Author: mlhoward

Available Data Date Summary for Delaware County GIS Files

Zip Code Map Data Layer- Contains all zip codes within the county, originally created in the early 2000’s but updated regularly and published monthly. Also includes the information used to populate both the zip_right and zip_left attributes for the county’s road centerline data.

Recorded Documents Data Layer- represent documents like vacations, subdivisions, centerline surveys, annexations, and other misc documents within in county recorder’s plat books, cabinet/slides and instruments records.

School District- this shows all the school districts within the county.

Precinct- consists of polygons showing the boundaries of each voting precinct boundary in the county.

Building outlines- has the outlines of all buildings in Delaware.

Original township- Consists of the original township boundaries in the county before tax district changes affected their original shape

E911 Data- is a spatially accurate representation of all certified addresses in the county, used for location, 911 emergency response, accident reporting, geocoding, and disaster management.

Township- data set that consists of the 19 townships in the county.

PLSS-consists of all Public Land Survey System polygons in the US Military and Virginia Military Survey Districts of the county.

Delaware County Contours- consists of 2 foot contours in 2018.

Street Centerlines- depict pavement centers of all public and private roads in the county, from the State of Ohio Location Based Response System.

Parcel- consists of polygons representing all cadastral parcel lines within the county.

Address Points- provides a spatially accurate placement of addresses within a parcel in the county, meant for 911 emergency response, support of appraisal mapping, accident reporting, geocoding, and disaster management.

Subdivision- consists of all condos and subdivisions recorded in the county.

Condo- consists of all condominium polygons recorded in the county.

Hydrology- consists of all major waterways within the county, enhanced by Lidar-based data in 2018.

Tax District- consists of all tax districts within the county, defined by the county’s auditor’s real estate office.

Dedicated ROW- consists of all lines that are designated as right-of-way within the county.

GPS- identifies all GPS monuments created in 1991 and 1997 in the county.

Survey- is a shapefile consisting of point coverage that represents surveys of land within the county

Map Sheet- consists of all map sheets within Delaware county.

Annexation- contains all annexations of conforming boundaries from 1853 to present day within the county.

Farm Lot- consists of all farmlots and their boundaries in the US Military and Virginia Military Survey Districts of the county.

9-1 : I was able to follow this tutorial perfectly fine, but I’m not really sure what it means.

9-2: Same as the previous tutorial.

9-3: I got a couple error messages when I tried right click UseRate and clicked Calculate Field. I’m assuming it’s because I typed in the expression wrong, maybe I put spaces when I shouldn’t have. I believe this inhibited me from making a scatterplot, as when I typed in the X and Y axis fields, there was no button to apply or even in the Edit tab i wasn’t able to save. So I was unable to completely finish the project.

9-4: I thought this tutorial was really interesting. The lines connecting pools and demand points are a fun way of visualizing on a map.

9-5: I liked the background of this tutorial. Mapping crimes, especially violent ones, are really important and its cool to see in real time how you can define the data to make it more understandable.

10-1: I don’t have “LandUse_Pgh” in my files, only “LandUse_Pgh.tif”. So, I have the land use for a good distance around pittsburgh instead of just the city itself. Actually, another time I tried to find it in the geoprocessing pane it was there. Sometimes files just don’t show up for me. I also don’t have NED_Pittsburgh, just NED. In the end, my tutorial looks just like the one from the book, except the Pittsburgh outline disappeared somewhere along the way and everything I did to the map didn’t just go inside the Pittsburgh limits.

10-2: I thought that this tutorial was interesting. Learning how to make a heat map seems pretty cool.

10-3: This tutorial was really long for me. I was able to do it all though, except for the fact that the poverty index model goes outside the Pittsburgh borders. Not sure why that happens to me so much. This was really complicated but seems useful.

11-1: It was fun playing around on this tutorial. The exploration was interesting.

11-2: Similar to the last tutorial.

11-3: I don’t see the “Get Z From View” button. I also don’t have the cute trees the book has but it is a fun tool to know.

11-4: This tutorial was also interesting to do. Creating the buildings out of thin air was cool. I definitely messed up somewhere along the way though because I didn’t get the proper sightline at the end.

11-5: Not too sure how many uses these tools have, other than scale I guess.

11-6:  This tutorial was super fun. The end product, the Smithfield street 3D, was cool to explore and the little planters, trash cans, and fire hydrants were cute.

11-7:Ok this one was cool. This chapter in general showed a lot of little things to make the viewing and creating experience more fun. It is taking a very long time to export the movie though which is a little annoying since it is only a draft and not that long in length.

4-1: For the section “Use database utilities in the catalog pane”, I was unable to do the copy and paste sections from part 2 and 3, paste just wasn’t showing up for me. I was able to finish the rest of the section, and since it asked you to delete everything at the end, it ultimately didn’t matter.

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4-2: Tracts was not in my contents page for some reason. I ended up going to the catalog pane, to folders, and right clicking tracks to add it t0 the map. Showed up on my contents page then. Hope that’s right. Actually, for delete unneeded columns, my table did not end up looking like the one in the book, instead of fully deleting even though I clicked it all the unneeded columns were just in a lighter gray. Because of this, I was completely unable to finish the section. And it was a long section.

