Urban Employment Subcenters and Sectoral Clustering in Montreal: Complementary Approaches to the Study of Urban Form

Since the late 1980's there has been renewed interest in the study of employment polynucleation within metropolitan areas, fed in part by the move to suburban locations of high-order service functions. In parallel, a growing body of research has underlined the role which proximity plays in information exchange, innovation and growth. So far there have been only limited attempts to merge these two approaches and investigate the degree to which local agglomeration economies and positive externalities may underpin the creation of suburban employment poles. In this paper a first step is taken in this direction by proposing an approach to systematically investigate the colocation of economic activities within a metropolitan context. It is found that the groups of economic activities which systematically tend to colocate closely mirror those activities which would be grouped together along sectoral lines.     

Blending Aggregation and Selection: Adapting Parallel Coordinates for the Visualization of Large Datasets

Abstract

Many of the traditional data visualization techniques, which proved to be supportive for exploratory analysis of datasets of moderate sizes, fail to fulfil their function when applied to large datasets. There are two approaches to coping with large amounts of data: data selection, when only a portion of data is displayed, and data aggregation, i.e. grouping data items and considering the groups instead of the original data. None of these approaches alone suits the needs of exploratory data analysis, which requires consideration of data on all levels: overall (considering a dataset as a whole), intermediate (viewing and comparing collective characteristics of arbitrary data subsets, or classes), and elementary (accessing individual data items). Therefore, it is necessary to combine these approaches, i.e. build a tool showing the whole set and arbitrarily defined subsets (object classes) in an aggregated way and superimposing this with a representation of arbitrarily selected individual data items.

We have achieved such a combination of approaches by modifying the technique of parallel coordinate plot. These modifications are described and analysed in the paper.     

Satellite-based investigation of flood-affected rice cultivation areas in Chao Phraya River Delta,Thailand

The occurrence of catastrophic floods in Thailand in 2011 caused significant damage to rice agriculture. This study investigated flood-affected rice cultivation areas in the Chao Phraya River Delta (CRD) rice bowl, Thailand using time-series moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) data. The data were processed for 2008 (normal flood year) and 2011, comprising four main steps: (1) data pre-processing to construct time-series MODIS vegetation indices (VIs), to filter noise from the time-series VIs by the empirical mode decomposition (EMD), and to mask out non-agricultural areas in respect to water-related cropping areas; (2) flood-affected area classification using the unsupervised linear mixture model (ULMM); (3) rice crop classification using the support vector machines (SVM); and (4) accuracy assessment of flood and rice crop mapping results. The comparisons between the flood mapping results and the ground reference data indicated an overall accuracy of 97.9% and Kappa coefficient of 0.62 achieved for 2008, and 95.7% and 0.77 for 2011, respectively. These results were reaffirmed by close agreement (R² > 0.8) between comparisons of the two datasets at the provincial level. The crop mapping results compared with the ground reference data revealed that the overall accuracies and Kappa coefficients obtained for 2008 were 88.5% and 0.82, and for 2011 were 84.1% and 0.76, respectively. A strong correlation was also found between MODIS-derived rice area and rice area statistics at the provincial level (R² > 0.7). Rice crop maps overlaid on the flood-affected area maps showed that approximately 16.8% of the rice cultivation area was affected by floods in 2011 compared to 4.9% in 2008. A majority of the flood-expanded area was observed for the double-cropped rice (10.5%), probably due to flood-induced effects to the autumn–summer and rainy season crops. Information achieved from this study could be useful for agricultural planners to mitigate possible impacts of floods on rice production.     

基于波段子集的独立分量分析的特征提取的高光谱遥感影像分类

针对高光谱影像数据具有波段众多、数据量较大的特点,本文提出了一种基于波段子集的独立分量分析(ICA)特征提取的高光谱遥感影像分类的新方法。以北京昌平小汤山地区的高光谱影像为例,根据高光谱遥感影像的相邻波段的相关性进行子空间划分,在各个波段子集上采用ICA算法进行特征提取,将各个子空间提取的特征合并组成特征向量,采用支持向量机(SVM)分类器进行分类。结果表明:该方法分类精度最佳(分类精度89.04%,Kappa系数0.8605,明显优于其它特征提取方法的SVM分类,有效地提高了高光谱数据的分类精度。     

运用GVF Snake算法提取水域的不规则边界

GVF Snake是一种改进型主动轮廓提取算法。本文在详细介绍GVF Snake原理的基础上,重点对GVF Snake的内、外部约束力在边界提取中的作用以及初始边界对提取结果的影响进行了实验研究,提出了初始边界和内部约束力权值的合理设置方法,设计并实现了交互式GVF Snake算法,并用于提取遥感影像上水域的不规则边界。该算法采用种子点区域生长法自动给出水域的初始边界,采用人机交互法设置内部约束力权值,然后运用GVF Snake算法搜索水域的实际边界。实验表明：对于形状极不规则的水域,交互式GVF Snake算法也能方便、快速、准确地获取其边界。     

5·12地震灾区生态环境变化研究

针对5·12地震及快速灾后重建带来的生态环境变化,基于不同时相的遥感影像数据,构建研究区(北川县)生态环境综合评价体系结构,并提取相关变化信息,最终得出生态环境质量等级图。结果表明:地震及其次生灾害和灾后重建等使得北川县特别是东南部老县城附近地区、新县城重建地区生态环境受到一定程度的破坏,造成该地区环境质量的下降。     

我国东部沿海三大经济区区域经济的空间自相关分析

本文以我国东部沿海三大经济区域——环渤海、长三角、珠三角为研究对象,依据空间统计学的空间自相关方法,采用以高速公路里程数为影响因子改进的空间权重矩阵,以及全局和局部Moran I指数模型,通过ArcToolbox空间分析工具分析三大区域经济空间格局。研究结果表明,长三角与珠三角区域发展呈显著的空间正相关,长三角地区较之其他两地区发展最为成熟,发展极辐射大。同时地理环境对于区域经济发展作用明显,发展核心城市集中于沿江地区或平原地区。     

基于AdaBoost算法的遥感影像水体信息提取

AdaBoost算法利用每个特征构造一个简单分类器,然后将简单分类器进行训练组合成一个强分类器。算法能够充分利用每个分类器的优势并避免其劣势,得到一个最佳判别,达到提高分类精度的目的。本文利用TM影像,将影像各波段灰度、水体指数和谱间关系特征相结合,构成提取水体的强分类器,实现水体提取。实验结果表明,算法能够非常有效地、高精度地提取水体信息。     

一种GIS空间知识分析的影像纹理尺度提取算法

本文提出了一种基于GIS领域空间知识的影像纹理尺度提取方法:该方法分析了GIS领域知识辅助下人类对纹理特征的认知过程,对4个步骤的具体实现算法进行探讨;并选取海南省昌江县作为研究区域,实验证明了本方法的有效性,且与传统的枚举法相比,在性能相近的情况下其效率显著提高,更适合于大数据量遥感影像分类运算。     

Building extraction from LIDAR based semantic analysis

Extraction of buildings from LIDAR data has been an active research field in recent years. A scheme for building detection and reconstruction from LIDAR data is presented with an object-oriented method which is based on the buildings' semantic rules. Two key steps are discussed: how to group the discrete LIDAR points into single objects and how to establish the buildings' semantic rules. In the end, the buildings are reconstructed in 3D form and three common parametric building models (flat, gabled, hipped) are implemented.