The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model is a robust watershed modeling tool. It typically uses the ArcSWAT interface to create its inputs. ArcSWAT is public domain software which works in the licensed ArcGIS environment. The aim of this paper was to develop an open source user interface for the SWAT model. The interface, QSWAT, is written in the Python programming language and uses vari...

The overall objective of the study is to generate information for an enhanced land use planning with respect to flood hazards. The study assesses the potential impact of climate change by simulating a dam break scenario in a high intensity rainfall event and evaluates the vulnerability risk in the downstream region by integrating ArcGIS and Hydrologic Engineering Centers River Analysis System (...

In Canada, flooding is the most common and costly natural hazard. Flooding events significantly impact communities, damage infrastructures threaten public security. Communication, as part of a flood risk management strategy, an essential means countering these threats. It therefore important to develop new innovative tools communicate with citizens. From this perspective, use story maps can be ...

Ecological data from land surveys from 1811 for the 100,000-acre Connecticut Tract in western New York were transcribed and then analyzed using ArcGIS and IDRISI GIS software. The surveys contained both witness tree data and line descriptions, which were analyzed for species composition and community type. Results illustrate that many changes have occurred in species composition. Possible cause...

While free and open source software becomes increasingly important in geospatial research and industry, open science perspectives are generally less reflected in universities’ educational programs. We present an example of how free and open source software can be incorporated into geospatial education to promote open and reproducible science. Since 2008 graduate students at North Carolina State...

GIS technology has been used for many years in environmental risk analysis due to its capability to focus on the management and analysis of geographic and alphanumeric data to support spatial decision-making (Vairavamoorthy et al, 2007). Especially in emergency management, a DSS (Decision Support System) constitutes an important task to provide quick responses, though not completely exhaustive,...

Currently, there is no spatial DBMS that implements a rule-based topology engine (considering that the topology rules are designed and performed in the spatial backend). If the topology rules are applied in the frontend (as in many GIS desktop programs), ArcGIS is the most advanced solution. The system presented in this paper has several major advantages over the ArcGIS approach: it can be exte...

This paper presents algorithmic components and corresponding software routines for extracting shoreline features from remote sensing imagery and LiDAR data. Conceptually, shoreline features are treated as boundary lines between land objects and water objects. Numerical algorithms have been identified and devised to segment and classify remote sensing imagery and LiDAR data into land and water p...