GIS Operations Research Articles

Developing a User Friendly Decision Tool for Agricultural Land Use Allocation at a Regional Scale

Agricultural land use planning should always be guided by a reliable tool to ensure effective decision making in the allocation of land use and activities. The primary aim of this study is to develop a user friendly system on a spatial basis for agricultural land suitability evaluation of four groups of agriculture commodities, including food crops, horticultural crops, perennial (plantation) crops, grazing, and tambak (fish ponds) to guide land use planning. The procedure used is as follows: (i) conducting soil survey based on generated land mapping units; (ii) developing soil database in GIS; and (iii) designing a user friendly system. The data bases of the study were derived from satellite imagery, digital topographic map, soil characteristics at reconnaissance scale, as well as climate data. Land suitability evaluation in this study uses the FAO method. The study produces a spatial based decision support tool called SUFIG-Wilkom that can give decision makers sets of information interactively for land use allocation purposes.This user friendly system is also amenable to various operations in a vector GIS, so that the system may accommodate possible additional assessment of other land use types.

Enabling smart data selection based on data completeness measures: a quality-aware approach

ABSTRACTGeographic information system (GIS) users rely heavily on the versatile operations of GIS software and the abundant variety of geospatial data from different resources to satisfy their application requirements. However, the convenient use of GIS software has resulted in users easily ignoring the threat of data misuse because of the lack of understanding of data quality. Here we argue that data quality considerations must be coherently assimilated into the GIS operation design to visually present helpful information and ensure the accuracy of data for decision making. Data completeness is selected in this paper to demonstrate how the use of data quality information opens a new dimension to the design of future GIS software. We propose a new model for the representation, analysis, and visualization of data completeness information. With the brand new quantitative measures and informative visual approach, understanding of the data completeness of the illustrated contents in the map interface is enhanced, and inappropriate dataset selection can be effectively prevented. Thus, this paper presents an innovative, integrated and geospatial concept of future GIS operation design, where users are constantly aware of the continuously changing status of data quality based on formalized and quantitative data quality theories.

Renewable Energy Development for Buildings

Abstract At the background of urbanization in China, energy consumption of buildings has been ranked as the second largest sector among the industry, building and transportation. Consequently, the renewable energy adopted in buildings has been quickly developed since the Chinese policy, which shifts 60% of total photovoltaic applications to the building sector, was enhanced. This paper discusses suitability of renewable energy applied in buildings, including solar thermal energy (ST), photovoltaic (PV) and geothermal heat pump systems (GSHP), based on GIS database and operation data analysis. GIS-based tools are also developed for evaluating suitability of renewable energy applied in buildings.

Multi-core parallelism for plane sweep algorithms as a foundation for GIS operations

The plane sweep algorithm is a foundational algorithm for many geometric and spatial computations; thus, improvements in the algorithm have far reaching effects in many applications. In this paper, we examine the performance of the serial plane sweep algorithm, and introduce a parallelization technique for the algorithm that is suitable to multi-core computers. The parallelization technique is described in detail and shown to be correct. Finally, experiments are performed using multiple data sets on computers with varying numbers of processing cores. We show that our algorithm achieves significant speedups over the serial plane sweep algorithm using a wide range of input parameters; thus, our algorithm achieves good performance without the need to tune the input parameters for specific input cases.

Geo‐questionnaire: A Method and Tool for Public Preference Elicitation in Land Use Planning

AbstractGeo‐questionnaire involves an integration of sketchable maps with questions, aimed at eliciting public preferences and attitudes about land allocation and services. Respondents can link their answers with corresponding locations on a map by marking points or sketching polygon features. Geo‐questionnaires have been used to learn about perceptions and preferences of city residents for specific types of land use, place‐based services, and development projects. This article reports on results of an empirical study, in which an online geo‐questionnaire was designed and implemented to elicit preferences of residents in guiding an urban development plan. Preferences collected in the form of polygon sketches were processed using GIS operations and mapped for visual interpretation. The article focuses on aggregation and analysis of respondent preferences including the analysis of positional and attribute uncertainty. Results of the study show that geo‐questionnaire is a scalable method for eliciting public preferences with a potential for meaningfully informing land use planning.