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4-3: After I was doing the section correctly, I opened the crime offenses attribute table and when there should’ve been 444 remaining features, there was still 3924. My SQL expression looked like the one in the book, so I do not know why this happened. At the end of the tutorial, I ended up with two people instead of just one too.

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4-4: This was a short tutorial and one I was able to do 100% successfully, thank god.

4-5: This tutorial was also short and I had no problems with.

4-6: Same as the last 2 tutorials. The latter half of the 4 tutorials were a lot easier than the first half.

5-1: I had no idea there were around 5200 projected coordinate systems and over 100 map projections. How would you even know what’s best for what you’re trying to do?

5-2: Again, there are so many coordinate systems and map projections.

5-3: This one was interesting. I don’t really understand why I was changing the projected coordinate systems and why this matters so much.

5-4: CouncilDistricts was not in my Chapter5,gbd, so I used municipalities because it seemed close enough. I also did not have libraries in it.

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5-5: This tutorial is really confusing. Column JK, which I was supposed to keep, was not the same as what the book said it should be- it was females not living in a place. And there was no column SE at all, so I was unable to do this section. When moving to the next section, I was unable to find most of the census shapefiles and I am not sure why. Because I couldn’t do this, I couldn’t do the next section. So I pretty much was unable to do this entire tutorial except downloading the data at the beginning.

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5-6: Eliminating the land use for everything else other than just the county is interesting. Actually looking at the data is really cool though, and seeing the difference in development. Also, ground features wasn’t an option to symbolize the elevated contours layer for me, so I just changed the color to a similar one instead. I am not the biggest fan of the textbook assuming we know how to do everything we previously learned 100% perfect, as I don’t have the best memory.

6-1: This one was fairly easy and makes sense why this would be useful.

6-2: I am unsure of how to export the selected features as UpperWestSideBlockGroups to Chapter6.gdb. Also, I couldn’t find UpperWestSideStreetsForGeocoding, so I couldn’t clip streets either.

 Screenshot (40).png  Screenshot (41).png

6-3: This tutorial seems really useful. Being able to combine all that data and clear up the contents page makes for much easier map readability.

6-4: Pretty much the same as the last tutorial. I have the same thoughts on it too.

6-5: I do not see SUM_Street_Length in my attributes table, only Street_Length. I’m pretty sure I did this section right so I’m not sure why it’s not appearing for me, even when the table is refreshed

 Screenshot (44).png

6-6: I don’t think I joined the tables right at the end. I didn’t really see how I could do it, clicked around and found something called join, but got a lot of null sections. I wish the book could explain in more detail how to do some steps, because even though it’s later on in the book there’s so much information that its hard to remember it all.

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6-7: I liked the background behind this tutorial. It reminds me that GIS is used for really important and possibly life-changing information, like separating the disabled people in half between 2 fire companies so in the heat of the moment no one gets left behind because of not remembering.

7-1: I don’t know where a constructions toolbar is, so I couldn’t click the add button and move the vertex points of the art building. I had issues with splitting the buildings too, but this is probably just a me thing.

 Screenshot (47).png

7-2: It took me awhile to do this tutorial, as working with these polygons was finicky for me, but I eventually  was able to do everything in the tutorial.

7-3: Well this tutorial was easy. I can understand how smoothing out the polygons can help with viewer comprehension.

7-4: I feel like this is something I would never remember how to do. It looks pretty cool though.

8-1: For me, the rematch addresses pane doesn’t have a “pick from the map button”, so I couldn’t finish the “rematch attendee data by zip code” section. The next section, “symbolize using the collect events tool” didn’t work for me either, as when I tried to run the tool I kept getting “collect events failed” multiple times, even with changing some things up.

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8-2: My only issue with this tutorial is that the basemap, World Light Gray Canvas Base, didn’t load for some reason. Otherwise this one made sense.

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Disclaimer: I do not have access to the book right now, just the files and the screenshots, so I am going from memory when discussing the tutorials because I don’t want to ask to take away one of the class copies while everyone who has them is working hard. I am using a lot of screenshots to prove I did the material since I can’t talk too much about what each tutorial was like.

1-1: I liked that this tutorial culminated into a finished product by the way of that image. It helped me make sense of everything better.

1-2: Here is the finished table for this tutorial. I feel like learning about tables will be very useful.

1-3: I don’t really remember much about this tutorial unfortunately, but I think it was about tables again.

1-4:The 3-d aspect was really cool! It’s really interesting to me how these graphics work and how the 2-D map I was acquainted with transformed into this.

2-1:I enjoy working with symbology, that process seems to make more sense to me than others. Plus, it just looks nice.

2-2: I believe this one was making mini-labels to label each different color/type of land use. I like that you are able to do that, I think it makes identification of your contents easier.

2-3: Another example of correct symbology.

2-4:The field that the book asked for was not popping up for me in any way for some reason, so I attempted to use the ObjectID one which must have been a very wrong choice because my final result was no colors and nothing popping up on the map. I wasn’t able to really do this tutorial.

