latest web-based technology and relevant open standards, this thesis shows how map data and GIS data can be made more accessible, more collaborative and generally more useful.

This thesis examines historical river channel change on a 12km study reach of the Rivers Tay and Tummel Scotland via the development of GIS and remote sensing techniques. Firstly, historical maps were combined using GIS rectification techniques in order to examine channel changes over the period 1755 to 1975. Secondly, also using GIS methodology, channel planforms as depicted in a series of aerial photographs were overlain to study recent channel change (1971 to 1994) including that caused by two major flood events. The study formed part of wider investigations into the hydrology and geomorphology of the River Tay, following the 1990 and 1993 flood events commissioned by organisations involved with management of the river. The study reach in 1863 and 1899 was shown to have alternating, highly divided sections with multiple mid-channel islands, and stable single-thread sections although, overall, the channel was less braided than depicted on 18th century maps. By 1975, the multi-channel sections had changed to a predominantly single-thread character and it is proposed that this had occurred in response to flood embankment construction and bank protection leading to channel narrowing and incision. This has wider implications for the management of the River Tay as channel instability supports diverse natural habitats with high conservation value. Once recent river planform changes on the study reach had been identified, stable and unstable reaches were defined allowing the determination of the degree and nature of instability using GIS methodology which included quantification of active channel widths and gravel area, braiding indices, sinuosity and channel occupancy indices. A number of unstable reaches were also studied in the field to examine the processes responsible for river bank erosion. In addition, the effect of in-channel morphology on river planform changes was examined by applying image analysis to bands 3, 5, 6 and 8 of airborne multi-spectral imagery (Daedalus ATM) to map channel bathymetry. The results showed that changes in channel planform and position occurred almost entirely in response to extreme flood events and that areas of greatest channel change were in zones of historical instability resulting from the presence of less cohesive sediments along the courses of former river channels. A meander-like alternation of pool-riffle sequences controlled the local distribution of bank erosion along most of these reaches by deflecting thalwegs against outer banks. The information derived from the study was used to construct an erosion hazard map. Using raster-based GIS techniques, these data were combined with measurements of distance from river channel and flood return periods, to create a model which enabled spatial mapping of river bank erosion probabilities. These probabilities were then mapped for hypothetical floods of 5, 10 and 25 year recurrence interval.

Network analysis in GIS is often related to finding solutions to transportation problems. In a GIS the real world is represented by either one of two spatial models, vector-based, or raster-based. Prefering raster or vector GIS is more a question of choice than of accuracy. A raster-based GIS model shows a better fit, when the problem is concerned with finding a path across terrain which does not have predefined paths. The approach of this study is to translate the scenario into a &lsquo / least-cost path&rsquo / graph with an associated cost function on the raster-based GIS layer. Sometimes, computation of shortest paths between different locations on a raster-based GIS has to be done in real-time. Therefore, knowing which shortest path algorithm runs fastest on real networks is needed. In order to meet this requirement, Dijsktra&rsquo / s algorithm with priority queue implementation is selected, because it reduces the time complexity of Dijsktra&rsquo / s algorithm from O(V2 log V) to O(E log V ). The run-time results of Dijsktra&rsquo / s algorithm, Dijsktra&rsquo / s algorithm with priority queue implementation and ArcMap Spatial Analyst Tool are compared for a number of raster GIS layers which have different number of nodes. Dijsktra&rsquo / s algorithm with priority queue implementation and Spatial Analyst tool of ArcMap show a linear relationship between node numbers and time, whereas Dijsktra&rsquo / s algorithm represents a quadratic relationship. Hence, when the number of nodes and edges in graph is increased, the run-time performance of the Dijsktra&rsquo / s algorithm decreases rapidly.

The August 17, 1999 Kocaeli-Turkey Earthquake (Mw=7.4) caused severe damage to the structures and lifelines in the Marmara region. Soil liquefaction was identified as one of the major causes of this damage. The aim of this study is to determine geotechnical and earthquake engineering factors that contribute to the structural damage observed in Sakarya city after 1999 Kocaeli Earthquake. For this purpose, the results of an extensive field investigation program compiled by General Directorate of Disaster Affairs including subsurface soil characterization and documenting structural performance data were used. The database was carefully screened for poor quality data and was transferred to geographic information system (GIS) framework. Maximum likelihood methodology for the probabilistic assessment of seismically induced structural performance was chosen as the statistical tool. After series of sensitivity analyses, important geotechnical and earthquake engineering parameters of the problem were selected as i) liquefaction severity index, ii) post liquefaction volumetric settlement, iii) peak ground acceleration and, iv) spectral acceleration defined at the period range of conventional buildings. In addition to these parameters, structural performance defined as a) no damage and light, b) moderate damage, c) heavy damage and collapse, as well as the number of storeys of each structure were used as to correlate structural damage with geotechnical earthquake engineering factors. As a conclusion series of vulnerability functions specific to Adapazari shaken by Kocaeli Earthquake were developed. Performance predictions of these vulnerability functions were shown to be consistent with as high as 65 percent of the observed structural performance.

In the last decade, the changes in living styles of people and shopping activities brought a new concept, &ldquo / shopping center&rdquo / . By the time the numbers of shopping centers increased and this big consumption market created a great competition among the investors. The investors had the necessity of examining their market share within the market and other social and spatial factors for the feasibility of their shopping centers. In this thesis considering the need of such a study, a market share analysis is carried out to determine the market share of shopping centers within the competition, analyze the important facts of the market share, estimate the market capacity and potential market regions. Ankara is chosen as the study area since it has an increasing trend for the development of shopping centers. Tthe study is carried out for Armada, Bilkent and 5M Migros shopping centers since they serve for the whole city and have different functions such as recreation, restaurants, cultural activities together with shopping activities. For the analysis a gravity model developed by Lakshmanan and Hansen is used. The model estimates the market share of the centers among regions considering the factors, as accessibility in terms of cost and time, economic conditions of regions, attractiveness of shopping centers and competitors of the market. For the application process Geographic Information Systems ESRI Arc GIS 8.1 and ESRI ArcView 3.2 are used as software to store and manipulate data, build regulations on road network structure, calculate distances and costs, and present maps and results.

Modern information systems strive to provide effective use of resources. Supplied with analysis tools, geographical information systems (GIS) can serve its stakeholders with minimal requirements. In this study, GIS capabilities were employed for Turkish Flora. Data related with the threatened plants that are indigenous to Turkey were gathered from the relevant literature and reshaped into a dataset in which spatial locations were represented in a geographically referenced format. Afterwards, this output was used to investigate the affects of different factors on the distribution patterns of these plants by means of functions of GIS and multivariate analysis. At last, overlay analysis was employed in order to reveal the congruence between official protection reserves, spatial locations of the plants in danger and areas of importance for other elements of wildlife specifically birds. Outcomes of the study is three-fold. First of all, a simple algorithm was established which can be used in the formation of a unified database of widely distributed floristic data in Turkey. Geographically referenced data and the analysis results produced in the study is another value added for Turkish botanics. From another perspective, effectiveness of GIS in handling different types of non-standard data were scrutinized. Overlay analysis of locations of the plants and the protection reserves constituted the managerial aspect of the study by pointing large gaps in the actual protection coverage and proposing candidate regions for official reserve choices of the future. In essence, GIS was deemed to be an effective tool for parties working on non-standard spatial data.