Core Science Systems
Publications
Here you will find publications, reports and articles produced by Core Science System scientists. For a comprehensive listing of all USGS publications please click the button below.
Community for Data Integration fiscal year 2017 funded project report
The U.S. Geological Survey Community for Data Integration annually funds small projects focusing on data integration for interdisciplinary research, innovative data management, and demonstration of new technologies. This report provides a summary of the 11 projects funded in fiscal year 2017, outlining their goals, activities, and outputs.
Hsu, Leslie; Allstadt, Kate E.; Bell, Tara M.; Boydston, Erin E.; Erickson, Richard A.; Everette, A. Lance; Lentz, Erika E.; Peters, Jeff; Reichert, Brian E.; Nagorsen, Sarah; Sherba, Jason T.; Signell, Richard P.; Wiltermuth, Mark T.; Young, John A.
Automated road breaching to enhance extraction of natural drainage networks from elevation models through deep learning
High-resolution (HR) digital elevation models (DEMs), such as those at resolutions of 1 and 3 meters, have increasingly become more widely available, along with lidar point cloud data. In a natural environment, a detailed surface water drainage network can be extracted from a HR DEM using flow-direction and flow-accumulation modeling. However,...
Stanislawski, Larry; Brockmeyer, Tyler; Shavers, Ethan J. Area-preserving simplification of polygon features
Developing simplified representations of a two-dimensional polyline is an important problem in cartographic data analytics where datasets must be integrated across spatial resolutions. This problem is generally referred to as line simplification, and is increasingly driven by preservation of specific analytic properties such as positional accuracy...
Kronenfeld, Barry J.; Stanislawski, Larry V.; Brockmeyer, Tyler; Buttenfield, Barbara P. Similarity assessment of linear hydrographic features using high performance computing
This work discusses a current open source implementation of a line similarity assessment workflow to compare elevation-derived drainage lines with the high-resolution National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) surface-water flow network. The process identifies matching and mismatching lines in each dataset to help focus subsequent validation procedures to...
Stanislawski, Larry V.; Wendel, Jeffrey; Shavers, Ethan J.; Li, Ting Classifying physiographic regimes on terrain and hydrologic factors for adaptive generalization of stream networks
Automated generalization software must accommodate multi-scale representations of hydrographic networks across a variety of geographic landscapes, because scale-related hydrography differences are known to vary in different physical conditions. While generalization algorithms have been tailored to specific regions and landscape conditions by...
Stanislawski, Larry V.; Finn, Michael P.; Buttenfield, Barbara P.
A comparison of synthetic flowpaths derived from light detection and ranging topobathymetric data and National Hydrography Dataset High Resolution Flowlines
Bathymetric and topobathymetric light detection and ranging (lidar) digital elevation models created for the Delaware River were provided to the National Geospatial Program and used to evaluate synthetic flowpath extraction from bathymetric/topobathymetric lidar survey data as a data source for improving the density, distribution, and connectivity...
Miller-Corbett, Cynthia The map as knowledge base
This paper examines the concept and implementation of a map as a knowledge base. A map as a knowledge base means that the visual map is not only the descriptive compilation of data and design principles, but also involves a compilation of semantic propositions and logical predicates that create a body of knowledge organized as a map. The digital...
Varanka, Dalia E.; Usery, E. Lynn Generalizing linear stream features to preserve sinuosity for analysis and display: A pilot study in multi-scale data science
Cartographic generalization can impact geometric properties of geospatial data and subsequent analyses. This study evaluates simplification methods with the goal of preserving geometric details, such as sinuosity. We evaluate two recently developed line simplification algorithms that introduce Steiner points: Raposo’s Spatial Means, and Kronenfeld...
Stanislawski, Larry V.; Kronenfeld, Barry J.; Buttenfield, Barbara P.; Brockmeyer, Tyler (Contractor) Modeling and simulation of emergent behavior in transportation infrastructure restoration
The objective of this chapter is to create a methodology to model the emergent behavior during a disruption in the transportation system and that calculates economic losses due to such a disruption, and to understand how an extreme event affects the road transportation network. The chapter discusses a system dynamics approach which is used to...
Ojha, Akhilesh; Corns, Steven; Shoberg, Thomas G.; Qin, Ruwen; Long, Suzanna K. An open source high-performance solution to extract surface water drainage networks from diverse terrain conditions
This paper describes a workflow for automating the extraction of elevation-derived stream lines using open source tools with parallel computing support and testing the effectiveness of procedures in various terrain conditions within the conterminous United States. Drainage networks are extracted from the US Geological Survey 1/3 arc-second 3D...
Stanislawski, Larry V.; Survila, Kornelijus; Wendel, Jeffrey; Liu, Yan; Buttenfield, Barbara P.
A linked GeoData map for enabling information access
OverviewThe Geospatial Semantic Web (GSW) is an emerging technology that uses the Internet for more effective knowledge engineering and information extraction. Among the aims of the GSW are to structure the semantic specifications of data to reduce ambiguity and to link those data more efficiently. The data are stored as triples, the basic data...
Powell, Logan J.; Varanka, Dalia E. Partial polygon pruning of hydrographic features in automated generalization
This paper demonstrates a working method to automatically detect and prune portions of waterbody polygons to support creation of a multi-scale hydrographic database. Water features are known to be sensitive to scale change; and thus multiple representations are required to maintain visual and geographic logic at smaller scales. Partial pruning of...
Stum, Alexander K. ; Buttenfield, Barbara P.; Stanislawski, Larry V.