Possibilities of land use change analysis in a mountainous rural area: a methodological approach

Decreasing population density is a current trend in the European Union, and causes a lower environmental impact on the landscape. However, besides the desirable effect on the regeneration processes of semi-natural forest ecosystems, the lack of traditional management techniques can also lead to detrimental ecological processes. In this study we investigated the land use pattern changes in a micro-region (in North-Eastern Hungary) between 1952 and 2005, based on vectorised land use data from archive aerial photos. We also evaluated the methodology of comparisons using GIS methods, fuzzy sets and landscape metrics. We found that both GIS methods and statistical analysis of landscape metrics resulted in more or less the same findings. Differences were not as relevant as was expected considering the general tendencies of the past 60 years in Hungary. The change in the annual rate of forest recovery was 0.12%; settlements extended their area by an annual rate of 3.04%, while grasslands and arable lands had a net loss in their area within the studied period (0.60% and 0.89%, respectively). The kappa index showed a smaller similarity (~60%) between these dates but the fuzzy kappa and the aggregation index, taking into account both spatial and thematic errors, gave a more reliable result (~70–80% similarity). Landscape metrics on patch and class level ensured the possibility of a detailed analysis. We arrived at a similar outcome but were able to verify all the calculations through statistical tests. With this approach we were able to reveal significant (p < 0.05) changes; however, effect sizes did not show large magnitudes. Comparing the methods of revealing landscape change, the approach of landscape metrics was the most effective approach, as it was independent of spatial errors and ensuring a multiple way of interpretation.     

A parallel algorithm for coverage optimization on multi-core architectures

Location siting is an important part of service provision, with much potential to impact operational efficiency, safety, security, system reliability, etc. A class of location models seeks to optimize coverage of demand for service that is continuously distributed across space. Decision-making and planning contexts include police/fire resource allocation for a community, siting cellular towers to support cell phone signal transmission, locating emergency warning sirens to alert the public of severe weather and other related dangers, and many others as well. When facilities can be sited anywhere in continuous space to provide coverage to an entire region, this is a very computationally challenging problem to solve because potential demand for service is everywhere and there are an infinite number of potential facility sites to consider. This article develops a new parallel solution approach for this location coverage optimization problem through an iterative bounding scheme on multi-core architectures. The developed approach is applied to site emergency warning sirens in Dublin, Ohio, and fire stations in Elk Grove, California. Results demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach, enabling real-time analysis and planning. This work illustrates that the integration of cyberinfrastructure can significantly improve computational efficiency in solving challenging spatial optimization problems, fitting the themes of this special issue: cyberinfrastructure, GIS, and spatial optimization.     

Estimating spatial efficiency using cyber search,GIS, and spatial optimization: a case study of fire service deployment in Los Angeles County

ABSTRACT

The efficiency of public investments and services has been of interest to geographic researchers for several decades. While in the private sector inefficiency often leads to higher prices, loss of competitiveness, and loss of business, in the public sector inefficiency in service provision does not necessarily lead to immediate changes. In many cases, it is not an entirely easy task to analyze a particular service as appropriate data may be difficult to obtain and hidden in detailed budgets. In this paper, we develop an integrative approach that uses cyber search, Geographic Information System (GIS), and spatial optimization to estimate the spatial efficiency of fire protection services in Los Angeles (LA) County. We develop a cyber-search process to identify current deployment patterns of fire stations across the major urban region of LA County. We compare the results of our search to existing databases. Using spatial optimization, we estimate the level of deployment that is needed to meet desired coverage levels based upon the location of an ideal fire station pattern, and then compare this ideal level of deployment to the existing system as a means of estimating spatial efficiency. GIS is adopted throughout the paper to simulate the demand locations, to conduct location-based spatial analysis, to visualize fire station data, and to map model simulation results. Finally, we show that the existing system in LA County has considerable room for improvement. The methodology presented in this paper is both novel and groundbreaking, and the automated assessments are readily transferable to other counties and jurisdictions.     

Optimal routing for waste collection: a case study in Singapore

ABSTRACT

To collect and dispose growing amounts of municipal solid waste (MSW) changed to be a hot topic along with the rapid urbanization in past decades. Cities are more and more dependent on the incineration instead of landfilling due to the cost-efficiency and environmental concerns. Considering the limited number of incineration plants and complicated situation of transportation in both spatial and temporal dimensions in different cities, the optimal routing for waste collection turns to be meaningful research topic. In this research, the ant colony optimization (ACO)-based multi-objective routing model coupled with min-max model and Dijkstra’s algorithm is proposed to address the question of which route to take from these waste-generating points to the target incineration plant(s) considering travel time, accident probability (black spots), and population exposure, so as to support the routing decision-making. The model is successfully implemented in Singapore and the effectiveness of the model has also been justified. Besides, few limitations of this research have also been discussed, some of which would also be the future directions of our research, especially the design and integration of a web-based routing decision-making support system.     

