University of New South Wales - BEES Home

| Professional | Research & Publications |

My broad research area is in spatial data analysis using GIS and geocomputational tools to understand and address geographic problems and issues. My current research focus is on biodiversity, disease modelling and terrain analysis.

Spatial data analysis can be applied across the biophysical-social spectrum, and recent applications include investigating the spatio-temporal spread of disease in animal populations, the spatial variation in genetic and taxonomic diversity at continental scales, identifying potential language groupings from historical word lists, environmental correlation analysis and predictions, the effect of error on spatial analyses, the spatial variation of weed infestations, and non-geometric models of spatial sampling for use in geostatistical modelling.

A set of online analysis tools for assessing the spatial distribution of genetic and taxonomic biodiversity are available from www.biodiverse.unsw.edu.au.

The 10th International Conference on GeoComputation is being held at UNSW between 30 Nov - 02 Dec 2009. Web Site

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

-- In press --

Highfield, L.D., Ward, M.P., Laffan, S.W., Norby, B.N. and Wagner, G.G. (in press) Critical parameters for modelling the spread of foot and mouth disease in wildlife. Epidemiology and Infection.

Laffan, S.W. (in press) The citation relationships between Geography and cognate disciplines. Geographical Research. Accepted 12Feb2009.

Wang, D., Laffan, S.W., Liu, Y. & Wu, L. (in press) Morphometric characterisation of landform from DEMs. International Journal of Geographical Information Science. Accepted 02Sep2008.

Zhang, K., Laffan, S.W., Ramp, D. and Webster, E., (in press). Incorporating a distance cost in systematic reserve design. International Journal of Geographical Information Science Special issue on Spatial Ecology. Accepted 16Oct2009.

Zhang, K., Laffan, S.W. & Zhang, S. (in press) A spatial approach to select pilot counties for programs to correct the biased sex ratio at birth in Shandong province, China. International Journal of Geographical Information Science. Accepted 18Feb2009.

-- 2009 --

Highfield, L.D., Ward, M.P., Laffan, S.W., Norby, B.N. and Wagner, G.G. (2009) The impact of seasonal variability in wildlife populations on the predicted spread of foot and mouth disease. Veterinary Research, 40:18.

Huang, Z. & Laffan, S.W. (2009) Sensitivity analysis of a decision tree derived forest type mapping to input data errors. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 23, 1433-1452.

Ladd, B., Bonser, S.P., Peri, P.L., Larsen, J.R., Laffan, S.W., Pepper, D.A. & Cendon, D.I. (2009) Towards a physical description of habitat: quantifying environmental adversity (abiotic stress) in temperate forest and woodland ecosystems. Journal of Ecology, 97, 964-971.

Moles, A.T., Warton, D.I., Warman, L., Swenson, N., Laffan, S.W., Zanne, A.E., Pitman, A., Hemmings, F., & Leishman, M.R. (2009) Global patterns in plant height. Journal of Ecology, 97, 923-932.

Rosauer, D.F., Laffan, S.W., Crisp, M.D., Donnellan, S.C. and Cook, L.G., (2009) Phylogenetic endemism: a new approach to identifying geographical concentrations of evolutionary history. Molecular Ecology, 18, 4061-4072.

Wang, D. and Laffan, S.W., 2009. Characterisation of valleys from DEMs. In: R.S. Anderssen, R.D. Braddock and L.T.H. Newham (Editors), 18th World IMACS Congress and MODSIM09 International Congress on Modelling and Simulation. Modelling and Simulation Society of Australia and New Zealand and International Association for Mathematics and Computers in Simulation, Cairns, Australia, pp. 2014-2020.

Ward, M.P., Laffan, S.W. & Highfield, L.D. (2009) Modelling spread of foot-and-mouth disease in wild white-tailed deer and feral pig populations using a geographic-automata model and animal distributions. Preventive Veterinary Medicine, 91, 55-63.

-- 2008 --

Highfield, L.D., Ward, M.P. & Laffan, S.W. (2008) Representation of animal distributions in space: how geostatistical estimates impact simulation modeling of foot-and-mouth disease spread. Veterinary Research, 39:17.

Jones C. & Laffan S.W. (2008) Lexical similarity and endemism in historical wordlists of Australian Aboriginal languages of the greater Sydney region. Transactions of the Philological Society, 106, 456-486.

Lees B.G., Huang Z., Van Niel K. & Laffan S.W. (2008) The impact of DEM error on predictive vegetation mapping. pp 349-362 in Advances in Digital Terrain Analysis. (Eds Q Zhou, BG Lees and G Tang). (Springer-Verlag).

-- 2007 --

Laffan, S.W., Lubarsky, E., Ward, M.P. and Highfield, L.D., 2007. A geographic automata system for modelling disease outbreaks. In: L. Oxley and D. Kulasiri (Editors), MODSIM 2007 International Congress on Modelling and Simulation. Modelling and Simulation Society of Australia and New Zealand, Lincoln, New Zealand, pp. 1252-1257.

Roger, E., Laffan, S.W. & Ramp, D. (2007). Habitat selection by the common wombat (Vombatus ursinus) in disturbed environments: implications for the conservation of a 'common' species. Biological Conservation, 137, 437-449.

Ward, M.P., Laffan, S.W. & Highfield, L. (2007) The potential role of wild and feral animals as reservoirs of foot-and-mouth disease. Preventive Veterinary Medicine, 80, 9-23.

-- 2006 --

Bickford, S.A. & Laffan, S.W. (2006) Multi-extent analysis of the relationship between pteridophyte species richness and climate. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 15, 588-601.

Laffan, S.W. (2006) Assessing regional scale weed distributions, with an Australian example using Nassella trichotoma. Weed Research, 46, 194-206.

