Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Geographic Information Sciences
The Challenges of Line Buffers
Published: 2024-02-15
Subjects: Geographic Information Sciences
This paper discusses the challenges of flat-cap and other linestring buffers, especially in automated applications. The pitfalls of existing implementations are introduced, stemming from the lack of a satisfactory definition of some linestring buffer variants. The buffers' roots in computational geometry are explored. Several candidate methods for robust buffer construction are described, and a [...]
Land transformation on multi-decadal timescales reveals expanding croplands and settlements at the expense of tree-covered areas and mangroves in Nigeria
Published: 2024-01-10
Subjects: Geographic Information Sciences, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Sustainability
Evaluating how land-cover is being transformed is essential to identify patterns necessary to infer the change trajectories and the driving factors. This study considers the case of Nigeria, where various natural ecosystems are being converted and for which a current national scale assessment is lacking. Producing Landsat-based time-series, we analyze change among land-cover types (i.e., [...]
Pygoda: a graphical interface to efficiently visualise and explore large sets of geolocated time series
Published: 2023-10-24
Subjects: Categorical Data Analysis, Climate, Computer Sciences, Databases and Information Systems, Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Fresh Water Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Glaciology, Graphics and Human Computer Interfaces, Hydrology, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Meteorology, Other Earth Sciences, Other Statistics and Probability, Spatial Science
Modern-day data sets in geosciences may comprise hundreds or thousands of geolocated time series. Despite all the automated tools and new algorithms now available to process and prepare those data before using them in research projects, it can be useful or even necessary to visualise and investigate them manually. Whether it be for data quality assessment, for the preparation of a training data [...]
Mapping the Landscape of Water and Society Research: Promising Combinations of Compatible and Complementary Disciplines
Published: 2023-10-13
Subjects: Environmental Education, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Human Geography, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Physical and Environmental Geography, Spatial Science, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Coupled human-water systems (CHWS) are diverse and have been studied across a wide variety of disciplines. Integrating multiple disciplinary perspectives on CHWS provides a comprehensive and actionable understanding of these complex systems. While interdisciplinary integration has often remained elusive, specific combinations of disciplines might be comparably easier to integrate (compatible) [...]
Large-scale green grabbing for wind and solar PV development in Brazil
Published: 2023-08-22
Subjects: Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Human Geography, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Large-scale wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) infrastructures are expanding rapidly in Brazil. These projects can exacerbate struggles for land rooted in weak land governance, with negative impacts for traditional populations due to loss of access to common lands. Here, we trace how green grabbing, i.e. the large-scale appropriation and control of (undesignated) public lands, both formally legal [...]
Information Sharing: The Missing Ingredient in Science, Technology and Innovation Policy of Pakistan-Agriculture Perspective
Published: 2023-08-22
Subjects: Agriculture, Food Science, Geographic Information Sciences, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science
The purpose of this paper is to focus on the important role of information sharing in advancing innovation that is presently missing in National Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) Policy of Pakistan approved in 2012. Information is a key resource for making innovations in science, technology and policies. Like other countries of the world, almost all government departments in Pakistan [...]
Social Vulnerability and Climate Risk Assessment for Agricultural Communities in The United States
Published: 2023-08-18
Subjects: Agriculture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Geographic Information Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Risk Analysis, Spatial Science
Floods and droughts significantly affect agricultural activities and pose a threat to food security by subsequently reducing agricultural production. The impact of flood events is distributed disproportionately among agricultural communities based on their socio-economic fabric. Understanding climate-related hazards is critical for planning mitigation measures to secure vulnerable communities. [...]
A Web-based Decision Support Framework for Optimizing Road Network Accessibility and Emergency Facility Allocation During Flooding
Published: 2023-08-03
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Risk Analysis
Transportation systems can be significantly affected by flooding, leading to physical damage and subsequent adverse impacts such as increased travel distance to essential services. Even though flooding is a frequently recurring phenomenon that can affect thousands of people per event, there are limited accessible online tools available for analyzing and visualizing flood risk for supporting [...]
OpenStreetMap for Multi-Faceted Climate Risk Assessments
Published: 2023-06-29
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Risk Analysis
Natural hazards pose significant risks to human lives, infrastructure, and ecosystems, necessitating a comprehensive understanding of climate risks for effective adaptation planning and risk management. However, climate risk assessments mostly focus on economic asset values and infrastructures such as roads and buildings, because publicly available data on more diverse exposures are scarce. The [...]
Towards Understanding the Geospatial Skills of ChatGPT: Taking a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Exam
Published: 2023-06-20
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Education, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Higher Education, Other Geography, Science and Mathematics Education, Spatial Science
This paper examines the performance of ChatGPT, a large language model (LLM), in a geographic information systems (GIS) exam. As LLMs like ChatGPT become increasingly prevalent in various domains, including education, it is important to understand their capabilities and limitations in specialized subject areas such as GIS. Human learning of spatial concepts significantly differs from LLM training [...]
ChatGPT as a mapping assistant: A novel method to enrich maps with generative AI and content derived from street-level photographs
Published: 2023-06-06
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Computer Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Other Computer Sciences, Other Geography, Spatial Science
This paper explores the concept of leveraging generative AI as a mapping assistant for enhancing the efficiency of collaborative mapping. We present results of an experiment that combines multiple sources of volunteered geographic information (VGI) and large language models (LLMs). Three analysts described the content of crowdsourced Mapillary street-level photographs taken along roads in a small [...]
Limitations in the Landsat satellite archive bias SDG monitoring
Published: 2023-05-19
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Geographic Information Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Sustainability
Satellite remote sensing is vital for monitoring, research, and policy addressing sustainability challenges from climate and ecosystem changes to food and water security. Here, Landsat satellite data play a crucial role, thanks to their unique global, long-term, and high-resolution coverage. Yet, gaps and quality limitations in the Landsat data archive may propagate into derived remote-sensing [...]
Rapid seaward expansion of seaport footprints worldwide
Published: 2023-02-25
Subjects: Civil Engineering, Geographic Information Sciences, Geomorphology, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Sustainability
As global maritime traffic increases, seaports grow to accommodate and compete for higher volumes of trade throughput. However, growth trajectories of seaport footprints around the world have gone unmeasured, likely because of a lack of readily available spatio-temporal data. Here, we use geospatial analysis of global satellite imagery from 1990–2020 to show that 65 seaports among the world's top [...]
Reconstructing Rotomahana Basin topography to disclose the lost White Terraces─ New Zealand’s Eighth Wonder of the World
Published: 2022-07-05
Subjects: Geographic Information Sciences, Geomorphology, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Spatial Science, Stratigraphy, Volcanology
The greatest geoscience and tourist attractions in the southern hemisphere were the Pink and White Terraces, the lost Eighth Wonder of the World. British, American and European tourists bypassed local calcareous terraces, for the sea voyage to New Zealand where the siliceous terraces astonished a global audience. Their allure remains. In 1886, the Mount Tarawera eruption buried the terraces. They [...]
Developing seagrass index for long term monitoring of Zostera japonica seagrass bed: a case study in Yellow River Delta, China
Published: 2022-06-30
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing
Seagrass beds offer unique and vital ecological services as an important blue carbon ecosystem in coastal wetlands. Zostera japonica is an intertidal seagrass species native to eastern Asia and is one of the most widely distributed seagrass species in China. However, little is known on the long-term variations of Z. japonica extents. Automatic mapping method for Z. japonica seagrass beds is in [...]