Analyze Data for Homeland Security

These are maps of the NORAD facility in Colorado. The line of site analysis is shows how the software can be used to help homeland security officials determine optimal surveillance coverage. The other map shows the line of site analysis used with 3D mapping. Overall this exercise was extremely frustrating because the directions were unclear throughout. I was just relieved to be finished with the exercise and be able to move on to the final project.

Analyzing Washington D.C. Crime

This is a map of schools color coded by the number of crimes committed within 1000ft. It is hard to tell if the drug free zone is effective without having the statistics from before the drug free zone laws were created. Currently 39% of all the crime is occurring within 1000ft of a school if the percentage was higher before the laws were created then it could be considered effective, but 39 percent is still very high in general.

Week 6 Location Decisions

These maps show proximity to different features within Alachua County. The Euclidean distance tool was used along with the feature to raster tool in order to create raster layers depicting the different distance rings around each feature. Making sure environment setting were correct in each data frame was a big part of accomplishing this assignment. I had to reset the extent settings multiple times in order to keep the raster layers from extending past the county bounds.

Week 5

This map shows the university student occupancy rate in Pewter City. The darker shades of blue indicate higher occupancy rates. This exercise shows how thematic maps can be useful in social impact assessments.

This is an environmental impact map showing existing and current traffic impact on a new building. It shows that there will be insignificant impact in the collector zone, but significant negative impact on the local zone. The exercise was very straight forward and easy to understand.

Week 4 Participation

Deepwater Horizon Animation

GIS allows for the mapping of patterns of destruction in order for responders to accurately allocate resources to affected areas. For the Deepwater Horizon Oil spill, GIS is being used to track the spread of oil in order to see where containment devices, such as booms, need to be placed. GIS can also be used to map water current patterns to help predict where the oil might be heading in order to take preventative measure before the oil reaches other areas. Fishery closures are also being mapped which shows how the fishing industry is being impacted by the oil spill. Since fishing is a major industry in the gulf, mapping the closures helps the public and government officials visualize what areas are being affected by the spill. These visual aids will help officials better analyze what economic impacts will occur from the closures. Assistance requests and insurance claims will need to be evaluated based on the areas affected by the oil and maps of the spill can assist with more efficient processing. Keeping the public informed of the cleanup progress is accomplished by posting information on the internet. Online mapping and data hosting by the EPA, Google, ESRI, and NOAA are helping to keep the public informed about ongoing issues such as fishery closures, spill extent, affected animal habitats, etc. Many GIS software programs have been created to help with modeling disasters. HAZUS was created for earthquakes, flooding, and hurricanes and has an option for estimating debris generation. An Area Contingency Plan (ACP) dataset could have been used to help oils spill responders with no previous knowledge of the area familiarize themselves and begin the response and recovery operations.

ESI Maps

This is an ESI map showing coastal lands that are vulnerable to the Deep Water Horizon oil spill. The most vulnerable type of coastal land is fine to medium grain sand beaches. Approximately 86,000 ft of shoreline will be affected when the oil reaches the area.

This is a map of the potential affected animal habitats resulting from the Deep Water Horizon oil spill. Invertebrates are the most affected with over 50 square miles of affected area. The map also shows booming operations in the area. Currently there are no verified in place operations.

Hurricanes

This is an elevation map of Key West, Florida. The highest elevation is 3.75 meters.

This map shows the percentage of flooding by land type. Most of Key west was flooded by the 8ft storm surge and developed land was the most heavily impacted land type.

This is map of infrastructure and health care facilities. The main road into Key west is Highway 1 and should be top priority for clearance in order to allow delivery of resources. The 2 hospitals and 1 airport were flooded buy the surge and should be next on the priority list.

Final

Presentation

Summary

Week 11 Lab

This was a very long lab for me because i did the second module of the labeling an annotation lab as well. I did learn a lot about annotation though. The only other difficulty I had with this lab was outputting the model builder diagram. It exported to pdf, but when I tried to save as a jpg the size jumped to over 2MB which is making it difficult to upload to this blog. I eventually was able to resize it.

Week 10 Lab

This is a map of the major land owners in Gulf County Florida. This map was very straight forward and simple to create. It gave some very good tips on querying and analyzing data. I can see using some of the skills I learned in this lab in future projects for my job.

Vector Analysis II

This is a map showing possible campground locations within a state forest. The intersect tool proved to be the easiest way to combine to different buffer layers by using only one step.

Questions

1. Which tool did you use? Was there any noticeable difference between its results and the results from the instructions? The intersect tool. There was not noticeable differences between the 2 results.


2. Which tool did you use here? Why? I used the erase tool because it allowed me to use the conservation layer to "erase" areas where it intersected with the possible sites layer.

3. How many features are in this layer? What is the area of the largest feature? What is the area of the smallest feature? There are 79 features in this layer. The largest feature is 1918.8 acres and the smallest feature is 0.2 acres.

Data Editing

This is a map of the UWF campus that shows roads, athletic fields, and buildings. This was a very simple lab that showed how to digitize features. I had to be aware of how close I was zoomed in to properly digitize the buildings and athletic fields in order to only draw the building and not the shadows. I used the snapping feature for the roads to make sure there were no gaps in my data.

Georeferencing Rasters

This is a map of the UWF campus with 2 georeferenced aerial photos. The top half is georeferenced with a 1st order polynomial and has an RMS error of 9.775. The bottom portion of the map is georeferenced using a 3rd order polynomial with an RMS error of 2.0183. I had to start over a few times with this lab because I did not realize that I had the first photo selected when I was trying to georeference the second one. Once I realized my selection was wrong the I restarted and finished fairly quickly.

GIS Data Search Lab

This is a map of Hendry County in south Florida. I found data from multiple sources such as the GIS Data Depot, FDGL, and LABINS. Getting the data was fairly easy, but displaying it on the map in a way that was easy on the eyes was a little more difficult. In order to get all the data displayed on a single map I used transparency combined with colors that contrast. I made sure that colors did not contrast too much so that your eye is not drawn to one particular part of the map, but were different enough to separate the different features.

Earthquake in Haiti

This is a map put together by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). It shows a lot of estimated information about the event such as the location of the epicenter, number of deaths, number of injuries, and number of displaced people. I think it a very good map because it gives a lot of information with out being too cluttered.

Week 4 Projections

This map shows various projected coordinate systems and how they affect maps. Alachua county represents the part of the map that is most consistent in square mileage calculations between the three coordinate systems while Miami-Dade county represents the part of the map that shows the biggest inconsistency in square mileage calculation.

Week 3 Lab

This is a map of population values in Mexico by individual states. This was a simple map to create and I had no problems creating it.

This a map of Central Mexico that shows urban areas, federal highways, and two river types. It also shows an additional data frame that displays an inset map. This is a very neat feature of the progrma that I did not know how to use before.

This a digital elevation map (DEM) of Central Mexico. I it uses a stretched symboloy to display the elevations throughout the region.

Lab 1

This is a map of world countries by population attributes from 2007. I did not have any problems creating this map.

Week 1 Deliverables

This is a map of Potential Youth Center Locations. I did not have any problems creating this map.

This a map of the San Diego Zoo location. The exercise was straight forward and easy to follow. I did not export the map until after I completed the exam and noticed when I went to post the map that the state of Idaho was still selected in the smaller map window. I had to go back in and fix it and then export it again. Other than that I did not have any issues.