Introduction: We have explored the use of GIS suitability models for the screening and analyzing of potential sites for Mars landers using engineering and scientific constraints in an iterative manner. While initially performed on locally held data sets, these analyses have now been extended to use widely distributed data from standardized Web Mapping Servers (WMS) [1]. The ability to exploit a...

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In the United States, federal management agencies, such as the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management are required to assess the capability of land for future use. In addition, Arizona law now requires local jurisdictions to prepare comprehensive and general plans. Suitability analysis can be used for compliance with several elements of these plans. Here, a framework for lan...

Saproxylic insects are characterised by their exceptional diversity and high proportion of threatened species. No recent studies have demonstrated the validity of habitat suitability analysis for scientifically based habitat management for these species. We studied the habitat requirements of the endangered longhorn beetle Cerambyx cerdo, a species with a supposed keystone function for the sapr...

The integration of conservation area designs for aquatic and terrestrial species has been a challenge for planners. The difficulties of crafting a single suitability index which reflects the landscape condition relative to all species, terrestrial and aquatic, and choosing assessment units appropriate for both realms, have made integration especially problematic. Here I will introduce a new tec...

Modelling is an effective tool to investigate the ecological state of water resources. In developing countries, the impact of sanitation infrastructures (e.g. wastewater treatment plants) is typically assessed considering the achievement of legal physicochemical quality standards, but ignoring the ecological water quality (EWQ) of the receiving river. In this paper, we developed a generic integ...

We describe a progression fiom pilot studies to development and use of domain-spec fzc verification and validation (V& v ) automation. Our domain is the testing of an AIplanning system that forms a key component of an autonomous spacecraft. We used pilot studies to ascertain opportunities for, and suitability OJ; automating various analyses whose results would contribute to V& V in our domain. ...

Themain idea behind social participatory sensing is to leverage social friends to participate in mobile sensing tasks. A main challenge, however, is the identification and recruitment of sufficient number of well-suited participants. This becomes especially more challenging for large-scale online social networks with unknown network topology and complex friendship relations. Moreover, the poten...