Patterns from studies in past urban morphologies have come under scrutiny recently due to the rise of authenticity in urban regeneration fields and the resurgences in the search for culturally-rooted, and sustainable, principles of urban design. Towards an improved place-making potential while complying with rising sustainable standards, the tropical region have a rich heritage of the Malay Nusantara pre-colonial ‘original’ urban patterns – which are essentially South East Asian riverine or maritime cities of the 15th to the 18th centuries straddling the Malay Peninsular and Borneo. This paper highlights the morphology studies of such centers, but focuses primarily on urban core patterns of cities such as Alor Setar (a city on the north of the Malay Peninsula), Kuala Kangsar (to the north-east, more towards inland), Melaka (a maritime city towards the south) and Pontianak, Kalimantan (west of Borneo) which layers of past patterns can be studied. It attempts to recreate an era which is known as ‘precolonial’ in the Malay world, whose urban grain and form still embraces ecological and ‘local’ principles and whose dense and compact forms are linked closely with rivers and seas. An attempt is then made to build a conceptual framework of urban design characteristics based on the findings; including features and strategies towards enhancing typical bioclimatic principles to encompass a range of visual and aesthetic concepts which embraces the notion of familiarity and cultural continuity arising from lessons learnt from vernacular forms and past settlements. As many of these sites have undergone sedimentation and development, the paper reconstructs the past based on historical data, maps and documents and then compares these reconstructed forms with those of colonial and post-colonial patterns. It is forwarded that the Malay urban core in pre-colonial times is distinctive for its natural growth and its ecological and climatic credentials, such as orientation and compactness, while the post-colonial patterns are more spread out and gridded configurations losing the original permeability.

Though the State Forests in Poland maintain an accurate spatial database covering roughly 80% of the forest area in Poland, the remaining 20% of forests, mostly private, are not mapped with similar accuracy. Several national mapping projects have been carried out in Poland recently, yet it is not trivial to integrate their results in  the context of forest cover estimation, due to inconsistencies of incorporated forest definitions. For instance, some datasets exclude areas which are legally forest, but temporarily devoid of trees due to damage by wind or pests. Moreover, the unknown extent of secondary forest succession on abandoned agricultural land  introduces much uncertainty in assessing the actual forest area. Our work proposes therefore a semi-automatic algorithm that integrates spatial data on contemporary forest cover from various sources, and eliminates their mutual inconsistencies. The study was conducted in the Polish Carpathians, where, due to a high share of  private forests, reliable forest cover estimates are particularly difficult. The approach combines forest cover information from the national topographic data, both past (1970s) and current (2010s) and from the State Forests spatial databases. Contrary to the current national topographic data, the produced map presents forests in coherence with the Polish forest definition and is comparable to the earlier topographic maps. Our results suggest that various databases underestimate forest cover in the Polish Carpathians, and that the expert knowledge- based fusion of the datasets may provide complete and reliable information on the actual current forest cover in the region.