Economic feasibility of a wood biomass energy system under evolving demand

In some European regions, particularly in mountainous areas, the demand for energy is evolving due to the decrease of resident population and the adoption of energy efficiency measures. Such changes are rapid enough to significantly impact on the planning process of wood-to-energy chains that are supposed to work for the following 20–25 years. The paper summarizes a study in an Italian pre-alpine district where some municipality shows a declining resident population together with increasing summer tourism. The planning of conversion plants to exploit the local availability of wood is formulated as a mathematical programming problem that maximizes the economic return of the investment, under time-varying parameters that account for the demand evolution. Such a demand is estimated from current trends, while biomass availability and transport is computed from the local cartography, through standard GIS operations. Altogether, the mixed integer optimization problem has 11 possible plant locations of different sizes and technologies taking their feedstock from about 200 parcels. The problem is solved with a commercial software package and shows that the optimal plan changes if one considers the foreseen evolution of the energy demand. As it always happen in this type of biomass-based plants, while the problem formulation is general and may be applied to other cases, the solution obtained is strongly dependent on local values and thus cannot be extrapolated to different contexts.

COMPARISON OF KRIGING AND INVERSE DISTANCE WEIGHTED (IDW) INTERPOLATION METHODS IN LINEAMENT EXTRACTION AND ANALYSIS

Analysis that is based on geostatistics eliminates many corresponding defects and limitations compared to classical statistics which have been developed by random distribution theory of processes and variables. Interpolation is important for local analysis by GIS, because many maps used for GIS operation are made by interpolation. In this research, two different methods which is Kriging method and Inverse Distance Weighted (IDW) method was examined for developing Digital Elevation Model image. Each method’s advantages and disadvantages were considered. The study are, Kepil, is within Kulon Progo physiographic and stratigraphic area, located in the western part of Yogyakarta city. This area is located close to the Java Island Subduction Zone, hence influence of tectonic plate movement is relatively dominant. Geological structures become a main factor that shapes the recent morphology. This study area also has many settlements and has high weathering and erosion rate. Lineaments are extracted based on Digital Elevation Model to provide assistance in delineating geological structures. The structural geology analysis and an understanding of tectonic phase of the area provide useful information for geological map- ping. Accuracy of lineament depends on extraction and imagery parameters used. In this study, the extraction was conducted by two different raster methods, namely Kriging and Inverse Distance Weighted (IDW) with the same resolution of 30 meters. Lineament extracted automatically (digitally) with certain parameter settings. Keywords: Kriging, inverse distance weighted, interpolation, lineament, random distribution, digital elevation model.

Propagation of positional error in 3D GIS: estimation of the solar irradiation of building roofs

While error propagation in GIS is a topic that has received a lot of attention, it has not been researched with 3D GIS data. We extend error propagation to 3D city models using a Monte Carlo simulation on a use case of annual solar irradiation estimation of building rooftops for assessing the efficiency of installing solar panels. Besides investigating the extension of the theory of error propagation in GIS from 2D to 3D, this paper presents the following contributions. We (1) introduce varying XY/Z accuracy levels of the geometry to reflect actual acquisition outcomes; (2) run experiments on multiple accuracy classes (121 in total); (3) implement an uncertainty engine for simulating acquisition positional errors to procedurally modelled (synthetic) buildings; (4) perform the uncertainty propagation analysis on multiple levels of detail (LODs); and (5) implement Solar3Dcity – a CityGML-compliant software for estimating the solar irradiation of roofs, which we use in our experiments. The results show that in the case of the city of Delft in the Netherlands, a 0.3/0.6 m positional uncertainty yields an error of 68 kWh/m2/year (10%) in solar irradiation estimation. Furthermore, the results indicate that the planar and vertical uncertainties have a different influence on the estimations, and that the results are comparable between LODs. In the experiments we use procedural models, implying that analyses are carried out in a controlled environment where results can be validated. Our uncertainty propagation method and the framework are applicable to other 3D GIS operations and/or use cases. We released Solar3Dcity as open-source software to support related research efforts in the future.

