Books

Book

GIS, Spatial Analysis, and Modeling.

Author (s)

David J. Maguire, Michael Batty, and Michael F. Goodchild, (eds.)

Other Info

ESRI Press, Redland, 2005, xiii+480p, ISBN 1589481305.

Category

GIS

Level

Intermediate

Recommended By

Rajesh Bahadur Thapa

Review

The book is related to spatial modeling within a GIS framework. The term modeling in this book includes both data modeling and process modeling. The book covers the concepts of spatial modeling, techniques, methods, and models currently available in GIS arena. Thirty-six authors have contributed their invaluable research efforts to this book. The twenty-one chapters focusing on potential GIS users in modeling and spatial analysis are organized into four key sections. There are many different approaches to geographic modeling and many types of models as Maguire, Batty and Goodchild pointed out in this book. Too much has been written but not enough has been done. Many challenges in spatial modeling still remain unsolved. However, deterministic models are useful for explaining and predicting well-defined static systems, but too much complexity requires more choices in approaches, modeling and spatial simulations. Although, the book illustrated many spatial analysis and modeling techniques using professional GIS software but it lacked to address open sources GIS platforms and their applications in spatial analysis and modeling. This book can be a good reference for graduate students and intermediate GIS professionals even though it is highly priced. The book covers a wide range of spatial analysis and modeling applications with lots of technical illustrations in different issues of socioeconomic and environment. Except for some minor errors in a few chapters, sentences repeated in chapter 6 for example, most of the chapters in this book are well written. The book is pleasant to read in spite of the complex subject matter. More reading...Thapa, R.B. 2006. GIS, Spatial Analysis, and Modeling (eds. by David J. Maguire, Michael Batty, and Michael F. Goodchild, ESRI Press, Redland, 2005), Geographical Review of Japan, 79:(12) 300 - 303 (in English edition).

Book

Spatial Multicriteria Decision Making and Analysis: A Geographical Information Sciences Approach

Author (s)

Jean-Clause Thill

Other Info

Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Gower House, Croft Road, Aldershot, Hants GU11 3HR, England

Category

GIS

Level

Intermediate

Recommended By

Duong Dang Khoi

Review

This textbook is structured into three parts. The first part presents theoretical and conceptual issues of spatial multicriteria decision making and analysis of significance to all application domains. The second part presents various forms of location decision and analysis problems in the domains of natural resource management and comprehensive planning. The third part gives various case studies on various spatial decision problems such as water resource management, watershed management, land suitability analysis, and land-use planning.

Book

The environment as Hazard

Author (s)

Ian Burton, Robert W. Kates and Gilbert F. White

Other Info

The Guilford Press New York / London. 72 Spring Street, New York, NY 10012

Category

Environmental hazard

Level

Beginner

Recommended By

Matteo Gismondi

Review

This book is mainly related to hazards and how globally people are reacting to face them. Although this book was written in 1978 and a second edition was produced in 1993 completing the book with more updated informations. Moreover despite being written in not so recent times, it is still very actual and the information given reflects the nowadays reality. The book offers several examples of hazards around the world in order to have a multiple overview over the same event. Moreover it considers different type of natural disasters focusing on the different aspects that characterize each of them. I can suggest this book as complementary reading for those who are not familiar with natural disasters and want to have a global overview to how people respond to hazards as individuals, groups and by making policies trying to reduce the natural disasters damage.

Book

Modelling Land-Use Change: Progress and Applications

Author (s)

Eric Koomen, John Stillwell, Aldrik Bakema and Henk J. Scholten (eds.)

Other Info

The GeoJournal Library Vol. 90, Published by Springer (2007), P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. ISBN 978-1-4020-6484-5

Category

Land Use Change Modelling

Level

Intermediate

Recommended By

Chandra Irawadi Wijaya

Review

Land use is a clear evidence of human interaction with natural resources that shows how human manages and acts to their natural resources. The need of people of land may alter land uses which involve land conversion from a type of use to other uses to fulfill human activities. Conversion of land may impact soil, water, and climate which are directly related to environmental issue. This book is compilation of recent issues about modeling land use change which are collected from some individuals and organizations in many countries. This book is divided into 6 parts, and every part contains some chapters written by researchers which discuss about the recent progress and applications related to modeling land use change. In the first part, the readers will be introduced to the object-oriented geo-database approach to analyse spatial developments in a period of transition at cadastral parcel, the driving forces identification by considering the level of driving forces and type of its driving forces, an application of matrix land-use analysis to identify the landscape changes, and a case study of new land-use development processes associated with the acceleration of urbanisation in China. In the second part of this book, explanatory models of land use change will be discussed in order to understand the land use change phenomenon in some areas. In this part, a stochastic Markov model is used by J. Pena et al that analyses a pair of land-use images and outputs a transition probability matrix, multinomial logistic regression model which derive the probability maps to downscale aggregated land-use data, and a spatial interaction model to understand the historic land-use evolution of a small island. In the third part, the book delivers the spatial optimization in land use allocation problems, sustainable land use and water management in mountain ecosystems, and modeling land use change using evolutionary algorithms which may develop the knowledge of the readers in optimization modeling. Nowadays, modeling has been developed in many approaches which may benefit people to understand the mechanism of the system. The modeling approaches have been developed may be integrated in order to produce new modeling approaches which may give better understandings of the system. In the fourth part of this book, the incorporation of new modeling approaches will be discussed by delivering some case studies of integration of modeling approaches to the readers. In the fifth part, the readers will be shown the operation of simulation of land use models for environmental impact assessment, urban and regional land use dynamics, and also the dynamic simulation of land use trajectories. And, due to the policy factors have important roles in driving the land use dynamics, the last part of this book discusses about land use simulation for policy analysis. In this sixth part, the declining of the urban fabric in Eastern Germany, land use simulation for water management and GIS-based modeling of land use systems, are discussed regarding to the policy factors which have been applied in the study area.

Book

Digital Analysis of Remotely Sensed Imagery

Author (s)

Jay Gao and McGraw-Hill

Other Info

ISBN 978-0-07-160465-9, McGraw-Hill, New York, 2009, USA

Category

Remote Sensing

Level

Intermediate

Recommended By

Surantha Dassanayake

Review

This book provides GIS and Remote Sensing users with a suitable textbook to comprehend information derivation from Airborne and Spaceborne remote sensing materials. Further this book describes the various steps involved in the exploitation of remote sensing imagery, from the selection of the relevant remotely sensed images to the integration of the derived information in GIS of each chapter. It covers not only the concepts and principles of remote sensing images analysis. A comprehensive coverage of image formats, storage, and processing systems is also including in the book that will be of great interest for those engaged in analysis and management of geospatial images. This book is very easy to understand if a low working knowledge of remote sensing fundamentals and no specific mathematical background. The basic concepts related to geometric sciences (ex. Projections in GIS and coordinate systems in GIS, and GPS techniques) are provided when these topics step in the image analysis approaches. In general, the structure of the book is good and a sufficient number of references are provided to the reader at the end of each chapter if anybody wants to deeper into a topic. Its content is well explained, very readable, and there are reasonable details to understand the method principles, strengths and limitations.