Narrow Results

The generation and use of spatial information has significantly increased in recent years. Its importance has been magnified by the INSPIRE Directive, which has subsequently led to specific requirements within several legislative frameworks, such as the Water Framework and Noise Directives, for generating spatial data and spatially-specific outputs, as well as encouraging the creation of spatial data infrastructures at European level. The increased availability of spatial datasets resulting from these initiatives facilitates and promotes the application of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in planning and environmental assessment, among other sectoral applications. Arguably, the inclusion of geographic information through GIS supports and enhances environmental planning processes, enabling a rapid and objective analysis of environmental issues, and presenting information in a spatial and graphical manner. However, there are a number of considerations for the successful application of spatial data and GIS, and a number of issues remain affecting consistency and validity of results. This paper provides a critical review of current issues affecting spatial dataset management and use (such as format, scale, completeness, timeliness and metadata), and discusses common GIS methods and existing constraints to their application in Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). It concludes outlining existing opportunities to optimise the contribution of spatial data to environmental planning, and establishing future research and practice needs to enhance GIS use in SEA and EIA practice.

The purpose of this work is to study the land cover and land types of Nanji Island. A scene IKONOS image was taken to classify the land types including village, farmland, shrubbery, meadow, reservoir, sands and so on. Then several models were built base on fractal theory to analyze the land types. Condition of the land cover and land use was analyzed at three aspects as following: 1) effects of patch area; 2) fractal characters of land types; 3) test of difference of fractal character between every two land types. The results show that the values of D of meadow and shrubbery are higher, and those of farmland and village are smaller, and that the fractal characters are determined by the degree of interferes of human activities.

Accurate river channel and flood plain representation plays vital part in flood risk analysis. Terrain models such as TINs and DEMs are normally used to represent floodplains. But unfortunately finding a terrain model with a high density of stream channel elevation points that are sufficient for hydraulic modeling is not a easy task. However for years engineers and researchers have developed a high-resolution cross-section data for hydraulic modeling from field surveys, photogrametries and topographic maps. This research presented here introduces the procedures for creating integrated multiresolution TIN (ITIN) models for highresolution flood plain representation for flood risk analysis. The high-resolution river channel geometric data stored in HEC-6 hydraulic model and low-resolution flood plain data in the form of DEM created in Arc View GIS 3.2a were integrated by resolving the coordinate incompatibility in the both system. An integration procedure (ArcView extention) namely AVHEC6.avx has been developed between HEC-6 Hydraulic Model and ArcView GIS 3.2a to visualize model outputs in a more presentable manner through 3D capabilities of GIS.

The models, methods and algorithms for power distribution network planning are summarized. After reviewing earlier planning models, new development of the planning models are sorted out from the aspects of the complication of models, the impacts of geographic information(GIS), distributed power supply and reliability management. According to the features of planning models, corresponding planning methods are summarized and analyzed. The advantages and disadvantages, as well as, the applicability of various algorithms are discussed. Finally, the prospect of distribution network planning research in future is analyzed.

Based on ARCGIS spatial analysis software, this paper analyzes the landscape pattern of land use before and after land circulation in Tongziyan village. The results demonstrate that Paddy and dry land are the dominant landscape types after land transfer and part of the forestland and unused land are converted into roads, construction land and pits. The number of paddy field, dry land and the density of patch have decreased by more than 20%. Although the number of patches, patch’s density, landscape shape index of roads, construction land and pits are rising, the mosaic structure of patches’ form remained relatively constant. The diversity index, shape index and evenness index are all in a decreasing trend, while the average patch fractal dimension, segmentation index shows an increasing trend, which reflects the increase of the complexity of land use landscape types in this area.