Based on WebGIS platform developing remote sensing information systems of forest canopy density inversion

With Landsa 8 OLI data, field investigation of the sample data and the ASTER GDEM elevation data as the foundation, this paper views Jiangle County, Sanming City, Fujian Province as the study area, and selects the stepwise-linear regression model, the backward-linear regression model and partial-least squares model to study the crown density distribution of the study area. On the ArcGIS Server for the. NET development （ADF） platform, this system combines with the spatial database technology, and sets up a distributed information system on forest crown density inversion which is based on B/S model, so that this system can carry out basic GIS operations, data query, the model factor calculation, forest canopy density model implementation, data editing and output functions, etc. Basically the system can meet the regional forest resources structure parameters analysis especially the unity of the crown density information management and processing requirements, and supports a platform for structural parameters, data normalization management and forest resources sharing services for Jiangle County, Sanming City.［Ch, 6 fig. 15 ref.］

GeoProcessing Workflow Models for Distributed Processing Frameworks

Information Systems (GIS) platforms are used to implement and deal with the massive spatial data, especially image data. Therefore, these platforms require high storage capacity and high computational power to process them. This paper aims of processing of Geodata using Distributed processing Frameworks. Large volume of Geodata cannot be processed using desktop GIS tools such as QGIS, ArcGIS, GRASS, OpenJUMP etc. Therefore, to handle and process on these types of large data, use of Hadoop Distributed processing framework needs to be deployed. GeoProcessing is a GIS operation used to manipulate spatial data. It is one of the original proposal in GIS development. Almost every GIS application is represented by a GeoProcessing Workflow. This paper explains the GeoProcessing Workflow for processing of image data. Also explains Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS), MapReduce Programming Model and Yet Another Resource Negotiator (YARN) architecture, useful in large spatial data handling and analysis at fast rate.

High-order Taylor series expansion methods for error propagation in geographic information systems

The quality of modeling results in GIS operations depends on how well we can track error propagating from inputs to outputs. Monte Carlo simulation, moment design and Taylor series expansion have been employed to study error propagation over the years. Among them, first-order Taylor series expansion is popular because error propagation can be analytically studied. Because most operations in GIS are nonlinear, first-order Taylor series expansion generally cannot meet practical needs, and higher-order approximation is thus necessary. In this paper, we employ Taylor series expansion methods of different orders to investigate error propagation when the random error vectors are normally and independently or dependently distributed. We also extend these methods to situations involving multi-dimensional output vectors. We employ these methods to examine length measurement of linear segments, perimeter of polygons and intersections of two line segments basic in GIS operations. Simulation experiments indicate that the fifth-order Taylor series expansion method is most accurate compared with the first-order and third-order method. Compared with the third-order expansion; however, it can only slightly improve the accuracy, but on the expense of substantially increasing the number of partial derivatives that need to be calculated. Striking a balance between accuracy and complexity, the third-order Taylor series expansion method appears to be a more appropriate choice for practical applications.

Automated system for generation of soil moisture products for agricultural drought assessment

Abstract. Drought is a frequently occurring disaster affecting lives of millions of people across the world every year. Several parameters, indices and models are being used globally to forecast / early warning of drought and monitoring drought for its prevalence, persistence and severity. Since drought is a complex phenomenon, large number of parameter/index need to be evaluated to sufficiently address the problem. It is a challenge to generate input parameters from different sources like space based data, ground data and collateral data in short intervals of time, where there may be limitation in terms of processing power, availability of domain expertise, specialized models & tools. In this study, effort has been made to automate the derivation of one of the important parameter in the drought studies viz Soil Moisture. Soil water balance bucket model is in vogue to arrive at soil moisture products, which is widely popular for its sensitivity to soil conditions and rainfall parameters. This model has been encoded into "Fish-Bone" architecture using COM technologies and Open Source libraries for best possible automation to fulfill the needs for a standard procedure of preparing input parameters and processing routines. The main aim of the system is to provide operational environment for generation of soil moisture products by facilitating users to concentrate on further enhancements and implementation of these parameters in related areas of research, without re-discovering the established models. Emphasis of the architecture is mainly based on available open source libraries for GIS and Raster IO operations for different file formats to ensure that the products can be widely distributed without the burden of any commercial dependencies. Further the system is automated to the extent of user free operations if required with inbuilt chain processing for every day generation of products at specified intervals. Operational software has inbuilt capabilities to automatically download requisite input parameters like rainfall, Potential Evapotranspiration (PET) from respective servers. It can import file formats like .grd, .hdf, .img, generic binary etc, perform geometric correction and re-project the files to native projection system. The software takes into account the weather, crop and soil parameters to run the designed soil water balance model. The software also has additional features like time compositing of outputs to generate weekly, fortnightly profiles for further analysis. Other tools to generate "Area Favorable for Crop Sowing" using the daily soil moisture with highly customizable parameters interface has been provided. A whole India analysis would now take a mere 20 seconds for generation of soil moisture products which would normally take one hour per day using commercial software.

