GIS-Related Dissertations/Theses Late 2007 & 2008

As always, there are oodles of great GIS-related theses and dissertations out there. After taking a long and deep gander at the latest batch, here are the latest ones to have caught my eye. For previous installments, click here.

• An object-oriented programming approach for a GIS data-driven simulation model of traffic on an inland waterway. by Sasso, Daniel, Ph.D., University of Louisville, 2008, 163 pages
• "This research demonstrates how the GIS technology can be integrated with a simulation software as an interface to model the transit of ocean-going vessels through the Panama Canal."


• An assessment of the utility of GIS-based analysis to support the coordination of humanitarian assistance. by Verjee, Firoz, D.Sc., The George Washington University, 2007, 272 pages
• "This dissertation investigated if Geographic Information Systems (GIS)-based analysis can have a decisive influence upon the coordination of international humanitarian assistance. Utility was assessed through a series of case studies demonstrating the application of GIS-based analysis to facilitate coordination of recent or potential humanitarian interventions."


• Artifact management and behavioral discourse in the software development process for a large public participatory geographic information system. by Wu, Jie, Ph.D., University of Washington, 2007, 155 pages
• "The objective of this work is to develop an artifact management framework (AMF) for supporting a large public participation geographic information system (PPGIS) software development effort."


• Assessment of black locust on the Black Kettle National Grasslands. by Farris, Bullit Michael, M.S., Oklahoma State University, 2007, 64 pages
• "Remote sensing combined with GIS analysis has been established as one of the most effective ways to study the conversion of grasslands to forests and has been used in many parts of the world to analyze woody encroachment. The purpose of this study is to analyze the distribution of black locust in the Black Kettle National Grasslands by comparing historical and current stand area using aerial photography and investigate the differences in encroachment rates focusing on the influence of potential soil moisture content using the topographic wetness index."


• Comparative impacts of Web-based GIS on student content knowledge, geography skills, and self-efficacy in introductory human geography. by Songer, Lynn Christine, Ph.D., University of Oregon, 2007, 229 pages
• "This dissertation compares the impacts on student learning outcomes: self-efficacy, content knowledge, and geography skills, when Web-based GIS is used to teach introductory human geography"


• Implementation of Geographic Information Systems in policing: A case study of the Spokane Police Department. by Akgul, Arif, Ph.D., Washington State University, 2007, 228 pages
• "For the last decade Geographic Information Systems (GIS) applications, including crime mapping and crime analysis in police departments, have emerged as one of the most important innovations in the law enforcement. However, very little research has been conducted on how police departments use the system."


• Settlement geography of the Punjab during the early historic and medieval periods: A GIS approach. by Smith, Mark A., Ph.D., New York University, 2007, 476 pages
• "Utilizing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analysis and quantitative geography techniques, the research provides insights into the meaning of changing settlement patterns in the Pakistani province of Punjab between the 5th century B.C and 18th century A.D."


• Spatial analytical approaches for supporting security monitoring. by Kim, Kamyoung, Ph.D., The Ohio State University, 2007, 144 pages
• "This dissertation addresses the challenges of strategic sensor location in security monitoring and discusses how GIS can be utilized to define the coverage of sensors. Application results demonstrate that sensor placement for supporting security monitoring in 3D urban areas can be approached using coverage-based optimization models combined with visibility analysis."


• Web-based GIS and public participation: An aid to widening female participation in revitalizing outdoor recreational facilities in Saudi Arabia. A case study in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. by Daghistani, Farouk, Ph.D., Texas A&M University, 2007, 211 pages
• "During the last decade, the Internet and Geographic Information System (GIS) have made changes in the relationship between governments and citizens in many developed countries. Citizens, in such countries, have been given more chances to participate in the decision making process of the spatial issues relevant to them."

Interesting GIS/Geography Related Dissertations

[updated 10/05 to include links to free dissertation abstracts and 24-page previews, compliments of UMI Dissertation Publishing at ProQuest. See comments for more info. Thanks Mike!]

Here's the latest installment of GIS-related dissertations that have caught my eye. Previous lists include 11/05, 01/06, 01/06, 04/06, 07/06, 10/06, 04/07. (Of course, this is not a comprehensive list...only those I find interesting.)

• An investigation of northwest Arkansas High School students' attitudes towards using GIS in learning social studies, by Al-Kamali, Abdulla Ahmed, PhD, University of Arkansas, 2007.
• "The research consisted of three parts: One, the quantitative aspect of the research was completed through a two-part questionnaire in which 204 students attending a high school in Northwest Arkansas responded. The first part contained questions concerning demographic information; the second part contained a 5-point Likert scale to measure their attitudes towards using/learning GIS. Descriptive statistics, Independent t-test, One-Way ANOVA, and tests of between group effects (Two-Way ANOVA) were used to analyze the data collected. The third part contained GIS use information."
  