South Africa is a vast country, and there are significant variations in building material prices across the country. This chapter will use Geographic Information System (GIS) technology in explaining the role of distance in the differentiation in building material prices in South Africa. The research employs a quantitative research approach based on a cross-sectional survey research design and GIS technology in analyzing the data collected from each location. It emerged from the study that when distributed by provinces, the relationship between price and distance varies between inverse and direct. For example, while the price of clay bricks increases with distance in the Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces of South Africa, it decreases in the distance from the manufacturers in Western Cape province. The same ambivalent relationships are observed between timber, steel, bitumen, cement prices and distance. Based on these findings, the study concludes that the distance of a building material manufacturer from the retailer is not a predictor of price in the Western Cape province of South Africa, while the most uniform relationship is found in KwaZulu-Natal province. Further studies are therefore required to explain the other extraneous factors responsible for the irreconcilable retail prices of building materials in the Western Cape province when compared to other locations in South Africa.

The integration of building information modelling (BIM) and geographic information system (GIS) has been studied for a long period of time by researchers from both domains. The foundation of the integration is the interoperability of the data, which means the BIM data has to have a right reference system, allowing it to be read correctly by GIS software applications. 3D models from the BIM world may not be correctly georeferenced, which impairs the data interoperability. Instead of rebuilding models from scratch, which is time- and labour-consuming, this paper proposes a more efficient, economical, two-step alternative mainly based on Affine transformation. In the first step, the modification is made against the x- and y-coordinates. A number of control points would be selected to form displacement links. Based on these, the transformation parameters would be calculated, and the 2D footprint of the model would be rectified by Affine transformation. Then, the z-value (height information) of each vertex in the model would be adjusted using the scaling factor f. This method could obtain a 3D model without a geographical coordinate system correctly geo-referenced, and thus, it could be further read by GIS applications, consuming the vast spatial analysis tools supported by the GIS world, achieving more than just visualization. The key to the success of this study is creating an accurate right footprint of the model and selecting appropriate control points to guarantee the accuracy of transformation. By far, this approach has only been tested with a bridge model, its performance on other building models needs to be further studied.

This paper studies a vehicle speed intelligent warning system, designs a vehicle safe running and intelligent control system with dynamic recognition and automatic control functions and establishes the architecture of the intelligent control system. This system judges the safe state of a vehicle automatically by comparing its real-time running speed with safe driving speed limit and then gives the vehicle driver a clue by releasing the vehicle speed warning information and finally controls the running speed by vehicle control module.

Fluid modeling covers a wide range of principles describing the motion of matter and energy in dependence on spatial scales, time scales and other attributes. In order to provide efficient numeric calculations, the information systems have to be developed for management, pre-processing, post-processing and visualization. In spite of that many software tools contain sophisticated subsystems for data management and implement advanced numerical algorithms, there is still need to standardize data inputs/outputs, wide used data analyses, and case oriented computational tools under one roof. Thus, the geographic information system (GIS) is used to satisfy all the requirements. As an example, the case study focused on dust dispersion above the surface coal mine documents the GIS ability to solve all the tasks. The input data are represented by terrain measurements of meteorological conditions and by estimates of the emission rates of potential surface dust sources. Remote sensing helps to identify and classify the coal mine surface in order to map erosion sites and other surface objects. GPS is used to improve the accuracy of the erosion site boundaries and to locate other point emission sources such as excavators, storage sites, and line emission sources such as conveyors and roads. The 3D mine surface for modeling of wind flows and dust dispersion is based on GPS measurements and laser scanning. All data inputs are integrated together with simulation outputs in the spatial database in the framework of the GIS project. In case of dispersion modeling, a few ways can be used to provide numeric calculations together with GIS analyses. The traditionally used way represents using of standalone simulation tools and the input/output data linkage through shared data files. The more advanced way is the implementation of dispersion models in the GIS environment. The methods are demonstrated by using U.S. EPA modeling tools and by linking standalone numerical calculations in the GIS environment with using case oriented programming libraries and GIS development tools.

