45,610 research outputs found
Open source environment to define constraints in route planning for GIS-T
Route planning for transportation systems is strongly related to shortest path algorithms, an optimization problem extensively studied in the literature. To find the shortest path in a network one usually assigns weights to each branch to represent the difficulty of taking such branch. The weights construct a linear preference function ordering the variety of alternatives from the most to the least attractive.Postprint (published version
EcoGIS â GIS tools for ecosystem approaches to fisheries management
Executive Summary:
The EcoGIS project was launched in September 2004 to investigate how Geographic Information Systems (GIS), marine data, and custom analysis tools can better enable fisheries scientists and managers to adopt Ecosystem Approaches to Fisheries Management (EAFM). EcoGIS is a collaborative effort between NOAAâs National Ocean Service (NOS) and National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), and four regional Fishery Management Councils.
The project has focused on four priority areas: Fishing Catch and Effort Analysis, Area Characterization, Bycatch Analysis, and Habitat Interactions. Of these four functional areas, the project team first focused on developing a working prototype for catch and effort analysis: the Fishery Mapper Tool. This ArcGIS extension creates time-and-area summarized maps of fishing catch and effort from logbook, observer, or fishery-independent survey data sets. Source data may come from Oracle, Microsoft Access, or other file formats. Feedback from beta-testers of the Fishery Mapper was used to debug the prototype, enhance performance, and add features.
This report describes the four priority functional areas, the development of the Fishery Mapper tool, and several themes that emerged through the parallel evolution of the EcoGIS project, the concept and implementation of the broader field of Ecosystem Approaches to Management (EAM), data management practices, and other EAM toolsets. In addition, a set of six succinct recommendations are proposed on page 29.
One major conclusion from this work is that there is no single âsuper-toolâ to enable Ecosystem Approaches to Management; as such, tools should be developed for specific purposes with attention given to interoperability and automation. Future work should be coordinated with other GIS development projects in order to provide âvalue addedâ and minimize duplication of efforts.
In addition to custom tools, the development of cross-cutting Regional Ecosystem Spatial Databases will enable access to quality data to support the analyses required by EAM. GIS tools will be useful in developing Integrated Ecosystem Assessments (IEAs) and providing pre- and post-processing capabilities for spatially-explicit ecosystem models.
Continued funding will enable the EcoGIS project to develop GIS tools that are immediately applicable to todayâs needs. These tools will enable simplified and efficient data query, the ability to visualize data over time, and ways to synthesize multidimensional data from diverse sources. These capabilities will provide new information for analyzing issues from an ecosystem perspective, which will ultimately result in better understanding of fisheries and better support for decision-making. (PDF file contains 45 pages.
Training of Crisis Mappers and Map Production from Multi-sensor Data: Vernazza Case Study (Cinque Terre National Park, Italy)
This aim of paper is to presents the development of a multidisciplinary project carried out by the cooperation between Politecnico di Torino and ITHACA (Information Technology for Humanitarian Assistance, Cooperation and Action). The goal of the project was the training in geospatial data acquiring and processing for students attending Architecture and Engineering Courses, in order to start up a team of "volunteer mappers". Indeed, the project is aimed to document the environmental and built heritage subject to disaster; the purpose is to improve the capabilities of the actors involved in the activities connected in geospatial data collection, integration and sharing. The proposed area for testing the training activities is the Cinque Terre National Park, registered in the World Heritage List since 1997. The area was affected by flood on the 25th of October 2011. According to other international experiences, the group is expected to be active after emergencies in order to upgrade maps, using data acquired by typical geomatic methods and techniques such as terrestrial and aerial Lidar, close-range and aerial photogrammetry, topographic and GNSS instruments etc.; or by non conventional systems and instruments such us UAV, mobile mapping etc. The ultimate goal is to implement a WebGIS platform to share all the data collected with local authorities and the Civil Protectio
Simulating farm income under the current soil management regime in the mid-hills of Nepal
Farmers in the mid-hills of Nepal follow diverse farming systems. The peri-urban area of this region, where population density is higher, faces several problems in farming. While hills suffer from erosion because they are erodible, the peri-urban areas face the problem of decline in factor productivity, particularly in intensively cultivated farmlands. The present study is concerned with simulating farm income on a regional scale based on soil management practices. Spatial explicit simulation shows that the loss of farm income due to degradation is substantially higher in hills while it is lower in valley bottoms. Strategy formulation and testing in the spatial environment indicates that Geographic Information System is an appropriate methodological tool for simulating the consequences of particular interventions
Review of current practices in recording road traffic incident data: with specific reference to spatial analysis and road policing policy
Road safety involves three major components: the road system, the human factor and the vehicle element.
