Geographic information systems

Aerial photo-interpretation, GIS analysis, and groundwater modeling were employed to determine the impact of permitted groundwater withdrawal, primarily for agricultural irrigation, on protected wetland communities within Jonathan Dickinson State Park (JDSP), Martin County Florida. Since 1952, much of the wetland habitat has succeeded to terrestrial pine flatwoods in the southwestern section of the wilderness preserve of JDSP. The drying trend can not be linked to natural hydrologic impact, but strongly correlates to groundwater drawdown calculated using a three-dimensional groundwater computer model.

At present the current trip generation models used in the state of Florida to derive residential trip generation rates take into account three variables, dwelling type, auto ownership and household size. It is hoped that by examining geographic location, improvements can be made to the present Florida Standard Urban Transportation Modeling Structure (FSUTMS). To analyze the impact of geographic location, GIS technology will be used. GIS will aid the study in several ways. It will be used to identify urban centers and major highways within the study area and once this is accomplished, GIS will be used to create zones around the selected urban centers and the major highways. Finally GIS will be used to prepare the survey data for statistical analysis. In addition to looking at geographic location, the study will also examine whether certain lifestyle variables can influence residential trip rates within the study area. Throughout this study it is hoped that the predictive power of the Florida Standard Urban Transportation Modeling Structure can be improved.

The State of Florida is divided into 67 counties. These counties serve as an "arm of the state" and administer state governmental functions at the local level. The last county to be created was Gilchrist on December 4, 1925. Since then, the state has evolved from a frontier state (population 1925) into the forth most populous state (population 1995) in the U.S. The county boundaries have not reflected this evolution. Using geographic information systems (GIS) and current census information the county boundaries of Florida will be reconfigured in hopes of better representing the citizens of the State of Florida at the county level.

The imminent availability of high resolution satellite imagery is causing a paradigm shift in remote sensing. Detente brought about new policy directives in the U.S. and abroad, which opened up for civilian use former Earth observation spy technology down to one meter resolution, previously considered classified and strictly used by the intelligence communities for national security. This study describes a number of new ventures in the private sector which have been formed to launch commercial high resolution systems. The satellites' technical capabilities are analyzed, and application development options for the new imagery are discussed in detail. This new remote sensing data source is also seen within the framework of the larger GeoTechnology Industry to which it belongs, and the author proposes appropriate business strategies for successful commercialization.

Much of the recent research concerning the use of GIS has revolved around data quality. Types of errors inherent in GIS data layers, and also errors that may be produced through the creation and manipulation of data layers have been identified. Definitions of these errors, and observations of how these errors occur have been offered. However, the majority of the research is qualitative. It is known that positional variation is produced through differing interpretations and generalization of points, lines, and polygons, but it is not known to what extent. This information would be extremely helpful in allowing the user of the information to fine tune the application, based on the accuracy of the data. Providing this type of information is the goal of this research. Quantitative analysis of the results of a series of experiments will give a numerical range of possible positional errors produced through database creation via aerial photo interpretation.

Protecting Natural Resources, such as drinking water in terms of quality and quantity, is one of the missions of South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD). Water Supply Planning is one of the many projects at the Planning Department of the SFWMD, in which sixteen counties are analyzed to determine the most accurate population distribution for water supply distribution among the water utility companies. This thesis examines the current methodology which is used at the SFWMD, and addresses its shortcomings. It then introduces a proposed methodology, to improve population distribution analysis, by incorporating satellite imagery. Textural classification of satellite imagery will be used to extract residential neighborhoods from non-residential areas. The resultant residential areas, which is in the form of raster data, then will be converted to a vector coverage to be utilized as an additional source of data. Incorporating satellite imagery eliminates the assumption of homogenous population distribution, which the current methodology is based on and consequently, leads to a more accurate population distribution methodology.

Geographic information systems (GIS) have been increasingly used in urban transportation planning and modeling. One key advantage of GIS is its ability to integrate and analyze various kinds of geographically referenced data. Modeling and analysis tools used to predict travel patterns should be shaped by changes in spatial organization that are currently taking place. Utilizing the detailed data made available by GIS, this study investigates the potential improvements offered to the conventional trip generation and trip distribution models by explicitly referencing the spatial land use and street network patterns within traffic analysis zones (TAZs).

GIS is expected to differ from other digital spatial data handling packages by virtue of its emphasis on spatial analysis and modeling, yet major limitations of spatial analytical capabilities are still observed. To identify the types of spatial analysis which are desirable and appropriate to GIS, this thesis proposes a systematic 'building-blocks' approach for the identification of data models and spatial analytical tools to develop a flexible and powerful GIS spatial analysis and modeling environment. The building-blocks approach will be demonstrated in this thesis by examining a ground water flow model in MODFLOW, an SDA package designed specifically for this purpose. Procedures in MODFLOW will be disassembled into their primitive component functions, or building-blocks, which will then be sought out in ARC/INFO, representing a modern, general-purpose GIS. In the process, the levels of integration between GIS and SDA will be encountered and discussed.

A new technique was devised that produces a LIDAR based predevelopment Digital Elevation Model and offers a more superior visualization, of the natural landscape prior to development, than the Bare Earth Model produced by Florida International University's Hurricane Center. Two locations in southeastern Florida have been chosen for this study. The first site is utilized as a control for testing the model and contains a present day ridge system that runs north and south through the Boca Raton cemetery. The second site is a paleowatershed, the Yamato Marsh which was located in Delray Beach. Modeling of the marsh site will assist in delineating surficial geomorphic features before they were anthropogenically altered. The predevelopment Digital Elevation Model successfully represents human derived land-use changes and defines the watershed boundaries of the historic Yamato Marsh.

From 1982 to 1992, urban areas of Broward County Florida grew 44.2 percent from 52,206 hectares to 75,274 hectares (Sierra Club, 1998). Many municipalities in Broward are now approaching critical build-out and because of this urban open space is under pressure. Given the development predicament facing the remaining vacant land in Broward, it's time to rethink the role and function of open space in the urban fabric. This thesis investigates the role of golf courses in the provision of open space in urban Broward County. It argues that golf courses, despite their environmentally negative image, play an underestimated role in urban open space. Golf courses provide hectares of pervious surface and have vegetative features integral to the game not typically found in city parks or county parks. This thesis shows how golf courses compare to city and county parks in terms of their environmental contribution to urban Broward County.