The series of articles contains a comparison of the possibilities of using for dasymetric estimation of population distribution of spatial information about buildings. The buildings come from three sources characterized by different spatial, thematic and temporal accuracy. These are data from Corine Land Cover (CLC) and Urban Atlas (UA) projects and the result of object classification (OBIA) of RapidEye data. The experiment was carried out in the area of Krakow. Statistical data from 141 city urban units (u. u.) were used.
In the first two parts of the cycle, population conversions based on CLC, UA, OBIA and OBIA in combination with UA were presented (Pirowski and Timek, 2018; Pirowski et al., 2018). In total, 12 maps of Kraków’s population were obtained. RMSE and MAPE mean errors were calculated as well as population density for each category of residential development. The results were discussed.
In the third part of the cycle, the obtained population maps were analyzed in detail, referring to the Bronowice district (the north-western area of the city) prepared especially by the population. The reference map has been made in high resolution. The methodology of its elaboration has been described in detail. Complementary use of orthophotomap from aerial photographs together with public databases (Geoportal, OpenStreetMap, GoogleStreetView) was presented. The proprietary MMAPE parameter has been proposed. The parameter analyzes the similarity of the reference map of Bronowice with the dasymetric maps. It allows you to statistically describe their credibility and exclude the phenomenon of equivalence.
As a result of the conducted research, an erroneous population distribution was detected for the variant OBIA, in which the weights were determined by minimizing the MAPE error. From the remaining experiments, the three best results were obtained by maps using information about urban development from Urban Atlas (MMAPE100m = 19.3–22.1%). Complementary use of OBIA and UA did not bring any synergy effect – the results were worse than for UA (21.6–24.3%). High errors were noted for OBIA – it is only worth to notice a better result from the binary OBIA method (MMAPE100m = 22.8%) than the result from the binary CLC method (MMAPE100m = 24.3%).
At this stage of the research, UA data is recommended for the conversion of population. The object classification methods are not a reliable source of data on building types, and such information is necessary for the use of surface-by-weight methods. The use of OBIA is possible only in the binary method and gives results similar to the use of data from CLC.
In the fourth part, it is planned to verify the population maps using the Central Statistical Offic (CSO) kilometer network for the whole of Poland, which was made available in 2017. On the basis of multivariate tests and two-stage verification, the authors plan to provide the advantages and disadvantages of the described methods of population conversion and to develop a ranking of the obtained Krakow population maps.

The paper is a continuation and summary of a series of publications related to the dasymetric estimation of the distribution of the population of Krakow. The conversion of the population from the original census units is based on the development data from three sources, the Corine Land Cover project (CLC), the Urban Atlas project (UA) and the object classification (OBIA) of the RapidEye data. The experiment was conducted using archival statistical data from 2009 from 141 urban units (u.u.) of the city.
In the first two parts of the cycle (Pirowski and Timek, 2018; Pirowski et al., 2018) population conversion was presented on the basis of CLC, UA and OBIA maps, obtaining a total of 12 maps of Krakow’s population. The obtained error distributions were presented and the calculated weights of population density for each category of residential buildings were discussed.
In the third part of the cycle (Pirowski and Berka, 2019) the results were analyzed in detail by reference to the reference, high-resolution population map of the Bronowice district (north-western part of the city).
In this publication, ending the cycle, population maps were verified on the basis of a kilometre grid of the Central Statistical Office (GUS), which is an aggregation of data from the National Census of Population and Housing 2011, made available by the Office in 2017. The results of high-resolution verification carried out in the Bronowice district were compared with the data of the CSO (GUS). In the GUS grid the best results were obtained for surface and weight UA methods (RMSE 908–917 people; MAPE 42-46%). The estimation of population distribution using OBIA data (RMSE 1115–2073 people; MAPE 121–184%) was found to be incorrect. After the correction of OBIA by UA data, a significant improvement in the results for surface-weighted methods was obtained (RMSE 930–1067 people; MAPE 53–68%), however, the error rate was still higher than for UA itself, which eliminates the OBIA method from practical applications in this area.
A correlation was found between the RMSE and MAPE errors recorded in UC at the stage of weight selection and the RMSE and MAPE errors recorded in the GUS grid, respectively R2(RMSE)=91%, R2(MAPE)=65%. Therefore, the correlation detected indicates that the low errors obtained at the selection stage translate into reliable population estimates. The proposed weighting methodology limits the subjectivity of the method, based on the minimisation of RMSE and MAPE in the original census units. The disadvantage of the method is that it is necessary to define the boundary conditions for the selection of weights, in case of obtaining unreal weights and the possibility of occurrence of equifinality phenomenon, difficult to detect in the absence of additional reference data.

This paper presents the GIS approach application methodology for analyzing the transformation of Agricultural Cooperatives under the Vietnam Cooperative Law 2012. Through the survey data at 90 cooperatives at 9 provinces in 7 economic regions of Vietnam, which can assess the level of the transformed successful group, transformed not successful group and do not transform of the agricultural cooperatives.
GIS analytical tools allowed for spatial analysis using field survey data. From that, the managers can determine the level and quality transforming of the Agricultural cooperatives under the Vietnam Cooperative Law 2012 according to the four selected criteria.