These three elements are inter-linked through geo-referenced traffic events and provide the basis for road
safety analyses and attempts to reduce the number of road traffic incidents and improve road safety.
Although numbers of deaths and serious injuries are back to approximately the 1950s levels when there
were many fewer vehicles on the road, there are still over 100 fatalities or serious injuries every day, and
this is a considerable waste of human capital. It is widely acknowledged that the location perspective is the
most suitable methodology by which to analyse different traffic events, where by in this paper, I will
concentrating on the relationship between road traffic incidents and traffic policing. Other methods include
studying road and vehicle engineering and these will be discussed later. It is worth noting here that there is
some division within the literature concerning the definitions of âaccidentâ and âincidentâ. In this paper I
will use âincidentâ because it is important to acknowledge a vast majority of âroad accidentsâ are in fact
crimes. However I will use the term âaccidentâ where it is referred to in the literature or relevant reports. It
is important to mention here that a road traffic accident can be defined as âthe product of an unwelcome
interaction between two or more moving objects, or a fixed and moving objectâ (Whitelegg 1986). Road
safety and road incident reduction relates to many other fields of activity including education, driver
training, publicity campaigns, police enforcement, road traffic policing, the court system, the National
Health Service and Vehicle engineering.
Although the subject of using GIS to analyse road traffic incidents has not received much academic
attention, it lies in the field of crime mapping which is becoming increasingly important. It is clear that
studies have been attempted to analyse road traffic incidents using GIS are increasingly sophisticated in
terms of hypotheses and statistical technique (for example see Austin, Tight and Kirby 1997). However it is
also clear that there is considerable blurring of boundaries and the analysis of road accidents sits
uncomfortably in crime mapping. This is due to four main reasons:
- Road traffic incidents are associated with road engineering, which is concerned with generic
solutions while road traffic analysis is about sensitivity to particular contexts.
- Not all road traffic incidents are crimes
- It is not just the police who have an interest in reducing road traffic incidents, other partners
include local authorities, hospitals and vehicle manufacturers
- The management of road traffic incidents is not just confined to the police
GIS has been used for over thirty years however it has only been recently been used in the field of
transportation. The field of transportation has come to embrace Geographical Information Systems as a keytechnology to support its research and operational need. The acronym GIS-T is often employed to refer to
the application and adaptation of GIS to research, planning and management in transportation. GIS-T
covers a broad arena of disciplines of which road traffic incident detection is just one theme. Others include
in vehicle navigation systems.
Initially it was only used to ask simple accident enquiries such as depicting the relative incidence of
accidents in wet weather or when there is no street lighting, or to flag high absolute or relative incidences
of accidents (see Anderson 2002). Recently however there has been increased acknowledgement that there
is a requirement to go beyond these simple questions and to extend the analyses. It has been widely claimed
by academics and the police alike that knowing where road accidents occur must lead to better road
policing, in order to ensure that road policing becomes better integrated with other policing activities. This
paper will be used to explore issues surrounding the analysis of road traffic accidents and how GIS
analysts, police and policy makers can achieve a better understanding of road traffic incidents and how to
reduce them.
For the purpose of this study I will be trying to achieve a broader overview of the aspects concerning road
accident analysis with a strong emphasis on data quality and accuracy with concern to GIS analysis. Data
quality and accuracy are seen as playing a pivotal role in the road traffic management agenda because they assist the police and Local Authorities as to the specific location whereby management can be undertaken.
Part one will consider the introduction to road incidents and their relationship with geography and spatial
analysis and how this were initially applied to locating âhotspotsâ and the more recent theory of âaccident
migrationâ. Part two will address current data issues of the UK collection procedure. This section will pay
particular reference to geo-referencing and the implication of data quality on the procedure of analysing
road incidents using GIS. Part three addresses issues surrounding the spatial analysis of road traffic
incidents, including some techniques such as spatial autocorrelation, time-space geography and the
modifiable area unit problem. Finally part four looks at the role of effective road traffic policing and how
this can be achieved due to better understanding of the theory and issues arising from analysing road traffic
incidents. It will also look at the diffusion and use of GIS within the police and local authorities
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