GIS 4048 Week 10 - HLS Protect

This has  been a challenge - but I have learned about ArcGIS and it's data base management. It was not fun but rewarding in surmounting the objective.

GIS 4048 Week 9 HLS Prepare

Again this was a frustrating but very good exercise in preparing data from various sources and preparing a organized database. The first is the Urban Area and the second is the DEM. I did have to download a new DEM which was painless.

Week 8: Law Enforcement

While I had no problems with the raw data and data conversion, I did encounter with some basic ArcGIS programs. The street database still has me "waking up the dead" and the placement of Neatlines has me even "waking up the real old dead." Never the less this was a good reinforcement of the basics and further insight into what ArcGIS can do if your not on a College Main Frame. Yes I lost the Neatline in 3 and 4 and after three tries - you get what you get.

Now for the show:

 

Week 7 On Your Own

Well this again was a good exercise of ArcGIS tools and reinforcement of the fundamentals of the program. Other than shooting myself in the foot many times, I was able to get it delivered. Just forgot to post it on the blog. oops

Location Decisions Part 1 - Homing in on Alachua County Florida

For the most part this was an enjoyable series of projects and reinforcing the basic of ArcGIS data base management. Also the continued use of the program is allowing me to hone up on the basic elements and manipulating them into their respective places with in the Frame.

The exercised also exposed some new tools when dealing with raster files and converting homegrown files into raster. Playing with the color wheel took most of the time deciding which color scheme suited the information to be displayed.

Week5 - Urban Planning and Impact Assessment - Activity 2

This was an ESRI traning module that gave insight into the inputting of spatial data into existing or creating new attribute tables and through the mathmatical formulas being able to render a meaningful map presentation. This has given me a new prespective on what is takes to create the presentation and the labor that was necessary in pre computer days.

Deliverable 1: Environmental Impact Assessment - EIA for Pewter City

This was a straight forward exercise that introduced us to the import and manipulation of spatial data. The initial exercised reinforced the area selection and buffering tools usage. Based upon the street survey data I was able to apply the spatial data to a map rendering giving the indication of the current and projected traffic flow.

Deliverable 2: Social Impact - Student Residency Locations

Again this was a reinforcement of database management and working with tables to be able to display spatial data. I was tasked to identify the various land types and the areas of location. I then appended select tables to add the survey data to determine the most populated areas in which students were residing.

Deliverable 3: Location Quotient


This exercise tested my reading skills in that I went through 3 series of attempts to get it right. This exercise expanded on spatial data manipulation and in creating or expanding the current attribute tables. Given the process steps to arrive at the findings were more intricate and challenging. While my planning has been dealing with emergency preparedness, this exercise was very informative in how the urban planners develop their spatial data and analysis.

Deepwater Horizon oil spill animation

Natural Hazards: Participation Activity Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

In summarizing the role of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) in confronting a catastrophe one has to understand what is GIS. Briefly, GIS is a set of massive warehouses of data owned by many different agencies, yet accessible to all in a common data format. As shown by the current Deepwater Horizon oil spill, some of the data is accurate and concise while other sources of data are inaccurate as we found out in our mapping exercises. Never the less GIS has again proven to be a highly effective set of tools in assisting the responders to the current catastrophe by allowing quick dissemination of critical information concerning the incident site and potenial damage to be caused by the discharge of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. As with catastrophes’ of the past there are lessons to be learned, data refinement and this in turn will enable the GIS community to develop better planning and response tools.

To point out some specific instances of how GIS has aided the response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill I will start with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife data and U.S. Park Service. Their inventory of data has allowed the quick identification of potential sites (26) to be effect and what was the type and diversity of species that will or might be impacted. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) along with the Coast Guard have mapped the entire underwater area and have studied the currents in the affected area and are able to develop data models that have allowed the placement or potential placement of booms and skimmers to mitigate the damage being caused by the oil discharge. GIS has also aided the Environmental Protection Agency, which is the co lead agency along with the Coast Guard, to gather and allocate resources in the areas with the greatest impact or potential impact. Also this has allowed the timely placement of monitoring stations for air and water quality. Also there are several university scientific teams monitoring the deep water impact and movement of the discharged oil.

