This study derives a method that seeks a possible relationship between
settlement site locations and sunrise-sunset times of those locations using
Geographical Information Systems. The method is applied to Ç / ankiri province,
which is located at northeast of Ankara and covers approximately an area of
8380 km2.
Three main data sets of the study area are used in this thesis: 1) Settlement data
containing the coordinates, IDs and names of the 891 settlement points, 2)
Topographic data containing the coordinates and digital elevation values of all
raster pixels 3) Bright sunshine duration data (BSD) composed of the difference
between sunset and sunrise times for all raster pixels.
In the first step of this study, sunrise and sunset times of the study area are
calculated with an algorithm that uses Digital Elevation Model. This algorithm is
developed specifically for computing those times over a topographic surface
which may delay the sunrise time or bring forward the sunset time, thus reducing
the BSD. In the second step, unsuitable landforms for settlement are clipped out
from the study area based on the thresholds derived from elevation, slope and
aspect parameters. Then, BSD histograms and statistics of the settlements and
study area are compared for each of the 12 months and for the average of 12
months. Finally, neighborhood analysis on settlements is carried out by
comparing the BSD values of each settlement with the BSD characteristics of
circular buffer surrounding the settlement.
The main conclusion derived from above mentioned analysis is that the BSD
does not directly affect the selection of the settlement sites.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:METU/oai:etd.lib.metu.edu.tr:http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12605487/index.pdf |
| Date | 01 October 2004 |
| Creators | Erdogan, Emre |
| Contributors | Toprak, Vedat |
| Publisher | METU |
| Source Sets | Middle East Technical Univ. |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | M.S. Thesis |
| Format | text/pdf |
| Rights | To liberate the content for public access |
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