页岩气基础地质调查皖南地1井钻探施工技术

皖南地1井是部署在安徽省南陵县烟墩镇的一口页岩气基础地质调查井。文章详细介绍了该井的钻探施工工艺技术以及遇到复杂问题的处理方法,并对钻效进行了分析,提出了实现优质高效钻探的措施。项目的顺利实施,梳理了皖南地区地层层序,为页岩气储层理论推测提供了有力的实物数据支撑和验证。     

Evaluation of effectiveness of three fuzzy systems and three texture extraction methods for building damage detection from post-event LiDAR data

Building damage maps after disasters can help us to better manage the rescue operations. Researchers have used Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data for extracting the building damage maps. For producing building damage maps from LiDAR data in a rapid manner, it is necessary to understand the effectiveness of features and classifiers. However, there is no comprehensive study on the performance of features and classifiers in identifying damaged areas. In this study, the effectiveness of three texture extraction methods and three fuzzy systems for producing the building damage maps was investigated. In the proposed method, at first, a pre-processing stage was utilized to apply essential processes on post-event LiDAR data. Second, textural features were extracted from the pre-processed LiDAR data. Third, fuzzy inference systems were generated to make a relation between the extracted textural features of buildings and their damage extents. The proposed method was tested across three areas over the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Three building damage maps with overall accuracies of 75.0%, 78.1% and 61.4% were achieved. Based on outcomes, the fuzzy inference systems were stronger than random forest, bagging, boosting and support vector machine classifiers for detecting damaged buildings.     

Geometric-constrained multi-view image matching method based on semi-global optimization

Targeting at a reliable image matching of multiple remote sensing images for the generation of digital surface models, this paper presents a geometric-constrained multi-view image matching method, based on an energy minimization framework. By employing a geometrical constraint, the cost value of the energy function was calculated from multiple images, and the cost value was aggregated in an image space using a semi-global optimization approach. A homography transform parameter calculation method is proposed for fast calculation of projection pixel on each image when calculating cost values. It is based on the known interior orientation parameters, exterior orientation parameters, and a given elevation value. For an efficient and reliable processing of multiple remote sensing images, the proposed matching method was performed via a coarse-to-fine strategy through image pyramid. Three sets of airborne remote sensing images were used to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. Results reveal that the multi-view image matching can improve matching reliability. Moreover, the experimental results show that the proposed method performs better than traditional methods.     

A geometric-based approach for road matching on multi-scale datasets using a genetic algorithm

Object matching is used in various applications including conflation, data quality assessment, updating, and multi-scale analysis. The objective of matching is to identify objects referring to the same entity. This article aims to present an optimization-based linear object-matching approach in multi-scale, multi-source datasets. By taking into account geometric criteria, the proposed approach uses real coded genetic algorithm (RCGA) and sensitivity analysis to identify corresponding objects. Moreover, in this approach, any initial dependency on empirical parameters such as buffer distance, threshold of spatial similarity degree, and weights of criteria is eliminated and, instead, the optimal values for these parameters are calculated for each dataset. Volunteered geographical information (VGI) and authoritative data with different scales and sources were used to assess the efficiency of the proposed approach. According to the results, in addition to an efficient performance in various datasets, the proposed approach was able to appropriately identify the corresponding objects in these datasets by achieving higher F-Score.     

基于优化经验模态分解和聚类分析的滑坡位移智能预测研究

针对三峡库区"阶跃式"滑坡的变形特征,提出了一种新的滑坡位移预测方法。以白水河滑坡ZG118和XD-01监测点位移数据为例,采用基于软筛分停止准则的经验模态分解(SSSC-EMD)将累计位移-时间曲线和影响因子时间序列自适应地分解为多个固有模态函数(IMF),并采用K均值(K-Means)聚类法对其进行聚类累加,得到有物理含义的位移分量(趋势性位移、周期性位移以及随机性位移)和影响因子分量(高频影响因子和低频影响因子)。使用最小二乘法对趋势性位移进行拟合预测;采用果蝇优化-最小二乘支持向量机(FOA-LSSVM)模型对周期性位移和随机性位移进行预测。将各位移分量预测值进行叠加处理,实现滑坡累计位移的预测。研究结果表明,所提出的(SSSC-EMD)-K-Means-(FOA-LSSVM)模型能够预测"阶跃式"滑坡的位移变化规律,且预测精度高于传统的支持向量机回归(SVR)、最小二乘支持向量机(LSSVM)模型;并通过改变训练集长度,进行单因素分析,发现其与预测精度之间呈正相关关系。     

金沙江白格滑坡残留体稳定性分析与防治对策

金沙江白格滑坡在经历了2018年10月和11月的2次滑动堵江后,在其后缘仍存在K1、K2和K3等3处规模较大的残留崩滑体,并有再次失稳堵江的可能。目前关于残留体稳定性的研究还存在较大争议,多从影响因素及成因机制等方面进行定性分析,其结果依赖于评价者的经验,差异较大。在野外调查的基础上,针对白格滑坡所在区工程地质条件及其残留体变形特征,选取坡高、坡度、坡面形态、临空面、地下水出露、裂缝发育和变形等7个因素作为评价因子,基于模糊综合评判模型,运用层次分析法对白格滑坡残留体进行分区稳定性评价,并提出相应的防治对策。评价结果表明:K1与K2残留体稳定性较差;K3残留体基本稳定,与实际调查状况较吻合。研究结果可为同类型滑坡的评价与防治提供参考。