Taylor, M., Laffan, S.D., Fielder, S. & Suthers, I.M. (2006) Key habitat and home range of hatchery-reared and wild sub-adult mulloway (Argyrosomus japonicus) in a south-east Australian estuary: Finding the estuarine niche to optimise stocking. Marine Ecology-Progress Series, 328, 237-247.

-- 2005 --

Doran, R.J. & Laffan, S.W. (2005) Simulating the spatial dynamics of foot and mouth disease outbreaks in feral pigs and livestock in Queensland, Australia, using a Susceptible-Infected-Recovered Cellular Automata model. Preventive Veterinary Medicine, 70, 133-152.

Laffan, S.W. and Bickford, S.A., 2005. Using spatial randomisations to improve the utility of Geographically Weighted Regression model results. In: R. Argent and A. Zerger (Editors), MODSIM 2005 International Congress on Modelling and Simulation. Modelling and Simulation Society of Australia and New Zealand, Melbourne, Australia, pp. 1396-1401.

Laffan, S.W., Nielsen, O., Silcock, H. & Hegland, M. (2005) Sparse Grids: a new predictive modelling tool for the analysis of geographic data. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 19, 267-292.

-- 2004 --

Bickford, S.A., Laffan, S.W., de Kok, R. & Orthia, L. (2004) Spatial analysis of taxonomic and genetic patterns and their potential for understanding evolutionary histories. Journal of Biogeography, 31, 1715-1733.

Laffan, S.W. & Lees, B.G. (2004) Predicting regolith properties using environmental correlation: a comparison of spatially global and spatially local approaches. Geoderma, 120, 241-258.

Van Niel, K.P., Laffan, S.W. & Lees, B.G. (2004) Error and uncertainty in environmental variables for predictive vegetation modelling. Journal of Vegetation Science, 15, 747-756. (open access link)

Whiteway, T.G., Laffan, S.W. & Wasson, R.J. (2004) Using sediment budgets to investigate the pathogen flux through catchments. Environmental Management, 34, 516-527.

-- 2003 and before --

Laffan, S.W. & Crisp, M.D. (2003) Assessing endemism at multiple spatial scales, with an example from the Australian vascular flora. Journal of Biogeography, 30, 511-520.

Laffan, S.W., Silcock, H., Nielsen, O. and Hegland, M., 2003. A new approach to analysing spatial data using sparse grids. In: D. Post (Editor), MODSIM 2003 International Congress on Modelling and Simulation. Modelling and Simulation Society of Australia and New Zealand, Townsville, Australia, pp. 708-712.

Van Niel, K. & Laffan, S.W. (2003) Gambling with randomness: The use of pseudorandom number generators in GIS. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 17, 49-68.

Laffan, S.W. (2002) Using process models to improve spatial analysis. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 16, 245-257.

Mackey, B. & Laffan, S.W. (2002). Case studies in GIS and environmental modeling. In Geographic Information Systems and Environmental Modeling (eds K.C. Clarke, B.E. Parks & M.P. Crane), pp. 306. Prentice Hall, New Jersey.

Crisp, M.D., Laffan, S., Linder, P. & Monro, A. (2001) Endemism in the Australian flora. Journal of Biogeography, 28, 183-198.

Langaas, S., Jansen, I.J. & Laffan, S.W. (1999). Utprøving av RESURS MSU-SK data for kartlegging i små målestokker (Assessing RESURS MSU-SK data for mapping over small scales). Project report to Norwegian Space Centre (in Norwegian and English).

Laffan, S.W. (1998) Visualising neural network training in geographic space. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on GeoComputation, Bristol, UK.

SELECTED RESEARCH STUDENTS

-- PhD --

Mayra Amboni (in progress) 'Assessing Australia's land mammal diversity in relation to conservation areas'

Simon Gatehouse (in progress) 'Modelling of compositional data'

Olivia Mottram (in progress) 'Spatial distribution of primates in southern Africa' (joint supervision with Dr Darren Curnoe).

Dan Rosauer (in progress) 'Spatial distribution of phylogenetic diversity in the Australian biota'

Erin Roger (in progress) 'The effect of roads on the long-term viability of a population of the common wombat (Vombatus ursinus) in Kosciuszko National Park' (joint supervision with Dr Dan Ramp) Publication 1, Publication 2

Sugianto (2006) 'Multi-angular hyperspectral data and its influences on soil and plant property measurements: spectral mapping and functional data analysis approach'.

-- MPhil --

David Leggett (in progress) 'Fire mapping and analysis'

Alex Gold (in progress) 'Modelling weed distributions in the Blue Mountains City Council LGA'

Wang Daming (2008) 'Morphometric characterisation of landform from DEMs'

-- Honours --

Melissa Head (2008) 'Effectiveness of the GBMWHA reserve system over time' (joint supervision with Dr Dan Ramp)

Hunsamon Jumrieng (2007) 'Preliminary regolith classification of Cyprus using Functional Data Analysis of soil spectra'

Michael Galloway (2005) 'Stormwater pollutant concentrations and the success of current treatment trains in three urban sub-catchments in Sydney, Australia'.

Ruth Doran (2002) 'Simulating an outbreak of foot and mouth disease via feral pigs, Sus Scrofa, in Queensland using Cellular Automata' (Elspeth Crawford Medal). Publication

Dan Wilkins (2002) 'The timing and Rate of Channel Change in the Numeralla River: Implications for Synchronicity of Fluvial Response to Internal System Thresholds' (joint supervision with Dr Jon Olley).

Tanya Whiteway (2000) 'Fine sediment and pathogen budgets for the Googong catchment'. (joint supervision with Prof Bob Wasson). Publication