Error propagation in the computation of volumes in 3D city models with the Monte Carlo method

Abstract. This paper describes the analysis of the propagation of positional uncertainty in 3D city models to the uncertainty in the computation of their volumes. Current work related to error propagation in GIS is limited to 2D data and 2D GIS operations, especially of rasters. In this research we have (1) developed two engines, one that generates random 3D buildings in CityGML in multiple LODs, and one that simulates acquisition errors to the geometry; (2) performed an error propagation analysis on volume computation based on the Monte Carlo method; and (3) worked towards establishing a framework for investigating error propagation in 3D GIS. The results of the experiments show that a comparatively small error in the geometry of a 3D city model may cause significant discrepancies in the computation of its volume. This has consequences for several applications, such as in estimation of energy demand and property taxes. The contribution of this work is twofold: this is the first error propagation analysis in 3D city modelling, and the novel approach and the engines that we have created can be used for analysing most of 3D GIS operations, supporting related research efforts in the future.

Performance study of various spatial indexes on 3D geo-data in Geo-RDBMS

In the emerging era of information and communication technologies, geotechnology is one of the fastest growing fields. Geo-RDBMS is very important and evolving aspect for GIS, as it can manage large volume of spatial data inside RDBMS. The utilization of RDBMS for geospatial data was one of the important focuses of GIS professionals in last decades to store and manage 2D geo-data. However, the support for 3D geo-data inside RDBMS is still limited and is a challenging task for RDBMS providers. In this study, data organization and performance assessment of 3D geo-data inside RDBMS are carried out. In this process, various file-based 3D data models such as CityGML, COLLADA and KML are migrated to geo-RDBMS to bring entire 3D geo-data in common platform. Various spatial indexing techniques viz. R-Tree, B-Tree, GiST, etc. are applied on these 3D data models and best indexing techniques are studied for 3D GIS operations.

Availability and Accessibility of Geographic Information Systems in Nigerian Federal Universities of Technology Libraries

This study was carried out to investigate the availability and accessibility of Geographic Information Systems in technology libraries of Nigerian federal universities. A survey research design was designed, with three research questions being formulated. The total of 1,422 respondents, including students, faculty, staff GIS users, and librarians constituted the population and sample size of this study from federal universities of technology at Akure, Minna, Owerri, and Abubakar Tafawa Belewa University, Bauchi. Two sets of questionnaires were used to collect data for this study, one for the GIS users and another for the librarians. The data collected were presented and analyzed using a frequency distribution table and percentages. The study found, among other results, that there are computer hardware units for GIS operation, though some peripherals such as like plotters and scanners were less available among selected Nigerian federal universities of technology (FUTs), and ArcView was the prominent type of GIS software that was available for GIS operations. This study concluded that GIS services would be better utilized if they were brought into the library, which is the information hub of the university. Lastly, it was recommended that the university library collaborate with organizations that deal with spatial information or GIS-related departments in the university to facilitate GIS services’ integration into the array of existing library services.

Service District Optimization: Usage of Facility Location Methods and Geographic Information Systems to Analyze and Optimize Urban Food Retail Distribution

With the surge of obesity in the United States, improving urban food environments has gained in importance. Research on food deserts focuses mainly on assessing the food environment but lacks methods of generating good solutions for the placement of food stores. This work uses a maximum covering location problem in combination with census block group GIS data from the City of Philadelphia to find optimal locations for future food store openings. A socioeconomic index of vulnerability is computed to weigh regions based on their residents' sensitivity to food access limitations. The analysis found that supermarkets in Philadelphia are relatively unequally distributed and that there are many viable locations which could satisfy both the public interest of improving food access as well as the private interest of being profitable. Going forward, this joint approach of GIS data and operations research can be used to highlight locations for possible policy interventions in urban areas.

