A hybrid approach to modeling territorial control in violent armed conflicts

Territorial control is central to the understanding of violent armed conflicts, yet reliable and valid measures of this concept do not exist. We argue that geospatial analysis provides an important perspective to measure the concept. In particular, measuring territorial control can be seen as an application of calculating service areas around points of control. The modeling challenge is acute for areas with limited road infrastructure, where no complete network is available to perform the analysis, and movements largely occur off road. We present a new geospatial approach that applies network analysis on a hybrid transportation network with both actual road data and hexagon‐fishnet‐based artificial road data representing on‐road and off‐road movements, respectively. Movement speed or restriction can be readily adjusted using various input data. Simulating off‐road movement with hexagon‐fishnet‐based artificial road data has a number of advantages including scalability to small or large study areas and flexibility to allow all‐directional travel. We apply this method to measuring territorial control of armed groups in Sub‐Saharan Africa where inferior transport infrastructure is the norm. Based on the Uppsala Conflict Data Program's (UCDP) Georeferenced Event Data (GED) as well as spatial data on terrain, population locations, and limited transportation networks, we enhance the delineation of the specific areas directly controlled by each warring party during civil wars within a given travel time.     

Cultural and economic residential sorting of Auckland’s population, 1991–2013: an entropy approach

Journal of Geographical Systems - Auckland, the largest city of New Zealand, is one of the most diverse cities in the world, with more than 40% of its population born abroad, more than 200...     

Spatial process and data models: Toward integration of agent-based models and GIS

The use of object-orientation for both spatial data and spatial process models facilitates their integration, which can allow exploration and explanation of spatial-temporal phenomena. In order to better understand how tight coupling might proceed and to evaluate the possible functional and efficiency gains from such a tight coupling, we identify four key relationships affecting how geographic data (fields and objects) and agent-based process models can interact: identity, causal, temporal and topological. We discuss approaches to implementing tight integration, focusing on a middleware approach that links existing GIS and ABM development platforms, and illustrate the need and approaches with example agent-based models.     

Combined Digital Photogrammetry and Time-of-Flight Laser Scanning for Monitoring Cliff Evolution

Although cliffs form approximately 75% of the world's coastline, the understanding of the processes through which they evolve remains limited because of a lack of quantitative data on the morphological changes they undergo. In this paper the combination of terrestrial time-of-flight laser scanning with high-resolution digital photogrammetry is examined to generate high-quality data-sets pertaining to the geomorphic processes governing cliff development. The study was undertaken on a section of hard rock cliffs in North Yorkshire, UK, which has been monitored over a 12-month period. High-density, laser-scanned point clouds have been used to produce an accurate representation of these complex surfaces, free from the optical variations that degrade photographic data. These data-sets have been combined with high-resolution photographic monitoring, resampled with the fixed accuracies of the terrestrial laser survey, to generate a new approach to recording the volumetric changes in complex coastal cliffs. This has led to significant improvements in the understanding of the activity patterns of coastal cliffs.     

Prehistoric soil and water detention structures (gabarbands) at Phang,Sindh Kohistan,Pakistan: An adaptation to environmental change?

Five gabarbands (dams), components of integrated soil and water conservation systems, were investigated in the arid region of Sindh Kohistan. The dams are associated with two prehistoric Kot Dijian settlements, Phang and Kohtrash (3200–2800 B. C.). The dams were constructed with relatively permeable materials. Three of the dams, South, East, and North, close off water gaps and a strike valley, respectively, to form a detention basin. The West Dam, located on Phang Nai, upstream of the detention basin removed the coarser sediment fraction from the flows. Spring Dam, located in a water gap to the north of the detention basin, acted as a low-head weir to distribute flow from a perennial spring onto the floodplain of Baran Nai, where double-cropping was probably practiced. Faulting eliminated the spring, which had probably supported the Kohtrash site, and led to construction of the detection basin for the purposes of subsurface storage of detained flows. Association of both modern and prehistoric sites with springs suggests that there has not been appreciable climate change in Sindh Kohistan in the last 5000 years. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.