The opencast extraction of aggregates (sand and gravel) affects the change in landscape, including the formation of anthropogenic water reservoirs. The research were conducted in selected open-pits mines in southern Poland. In the research, a remote-controlled bathymetric device, constructed by the author, was used. Firstly, the investigation aimed to check the method under strictly defined conditions in open-pit mines of aggregates. But, above all, the study cycle aimed to verify whether a remote-controlled bathymetry could successfully be helpful for protecting the aquatic environment.

The following issues were discussed in the paper:

• characteristics of the applied remote-controlled bathymetric set Smart-Sonar-Boat,
• characteristics of the obtained bathymetric data,
• research that were conducted by the author on aquatic environment of open pit mines by applying remotely controlled bathymetric measurements,
• what contribution to the aquatic environment of open pit mines could be made using such measurements.

The research were conducted in southern Poland in the following facilities:

• Zator-Podolsze Nowe Aggregate Mine, where the colonies of night heron birds (Nycticorax nycticorax) nested on the island,
• Dwory Aggregate Mine in the city of Oświęcim, where the aggregates were being extracted in close vicinity to high voltage electricity lines and railway tracks,
• Brzegi Aggregate Mine in the city of Kraków, where the reclamation works were being performed to develop the post-mining area into the water park of Przystań Brzegi,
• Lake of Bagry Wielkie in the city of Kraków where the research of a hard-to-reach water area was conducted.

The study proved the applied remote-controlled bathymetric method was practical, effective and accurate in open-cast aggregate mines. The research confirmed the contribution to protecting the aquatic environment could be made using remotely controlled geodetic measurements. The completed research stages were described in detail in separate articles. The detailed results of the planned tasks will be published after their completion.

The tradition of making mounds in the area of Poland goes back to prehistoric times. Mounds had the function as the places of skeleton burials and/or cremation burials as well as places of worship. Later mounds had (among others) the following functions: orientation points, signalization points, landmarks and border points, artificial elevations for development, elements of the landscape in gardens and parks, places of burial, monuments honouring famous people and historic events. Their proper documentation, by their characteristics through graphical description, can be a valuable source on their localization, history and technical shape of the building.
The article presents proposals of a card of scientific documentation of mounds and barrows, using the example of the Krakus Mound. Based on scientific literature, cartographic materials, lists of the Polish Tourist and Sightseeing Society (PTTK) and interviews in the fields, 1111 (including 85 destroyed) mounds and barrows were illustrated on the map, making an open database.

The location of a significant number of Krakow churches and monasteries marks the lines which have the character of an astronomical calendar. Two lines are described that correspond closely to the direction of Krakus Mound – Wanda Mound. Advantageous conditions have been demonstrated in astronomical aspects, with the location of the following churches: St. Benedict’s, St. Adalbert’s on the Main Square, St. Mary’s and the Esterka Mound. Described in detail are: sunset line on the summer solstice day on the background of Wawel Hill and two meridian lines.

Making excavations in underground mining enterprises is carried out in a strict co-operation of miners and mine surveyors. Carrying out exploitation in horizontal and vertical direction is based on the application of the control line, the accuracy characteristics of which is defined by legal regulations. Fulfilling accuracy requirement referring to the error of the point situation and the error of the line azimuth is often impossible without the application of gyroscopes. The implementation of gyroscope measurements in an underground mine is, first of all, connected with: better adjustment to the regulations referring to making measurements in mine excavations, especially in one-sided sequences, gyroscope measurements on the existing lines on the surface and in excavations, making the orientation of the excavations, constructing new levels in mines or new mines. The process of the implementation of gyroscope measurements was divided into several stages, i.e.: the development of the basic orientation line on the surface of the Ruch „Borynia” with newly stabilized points, on which a static GPS measurement, referring to the reference stations of grid ASG-EUPOS, carrying out the transformations of the co-ordinates of system 2000 to mine system SG-ROW and calculation of the azimuth of the lines in a local geodetic system, carrying out gyroscope measurements on several lines of the base on the surface in Ruch „Borynia”, determining gyroscope azimuths in mining excavations. The article also presents the results of first measurements made in mine excavations i.e. in one survey in Ruch „Zofiówka” and two surveys in Ruch „Borynia”, where in the distance of about 3.5 km, between the lines of gyro, the measurement was carried out with the method of transect sequence with the method of three tripods. In the final conclusions of the article the conclusions of first experience of gyroscope measurements by the surveying department of Ruch „Borynia” JSW S.A. and initial assessment of the accuracy of gyrotheodolite Sokkia GYRO X1 II are made.