In closing, while GIS is thought by some just to be a group of electronic cartographers, it has grown in its evolution from static maps on the wall to real time instant data with a very high degree of accuracy of location and spatial information that is required for a timely and effective response to a catastrophe

Oil Spill PROJ 2-3 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Potential Protection Plan

This is the data that was furnished by the State of Florida, Division of Emergency Management. If I had time I would have questioned the placement and proposed placement sites.I also included the NOAA Response Agency to this coverage.

I also chose this one for the .kml posting requirement.

Oil Spill PROJ 2-2 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Potential Impact

This map is the ESIL Birds coverage - very congested and concentrated area. Normally the color and Hatch Pattern is that of "diagonal hatch" but I deviated to allow all to be marked.

Oil Spill PROJ 2-1 Deepwater Horizon's Oil Spill Potential Impact

This is the seconded environmental impact study preformed. I chose Tile 51,Goose Island, Florida which is located in Franklin County and for tourist's it is referred to as St George Island. For the first assignment I took into the account the landmass exposure in this tile and based my footage impact on the following ESIL's 10A & 10A+ (Salt and Brackish water marshes), 4 (Coarse grained Sand Beaches), and 7 (Exposed Tidal Flats). I also noted the only Social Economic impact which is located on the south eastern shore area on the island. I have edited the graph and now it is readable.

Hurricanes - PROJ 1 Katrina

Well this was fun and as far as the deliverables go I did not encounter any problem other than my own stupid mistakes in data entry and forgetting to post it to the blog.

Earthquakes Test Page

The expansion of necessary skills in using ArcGIS is increasing and becoming more second hand and as usual I forgot something on the presentation and these are to sent to the drop box. - I'll be back.

Final Project posting

To one and all, thanks for everything - it was just yesterday that we set up the blogs - it has been frustrating, yet rewarding when the challenges were defeated. With the exception of PP all in all it's been fun and rewarding.

First site is the old fashion manual slide show: http://students.uwf.edu/wsp3/wsp3fp1.pptx 

The second should be the automatic show: http://students.uwf.edu/wsp3/wsp3fp2.ppsx

For boring reading: http://students.uwf.edu/wsp3/wsp3sssum.docx

Week 11 Labs

I found this to be an interesting series of labs. The Spatial Analysis did not present any real difficulties, like wise the Labeling was straight forward, however; I did encounter a problem with moving the CitiesandRoads into View. It seems the "Water" layer was causing problems but with the other .mdx's there was no problem. And I went back today 04/09/10 and found the problem to be in the scaling of the basic .mdx file and was finally able to move into the View screen and produce presentation.

  The 3D Analyst Tools and ArcScene programs were also interesting and I look forward to exploring them more. I chose a different color spectrum to give a vegetation perspective and highlighted the trail to show the steepness of the trail.

Vector Analysis II Lab

The exercise was "easy" - my problem was giving a background - the conservation layer is giving me the problem and I did not take the time to digitize the areas.

Q1: I used both the Identity and Intersect and both appeared to give the same results.

Q2: I used the Erase tool to eliminate the area's that fell within the Conservation areas.

Q3: For the Possible_Sites layer I observed that there are 78 records and in using the "double type", the smallest site is 1 Acre US[ac] and the largest site is 1,088 Acres US[ac]

Spring Break Gulf County Pacels Mapping

This exercise increased the use of Tables and extracting data for presentation and the further manipulation of the Symbology tool.

 

Data Editing in ArcGIS

This was relaxing and enjoyable exercise.

Georeferencing Lab

After few trials and  errors I was able to get the .jpg's to fall into place or I have managed to move UWF to outer space. Thank you Don for your advice on shifting the layers to get rid of the pesky black over print - Whoda Thunk.