Geoarchaeological and historical implications of late Holocene landscape development in the Carseolani Mountains, central Apennines, Italy

This study investigates the relationship between late Holocene landscape development and early human interaction by means of geomorphological and sedimentological analyses supported by GIS modeling operations. The selected geoarchives are sedimentary valley fills of two subwatersheds located in the upper Turano River drainage basin (60km northeast of Rome, Italy), where humans settled at least since the earliest classic period. First the alluvial plains were identified and mapped through multiple GIS operations. Thereafter, 12 cores were taken from the alluvial plains, collecting in total 68m of alluvial profiles. By sedimentological analyses (i.e., grain size, carbon determination) together with 36 AMS-radiocarbon dates, we identified phases when changes in the geomorphological evolution of the study area occurred. Starting around 4200cal BP, eight distinct clusters of increased cumulated probability density functions of the 14C dates were observed, representing enhanced alluvial deposition and/or fluvial activity. The shift from a phase of prevailing biostasy to a period of anthropic rhexistasy occurred after 4200cal BP in the Rio di Riccetto and around 2200cal BP in the more remote Ovito watersheds. Dividing the alluvial sediment volumes by the potential erosion areas and assuming a sediment delivery ratio (SDR) between 0.21 and 0.46, we obtained an average late Holocene surface lowering of 370 to 540mm in the Rio di Riccetto and 400 to 510mm in the Ovito watersheds. Our results show that notable land reshaping occurred in the vicinity of the city of Rome, which can be attributed to human-induced land cover changes.

GeoFIS: An integrated tool for the assessment of landslide susceptibility

In this study, requirements of landslide susceptibility mapping by a Mamdani fuzzy inference system (FIS) are identified, and a single standalone application (GeoFIS) is developed. GeoFIS includes two main open source libraries, one for GIS operations and the other for creating Mamdani FIS. As a result, it is possible to construct a landslide susceptibility map based on expert opinion, to visualize maps instantly and to measure model performance. GeoFIS supports all steps of the landslide susceptibility mapping process, starting from data deployment and ending with performance measurement. In GeoFIS, visual controls allow use of the inferred results and actual landslide occurrence information, and ROC–AUC values are calculated automatically. Moreover, a confusion matrix is produced, and alternative measurement schemes such as recall are suggested, to reveal those performance details not observable with ROC–AUC and to create trust in the inferred results. GeoFIS is applied to the Trabzon region of northern Turkey, and the recall and ROC–AUC values were .902 and .602, respectively.

Analysis and Development of Land Information System of Bauchi State soil types capabilities in Enhancing Crop Production

This research paper is focused on the analysis and development of a land information system for the different soil types in Bauchi State and their capabilities in enhanced crop productivity, which covers the whole of Bauchi State .the execution of this project, was carried out in two different stages namely: The design stage and the implementation stage. The development of the LIS was facilitated by obtaining a clear and properly identified map of the study area, which was eventually scanned and saved in JPEG format. The scanned map was further geo-referenced and digitized on software and exported to the ARCVIEW GIS9.3 software. The graphics were linked with a created spatial database; the developed system was then put to the test by carrying out a number of GIS operation and analysis called queries (Kufoniyi, 1998). The queries were then generated to help in the identification and differentiation of the various soil types existing in Bauchi as well as their capabilities as regards to the types of crops planted in Bauchi state in other to device means for which production can further be enhanced.

Design and Implementation of Regional LS Factor Computing Tool Based on GIS and Array Operation

For over 40 years, the universal soil loss equation (USLE) and its revised version the revised universal soil loss equation (RUSLE) have been used all over the world for soil mean annual loss per area unit. Because of the watershed erosion models are under developing, many researchers applied the USLE and RUSLE to estimate soil loss in watershed estimations. However, a major limitation is the difficulty in extracting the LS factor. The geographic information system-based (GIS-based) methods which have been developed for estimating the slope length for USLE and RUSLE model also have limitations. A series of ARC/INFO AML program was created that can calculate LS factor for the USLE, however the program need a very long time to run in wide-ranging areas. The flowpath and cumulative cell length-based method (FCL) overcomes this disadvantage but does not consider the following questions: (1) Some original AML program functions are not achieved, so results are different. (2) Using USLE to calculate LS factor that do not adapt to the erosion environment of China. (3) There isnt a friendly graphic user interface. The purpose of this research was to overcome these limitations and extend the FCL method through Integrating CSLE equation. We developed a LS calculation tool (LS-TOOL) in Microsofts .NET environment using C# with a user-friendly interface. Comparing the LS factor calculated with the FCL method and AML method, LS factor values generated by using LS-TOOL method delivers improved results. The LS-TOOL algorithm can automatically calculate slope length, slope steepness, L factor, S factor, and LS factors, providing the results as ASCII files which can be easily used in some GIS software. This study is an important step forward in conducting fast large-scale erosion evaluation.