This paper is an exploratory study to bring upon discussion some technical (that is, in this case, both urbanism and environmental engineering criteria) subsidies in order to build a Metropolitan (urban, mostly) Drainage Plan for the Metropolitan Region of Belém (RMB), Brazil. Located in the Amazon Region, North Brazil, RMB is the metropolitan area with the highest levels of domiciles in slums and shantytowns, according to 2010 official data. Its territory is a plain site, with low declivities and high pluviometry rates, and its floodplains have been precarious for decades. Serious sanitation problems may be found in those areas, which are extensive in territory. GIS is a resource used alongside with theoretical issues to discuss the case of RMB flooding phenomenon, considered as its main environmental risk problem. Finally, directives are listed, recommending combined and systemic use of both structural (highly artificial, concrete-based drainage structures) and non-structural (less artificial, more based on water and basins management, soil infiltration and natural processes, such as retention and flow), differentiated by the morphological characteristics of urban occupation and demographic densities.

Forests are essential for survival and sustenance of life. Their growth should be optimized so that greater benefits are derived from them. With such a large establishment and geographical base, the monitoring and decision making becomes very critical. The inherent delays hamper the decision process required at a particular time. The increasing area covered by forest plantations creates a demand for trustworthy mechanisms to ensure they are responsibly established and managed. However, most are focused exclusively or prevalently on natural or semi-natural forests, while only a few are specific to planted forests or plantations. The main aim is to assess whether and to what extent planted forests are properly considered within the existing sets of standards/guidelines and to identify areas for improvements, is based on a series of comparative analysis. This paper focus to carry out the full potential of convergence of GIS and Mobile Technology for plantation, with emphasis on technically viable infrastructure solution based on sustainability principles. Integration of GIS and Mobile is being proposed with an objective to enable a single window access to information and services being provided by various formations and to establish a collaborated environment.

In this paper, we propose a “center” type of electric vehicle charging dynamic route planning service system architecture, and the architecture of the server-side data management technology and services were studied, through GIS technology, the optimalal location of each electric vehicle charging station sultimately comestrue, which ensures the coordination and harm onization of electric vehicles, charging stations and users, saves the time for travel and charging, and improves operating efficiency. Simultaneously, taking full account of the requirements of power grid, select electric vehicle charging station, use the resources of electric vehicle charging stations rationally, to ensure the safe operation of grid.

Facing with the constantly overloaded operation of the life support system on earth currently, the ecological environmental problems become more and more serious on a global scale, and the ecological security of the geographic space attracts extensive attentions increasingly. Based on GIS and spacial ecological condition, this paper builds the ecological security evaluation index system, sets up the evaluation criterion, designs the space ecological security evaluation model further, and analyzes the evaluation results of the province regions in China from 1998 to 2012, so as to have the definite strategy for promoting the spacial ecological security in the province region.

Lake and its drainage basin is an important place for human survival, and the protection of the lake is an important part of environmental protection. Research and establish the information management system of Lake classifying protected areas based on GIS, considerate and plan the lake eutrophication comprehensively by using information technology, on the basis of river basin comprehensive sewage interception, high intensity of pollution, to make artificial intervention and macro control of the restoration of the lake ecosystem.

GIS is widely used in grid for its excellent performance. In the practical operation, besides the accidents caused by discharge faults, there are also a lot of accidents which are induced by mechanical faults. The electrical detection methods are mainly about discharge faults, there's lack of methods about mechanical faults. The field measurement of 110 kV GIS, especially the part of bus, is carried out using the GIS vibration test system in this paper. The results show that the vibration of bus near the part with contact faults is strongest, while the bus vibration is generally weak. The results provide data support for the on-site testing of GIS vibration and fault diagnosis of mechanical faults.

The quantitative estimation of forest biomass provides important reference information for global carbon storage and carbon cycle research. This study based on the four periods TM remote sensing data of 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and early 21st century and forest resources inventory sample data during the same period, with ArcGIS analyzed the forest biomass spatial distribution characteristics of Lesser Khingan Range, and acquired the forest biomass distribution law with elevation and slope change, the study results are important to maintain the ecological balance of the three northeast provinces of China. Research results shows that: in this study area with the increasing of elevation the forest biomass and distribution have a lesser proportion, the sequence of forest biomass distribution with slope change of each period from big to small is: slope class 1 > slope class 2 > slope class 3 > slope class 4 > slope class 5 = slope class 6.