This dissertation examines the current state of automated indoor mapping and modeling using point cloud data produced by close range remote sensing systems. The first part looks at reality capture techniques that convert the physical form of indoor spaces into point clouds of millions of measured points, each with an (x,y,z) coordinate value. The second part examines methods for teasing out geometries from these point clouds -- often complicated by noise and voids -- and converting them into 3D geometric models. The final part examines techniques for merging the coordinate reference systems of these indoor maps and models with those of the outdoor world, resulting in a seamless representation of space. Lessons learned in this study revealed that theories, techniques, and practices in indoor mapping remain relatively elementary compared to those for the outdoors, yet they also present significant opportunities for future research propelled by emerging developments in remote sensing and a growing demand for indoor maps.
Water is essential to human life and activities and river is an importance source of water. This dissertation addresses two problems related to rivers. First is the water quantity allocation between countries which share an international river. International resources such as water are typically subject to conflict as individual countries perceive individual gains from increased use of the resource. This inherent conflict is also reflected in analytical studies which are typically partial equilibrium and hence naturally assume that welfare functions are increasing in the resource allocation. In this setting, the question arises if there are ever circumstances such that it is in the joint self-interest of political entities to share the resource.
With a two-country-two-good Ricardian trade model, the conflicts over water naturally stems from a welfare function monotonically increasing in water could be mitigated, since the free trade welfare functions can be non-monotone when a country has absolute disadvantage in production of both goods. The welfare function is applied to a Nash bargaining game to show how it reduces conflicts over water. The results also hold when the number of production factors increases to two and number of countries sharing the river increases to three. This contributes to the literature by combining the general equilibrium trade model in a river sharing context, deriving the welfare functions that can be utilized in a game-theoretic framework of river sharing, and demonstrating the possibility that the welfare functions are not always monotonically increasing in a country's resources. Second is the allocation and efficient usage of river water in an irrigated agricultural region, with an application to the California lower San Joaquin River. The results show that the region is threaten by water salinity problems in times of drought and efficient use of the water could help increase aggregate irrigation benefits. This research incorporates a set of crop-water-salinity agricultural production functions in an integrated hydrologic-economic surface water quality model and is significant in terms of empirical originality.