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- All Subjects: Geography
- Creators: Feyrer, Aubrey
- Creators: Rey, Sergio
- Status: Published
The new spatially explicit counterfactual framework considers how spatial effects impact treatment choice, treatment variation, and treatment effects. To illustrate this new methodological framework, I first replicate a classic quasi-experimental study that evaluates the effect of drinking age policy on mortality in the United States from 1970 to 1984, and further extend it with a spatial perspective. In another example, I evaluate food access dynamics in Chicago from 2007 to 2014 by implementing advanced spatial analytics that better account for the complex patterns of food access, and quasi-experimental research design to distill the impact of the Great Recession on the foodscape. Inference interpretation is sensitive to both research design framing and underlying processes that drive geographically distributed relationships. Finally, I advance a new Spatial Data Science Infrastructure to integrate and manage data in dynamic, open environments for public health systems research and decision- making. I demonstrate an infrastructure prototype in a final case study, developed in collaboration with health department officials and community organizations.
Spatial-Temporal Analysis of Barrett Freshmen 2007-2012: Source Area Analysis and Poisson Regression
Meanwhile, the emerging cyberinfrastructure rapidly increases our capacity for handling such massive data with regard to data collection and management, data integration and interoperability, data transmission and visualization, high-performance computing, etc. Cyberinfrastructure (CI) consists of computing systems, data storage systems, advanced instruments and data repositories, visualization environments, and people, all linked together by software and high-performance networks to improve research productivity and enable breakthroughs that are not otherwise possible.
The Geospatial CI (GCI, or CyberGIS), as the synthesis of CI and GIScience has inherent advantages in enabling computationally intensive spatial analysis and modeling (SAM) and collaborative geospatial problem solving and decision making.
This dissertation is dedicated to addressing several critical issues and improving the performance of existing methodologies and systems in the field of CyberGIS. My dissertation will include three parts: The first part is focused on developing methodologies to help public researchers find appropriate open geo-spatial datasets from millions of records provided by thousands of organizations scattered around the world efficiently and effectively. Machine learning and semantic search methods will be utilized in this research. The second part develops an interoperable and replicable geoprocessing service by synthesizing the high-performance computing (HPC) environment, the core spatial statistic/analysis algorithms from the widely adopted open source python package – Python Spatial Analysis Library (PySAL), and rich datasets acquired from the first research. The third part is dedicated to studying optimization strategies for feature data transmission and visualization. This study is intended for solving the performance issue in large feature data transmission through the Internet and visualization on the client (browser) side.
Taken together, the three parts constitute an endeavor towards the methodological improvement and implementation practice of the data-driven, high-performance and intelligent CI to advance spatial sciences.
Manchester United and Leeds United are two of the English Premier League’s most popular and historically successful clubs, and together constitute one of English football’s most interesting and inexplicable rivalries. English popular opinion claims that this rivalry is based on the Wars of the Roses and the royal houses of Lancaster and York, so this thesis engages with this idea and analyzes the rivalry's connections to this medieval historical event. Furthermore, the top flight English football league's evolution into the English Premier League brought social and economic changes to the sport, both at a broad and ground level, and this thesis finds out how much these changes affected this rivalry. All in all, this thesis analyzes medieval, social, cultural, and economic historical connections to one of English football's most unique club rivalries.
The second paper considers marginal agricultural land use for bioenergy crop cultivation to meet future liquid fuels demand from cellulosic biofuels sustainably and profitably. At a wholesale fuel price of $4 gallons-of-gasoline-equivalent, 30 to 90.7 billion gallons of cellulosic biofuels can be supplied by converting 22 to 79.3 million hectares of marginal lands in the Eastern United States (U.S.). Displacing marginal croplands (9.4-13.7 million hectares) reduces stress on water resources by preserving soil moisture. This displacement is comparable to existing land use for first-generation biofuels, limiting food supply impacts. Coupled modeling reveals positive hydroclimate feedback on bioenergy crop yields that moderates the land footprint.
The third paper examines the sustainability implications of expanding use of marginal lands for corn cultivation in the Western Corn Belt, a commercially important and environmentally sensitive U.S. region. Corn cultivation on lower quality lands, which tend to overlap with marginal agricultural lands, is shown to be nearly three times more sensitive to changes in crop prices. Therefore, corn cultivation disproportionately expanded into these lands following price spikes.
Underutilized spaces can contribute towards sustainability at small and large scales in a complementary fashion. While supplying fresh produce locally and delivering other benefits in terms of energy use and public health, UA can also reduce pressures on croplands and complement non-urban food production. This complementarity can help diversify agricultural land use for meeting other goals, like supplying biofuels. However, understanding the role of market forces and economic linkages is critical to anticipate any unintended consequences due to such re-organization of land use.