In every mining company, the process of extracting deposits requires recalculating resources and, consequently, updating surveying-geological documentation. This documentation is necessary, among other things, to introduce changes to the deposit development project, the mining company operation plan, and finally, for proper planning of activities in the field of processing, namely pollution removal of the mining spoil, as well as transport and sale. Software was developed that allows you to create spatial models of deposits. The article presents solutions applied in this scope in the majority of mining enterprises conducting underground hard coal excavation in the Upper Silesian Region. The applied system, called the Numerical Model of the Deposit, uses the Oracle Spatial, AutoCAD Civil 3D, GEONET, GEOLISP, EDBJ-OPN software. The article focuses on the possibilities of the system in the aspect of coal quality assessment based on chemical, physicochemical, physical and petrographic methods. Basic functionalities of the system that uses the qualitative model of the deposit were presented. Chemical analyses of coal made by laboratories are recorded on a current basis into a relational database, and then verified by an authorized geologist. It allows us, among others, to supplement geological data of lots with attributes such as: field, tonnage, average fall, sulphation, etc.

The development of information technologies has made the presentation of engineering objects in the form of spatial visualizations more common. This applies primarily to historical objects made available for tourism, which in practice increases their attractiveness to the recipients. Known from the literature, the pseudo-spatial (on the plane) studies of the historic “Wieliczka” Salt Mine are examples of masterpieces of engineering graphics, but they are one-time works, due to the technology of the model construction, as well as the complexity of the model and the number of details presented (after-exploitation chambers and tunnels). Today, CAD software programs (AutoCAD, Microstation) allow you to generate models of all kinds of objects, based on archival and present documentation of data from geodetic or photogrammetric measurements. The degree of model generalization depends on the number and accuracy of the data sources used. One of the popular programs in the field of engineering graphics is program AutoCAD from Autodesk, which was used for modeling, based on the cartographic documentation of the spatial model of the “Bochnia” Salt Mine’s current state.

The assessment involving the prospects of mining exploitation, in particular with the disruption of protective pillars, is frequently a fundamental issue in the engineering practice. It is even more important when the problem involves the completed mining exploitation which was carried out for many years and which already brought about stress-strain changes in the protected objects whose technical condition should ensure safety of use.
The impact of mining exploitation on rock mass and surface ground can be most reliably determined basing on the results of geodetic surveys, but in practice, in the conditions where mining exploitation was carried out for many years, the results of geodetic surveys with the records of deformations that occurred in such areas are not available. Then, to assess the impact of mining operations carried out so far, we can only apply the available partial results of geodetic surveys. It happens in situations when we are to assess the prospects of mining exploitation, especially with the disruption of the protective pillar of mining shafts, which are of fundamental importance for mining operations.
The article presents an exemplary assessment involving the prospects of mining exploitation with roof fall in the protective pillar of shafts in terms of the results of the reprognosis involving the impact of completed mining exploitation on the surface ground and rock mass.
The methodology used to assess the prospects of further mining exploitation in the vicinity of the protective pillar of main shafts takes into account the fact that in view of the reprognosis results, years-long mining exploitation carried out to the boundaries of the protective pillar resulted in relatively large horizontal displacements around the area of the shafts, and smaller vertical displacements. In such circumstances, the latest surveys of horizontal displacements were used to infer about the current curvature of the vertical axis of shaft No.1, located closest to the plots of the completed mining. The calculation involving the possibility to carry out further mining operations within the impact range on the protected shafts No.1 and No.2 was determined by comparing the calculated permissible curvature radius of the shaft axis, reflecting the strain efficiency of the lining, with the calculated curvature radius of the vertical axis of the shaft lining effected by horizontal displacements of rock mass.