• A descriptive spatial analysis of the relationship between geology, aeroradioactivity and incidence of cancer with indoor radon measurements for the state of Virginia, by Simoni de Cannon, Fiorella V, PhD, George Mason University, 2007.
• "This dissertation showed that county averages of the incidence of lung cancer, chronic bronchitis, and chronic pneumonia are well correlated. Also, the dissertation showed that aeroradioactivity can be used to locate geological areas with higher soil radioactivity and areas with higher indoor radon."


• Computer-aided qualitative GIS (CAQ-GIS) for critical researchers: An integration of quantitative and qualitative research in the geography of communities, by Jung, Jin-Kyu, PhD, State University of New York at Buffalo, 2007.
• "This project explores a new approach of blending qualitative research with GIS by creating two software-level strategies. The first strategy is to include qualitative data directly into a GIS database from the beginning of research, thereby aiding in the comprehensive analysis of multiple forms of data... The second strategy meshes GIS with CAQDAS (Computer-Aided Qualitative Data Analysis Software), specifically the ATLAS ti ^® program."


• Market competition and nursing home quality of care, by Geng, Yisong, PhD, University of Minnesota, 2007.
• "Findings: Nursing homes in counties with smaller HHI or closer to competitors have more staffing hours, fewer deficiencies, higher quality measure scores and higher total scores. Predicted average occupancy of other nursing homes in the county is not significantly related with quality in general, the reason may be that it does not have sufficient variation."


• Market transition and the spatial dynamics of Internet development in China, by Zhang, Jun, PhD, University of Minnesota, 2007.
• "This thesis examines the spatially uneven evolution of the Internet industry in China's changing socio-economic environment. Using a census data, I demonstrate the evolution of founder structures and business models of China's Internet startups in space and through time. Taking a system view of institutions and a resource-based view of industrial development, I interpret the decade-long history of China's Internet development, characterized by the interplay of multiple factors at multiple geographic scales, through an analytic narrative."


• Spatial query processing using Voronoi diagrams, by Sharifzadeh, Mehdi, PhD, University of Southern California, 2007.
• "In this dissertation, we propose a new index structure, termed VoR-tree , that incorporates Voronoi diagrams into the R-tree index structure for I/O-optimal processing of nearest neighbor queries on point datasets. The neighborhood information encoded in Voronoi diagrams allows a VoR-tree-based algorithm to optimally explore the data space towards the result."


• Service oriented architecture for geographic information systems supporting real time data grids, by Aydin, Galip, PhD, Indiana University, 2007.
• "In this dissertation we propose and evaluate a Service Oriented Architecture for seamless coupling of real-time and non-real time geographic data with scientific geospatial applications. We describe necessary principles and service features for accessing both data types and outline Data Grid architecture to address these requirements. We describe various methods for improving the performance of our Web Services such as adoption of Binary XML Frameworks and integration of a message oriented middleware for streaming the responses. We introduce a novel approach to map Geography Markup Language (GML) based XML queries to relational database queries."


• The effects of war on land-use/land-cover change: An analysis of Landsat imagery for northeast Bosnia, by Witmer, Frank D. W., PhD, University of Colorado at Boulder, 2007.
• "The use of satellite technology by military planners has a relatively long history as a tool of warfare, but little research has used satellite technology to study the effects of war. This research addresses this gap by applying satellite remote sensing imagery to study the effects of war on land-use/land-cover change in northeast Bosnia."


• The Indian Trading Path and colonial settlement development in the North Carolina Piedmont, by Dobbs, Gladys Rebecca, PhD, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2007.
• "This is a work of historical geography examining the role of an Indian-origin transportation route in the development of the colonial settlement system that emerged in the North Carolina Piedmont during the mid 18 ^th century. This system has evolved in modern times into an important polycentric urban region, and the area's current inhabitants attribute this pattern to the Indian route, the Indian Trading Path. The relationship between the route and settlement development has not previously been tested, however."

GIS-Related Dissertations: Latest Batch

Here's the latest installment of GIS-related dissertations that have caught my eye. Previous lists include 11/05, 01/06, 01/06, 04/06, 07/06, 10/06. (Of course, this is not a comprehensive list...only those I find interesting.)

Now, I will continue to link to the ProQuest Digital Dissertations public database, which provides free abstracts and 24 page previews for many dissertations and theses. However, due to Proquest's migration to the ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT) database, the public database will provide only brief citations beginning on July 21, 2007. I will link to full-text versions if Google can point them out to me.

• Airfare, competition, and spatial structure: New evidence in the United States airline deregulation, by Gong, Gang, Ph.D., Boston University, 2006, 170 pages.
• "The dynamics of airline deregulation has caused dramatic changes in airfare and competition structure... The spatial distribution of airfare has not been even. Pricing dynamics have resulted in geographic patterns of lower airfare for cities in the west and southwestern United States while higher airfare was found in the South, New England, and Midwest."
• I find this research extremely interesting and I bet a lot of folks would find this intriguing as well. Perhaps if I can pull the data together, this would make an excellent workshop next Fall 2007 semester. See here for Spring 2007 workshops.
  