Week 5 Lab - GIS Data Search

Monroe County is located in the South West portion of Florida. It consists of both National and State Parks that span the entire county. This lab was again a challenge with some rewards and a lot of failures - so goes learning.

 

 

 

Week 4 Lab Projections

I found this to be a interesting project and that it reinforced the basic skill need for multiple maps display. While I did encounter some problems with the actual map projection conversion, I freely admit it was my own doing and will continue to revisit the procedures.

Haiti relief map

Now that there is some stability coming to the massive emergency response required, some of the maps that will be produced should give a more clear detail of that Emergency Support Function.

WeeK 3 Lab Intoduction to ArcGIS

The Week 3 - GIS Cartography exercises introduces the manipulation of cartographic data. We were challenged to transform data into a presentational format and in doing so to convey a clear picture of the data. These exercises gave the opportunity to become familiar with two of the ArcGIS software suite programs. ArcCatalog is the data management application which is the primary tool for building and managing GIS databases. I am still getting use to the feature and over time will become more versed in navigating around the program given the extra added fun of dealing with an overloaded mainframe.


The second suite is ArcMap in which the actual base map is created and the required overlay layers of data are assembled. This particular assignment dealt with the creation and manipulation of symbols and using the layout feature to present the final product. The program is robust and in time should be come easier to understand the magic.

Week 3 Lab Map 1 the Administrative States of Mexico

Map 1 presented the challenge to create a map of the Administrative States of Mexico and to use the population density data to present a Choropleth map. The data was gain by the use of the database SQL routines and then using the Symbology routine to assign the color and Label routine to annotate the names of the states.

Week 3 Lab Map 2 Presentation of more spatial date within Mexico

Map 2 intensified the acquisition of data and changing the symbology so there would be some organization to madness of information. I found the Roadway database to be fragmented and trying to fit an entire county in a small space was a challenge. The scaling and converting labels to annotation caused some problems. Now if I can convince my TV to allow me to place multiple TV frames within the TV frame, I could save money.

Week 3 Lab - Map 3 Presentation of a Raster overlay and color scheming

Map 3 was straight forward for data placement and presented no problems. The choice of an acceptable color scheme was an issue. I attribute this to the “canned” options given by ArcGIS and would hope that in the actual development of the raster data there is a more robust color scheme programming routine available.

 

Week 2 Lab - My World Map

The exercise reintroduced forgotten skills and how much I have to catch up on.

Deliverable 1 Trip to San Diegao

This was a good introductory into the basics of resizing, searching and trying to come up with a deliverable map. Given the land mass being viewed was about 15 by 30 Miles there was a whole lot to get into a Deliverable 1 assignment. Instead of stacking the hay on the needle point, I just captured the starting point, realizing the "person who won the trip" would be staring here.

In reviewing the assignment, there were a few questions asked and in my dotting of the T's and crossing of the I's I'll add my responses.

Why would this hotel this hotel be a desirable location? It is situated on the San Diego Bay front, and close to the Convention Center and other attractive tourist sites and other wonderful sights.

What is the hotel's telephone number? The listed number is 619-234-1500.

What is the address of Seaport Village? The listed address is 849 W Harbor Dr.

Approximately how far is it from the Marriott Hotel and Marina to Seaport Village? Approximately .17 MI

Approximately how far is the nearest trolley stop?  Approximately .14 MI

What is the name of the nearest trolley stop at Qualcomm Stadium?  Most appropriate - Stadium.

Deliverable 2 Find Potential Sites for a Youth Center

This added the challenge of taking the data and massaging it into what you really needed. Unless you count not following instructions as a problem, I had fun and I am gradually recalling the fundamentals of the program. Again, I kept the needle uncluttered.

New Blog Site for GIS 4043/L Intro to GIS

I trust this will take care of the separate Blog Page issue.