• Communal ontology for navigation support in urban region: Getting directions from familiar landmarks, by Hong, Ilyoung, PhD, State University of New York at Buffalo, 2007.
• "This dissertation proposes a communal ontology as a type of regional knowledge with a formal structure that can be incorporated with geographical information systems. As part of an effort toward the realization of community wayfinding, this research explores several methodologies. To figure out what the shared geographical places are, the preference and degree of familiarity of different places are measured using the behavioral geographer's methodology. For investigating similar geographical interests within a community, social network analysis is conducted with the help of a person-place matrix and centrality measures are calculated."
• A co-evolutionary cellular automata for the integration of spatial and temporal scales in forest management planning, by Mathey, Anne-Helene, PhD, The University of British Columbia, 2006.
• "This thesis presents a case for more holistic numerical planning tools which can handle spatial objectives and inter-temporal trade-offs. A novel algorithm based on cellular automata (CA) is designed to address forest planning objectives that are both spatial and temporal and subject to global constraints."
• A geographic information system prototype for archived data from intelligent transportation systems: A multidimensional analysis, by Cusack, Maggie, PhD, State University of New York at Albany, 2006.
• "This work suggests a GIS prototype that will exploit existing industry data collection technologies, and apply sound Information Science (IS) principles to a growing transportation industry database problem. The prototype demonstrates a rational approach to applying those principals to the ITS data archiving and retrieval problem, with emphasis on the possibilities for data analysis."
• Archaeological predictive model of southwestern Kansas, by Campbell, Joshua Stewart, M.A., The University of Kansas, 2006, 131 pages.
• "Knowledge on the archaeological condition of southwestern Kansas is anomalously low, therefore a high-resolution archaeological predictive model has been constructed for the High Plains region of southwestern Kansas. Using quantitative data about the environment as independent variables, the model was constructed using a combination of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and statistical software."
• Association between ozone and emergency department visits: Application of geostatistics and geographic information systems (GIS), by Choi, Mona, Ph.D., University of Maryland, Baltimore, 2006, 123 pages.
• "Using traditional statistics and geostatistics in combination with GIS, the association between ozone concentration and emergency department (ED) admissions for cardiovascular and respiratory conditions were examined at the ZIP code level... Findings suggest that respiratory and cardiovascular ED visits increased even at lower ozone concentration than the EPA's air quality standards."
• A Web-based spatial decision support system for utilizing organic wastes as renewable energy resources in New York State, by Ma, Jianguo, Ph.D., Cornell University, 2006, 129 pages.
• "As the 3rd largest dairy state in the nation and the host for many food waste generators, New York State produces a large amount of organic waste. Recently there has been a renewed interest in farm-based co-digestion, which has created strong needs for research in this field... [A] Web-based spatial decision support system (SDSS) is developed by integrating geographic information systems (GIS), the Internet, and modeling. ArcGIS, Manifold, VB.Net, JavaScript and HTML are used during the design process. This system consists of three modules: (1) Dynamic Mapping and Querying; (2) Food Waste Estimator; and (3) Co-digestion Economic Analysis."
• Bahamian cave and karst geodatabase, and GIS analysis of San Salvador Island, Bahamas, by Walker, Adam Dennis, M.S., Mississippi State University, 2006, 94 pages.
• Full-Text
• "A geodatabase and a data management program have been created to store and manipulate cave and karst feature data from the Bahamas. A geographic information system was used to recognize any spatial patterns in the cave and karst data from San Salvador Island."
• Comprehensive conservation modeling: A spatially explicit individual-based approach using grizzly bears as a case study, by Backus, Vickie Marie, Ph.D., The University of Utah, 2006, 239 pages.
• "This dissertation illustrates how a mechanistic bottom-up approach to constructing a spatially explicit individual-based model (IBM) provides the proper theoretical and operational frameworks for constructing population viability analysis (PVA) models that avoid many of the substantive and theoretical criticism of the conventional demographic models used in PVA. Using Java™, such a model is developed for the grizzly bear population of the Cabinet-Yaak Ecosystem."
• Creation of a system for assessing and communicating the risks associated with terrestrial chemical spills, by Bryant, Derek L., Ph.D., Vanderbilt University, 2006, 85 pages.
  
• Full-Text
• "Adequately preparing for and responding to potential terrestrial (land-based) chemical spills are critical to the protection of human health and ecology. In this research, an environmental risk management system is developed to support analysis and facilitate decision-making for terrestrial chemical spill planning and response... The system leverages geographic information systems (GIS) technology to assess and delineate the immediate threat to human and environmental receptors from terrestrial chemical spills. It characterizes a spilled chemical's ability to immediately impact human health, groundwater, surface water, and soil resources, and incorporates these four receptors into an overall measure of terrestrial chemical risk."