2-5: Back on track with this tutorial, I was able to actually do this one. Here’s yet another screenshot of symbology because I guess that’s what I mainly took pictures of.

2-6: The swipe feature that lets you see one data set underneath another was actually really cool. I wouldn’t have thought of that being a thing but I think if you were presenting this map as a project it would make the audience more engaged.

2-7: Yet another symbology screenshot. I guess you can say my main takeaway from these tutorials is that I like colors and symbols a lot. Did I really not take pictures of anything else?

2-8: I had some issues with the labeling on this one I think. I couldn’t get the labeling to only go on the West Village bookmark like the book asked. Not sure what I could’ve done wrong other than I must’ve missed something small.

3-1: Couldn’t find the “click text, expand position, and for height, type .45” that the book said to do, so I instead made the Offset Y .45 instead because it seemed close enough to me and thats what I could think of. Also manually moved the text box to look like the one in the book. I think for this one I was just not thinking hard enough. I did search forever for that height section though.

3-2: Here is the completed version of this map, with the correct information in the popup (because for some reason throughout these chapters that didn’t happen for me all the time). Right as I had kind of figured out the software, we switched to the website, which was way different and interesting to try to understand.

3-3: Creating a story was very different from what I was originally expecting my coursework to be like in this class. I think the style of the story is sleek and interesting and makes showing your information more engaging. I can absolutely see this being used for a multitude of things.

3-4: Couldn’t seem to figure out how to do the “Adjust your dashboard” section. Dragging the map and docking it weren’t coming up as options for me for some reason. The rest of 3-4 I was able to do. The idea of a dashboard to show information is interesting, I liked all the ways you can customize one.

Overall, the work this week was different from what I expected by the preliminary readings, and took longer than I anticipated. I also struggled to get the software up and running at the beginning, as I had to do a software update and click around to have the beginning map show on my screen, because it didn’t for some reason. There’s a lot more tutorials for next week, so I’m already setting aside more time than this week to work on everything.

Chapter 4-

Chapter 4 discusses mapping the density of features, why to do it, and how to do it, so you can more accurately compare areas and know if certain areas fit your criteria. The first subsection, “why map density,” describes how it shows you where the highest concentration of features is and how it’s good for looking at patterns in features. If you have multiple features on a map, or when you’re mapping areas, mapping density can help to differentiate easier. “Deciding what to map” asks you to consider what kind of data you have, if you want to map features or feature values- feature values being the number of employees at a business vs. the location of businesses, for example, since the two can create different patterns. “Two ways of mapping density” describes mapping density by defined area- by mapping it graphically, using a dot map (which doesn’t actually show exact locations just the density of features in an area), or by calculating a density value for each area, and by creating a density surface- each cell in the raster layer gets a density value, typically if you have individual locations, sample points, or lines. The next two subsections go into extreme depth on how each method works, how to do it, and what the GIS does. 

Chapter 5- 

Chapter 5, “Finding What’s Inside,” describes why you should map what’s inside, defining your analysis, ways of finding what’s inside, drawing areas and features, selecting features inside an area, and overlaying areas and features. The first subsection, “why map what’s inside,” states that you can look at what’s happening inside an area, or compare what’s happening in several areas based on what’s inside. You can know whether to take action by observing one. “Defining your analysis” describes how depending on your data, you can either draw an area boundary on top of the features, use an area boundary to select the features inside and list or summarize them, or combine the area boundary and features to create summarized data. The subsection goes in depth on what you need in order to make a decision and why. “Three ways of finding what’s inside” describes drawing areas and features as a way to find what’s inside- creating a boundary of an area and features to see what’s inside and out, selecting the features inside the area, and overlaying the areas and features- the GIS combines the area and the features into a new layer or compares two layers, and the subsection also compares each method and what features best suited for them. “Drawing areas and features” describes the actual process of finding what’s inside, by making a map to see what features are inside the area either using locations and lines, discrete areas, or continuous features. “Selecting features inside an area” is a method where you specify the features and the area, then highlighting selected features on a map and putting them into a data table, or can summarize an attribute associated with the features. “Overlaying areas and features” is a method for discrete features or continuous ones.

Chapter 6-

“Finding What’s Nearby,” talks about how this lets you see what’s in a set distance or travel range of a feature to monitor events in an area or find an area served by a facility or the features affected by an activity. The first subsection, “why map what’s nearby,” talks about how finding what’s in a set distance identifies an area and the features inside an idea affected by an event or activity. “Defining your analysis” describes how in order to find what’s nearby, you can measure straight line distance, measure distance or cost over a network, or measure cost over a surface, and how the information you need from the analysis will help to choose the best method. “Three ways of finding what’s nearby” goes more in depth about the previously mentioned methods, what each is good for and what you need, and how to choose what method works best for you. “Using straight-line distance” is the simplest way of finding what’s nearby, by either creating a buffer to defined a boundary and find what’s inside it, select features to find others within a given distance, calculate feature to feature distance to find and assign distance to locations near a source, or create a surface to calculate continuous distance, and each method is discussed in depth. “Measuring distance or cost over a network” is a method where the GIS identifies all lines within a given distance, time, or cost of a source location, by specifying the network layer, what the GIS does, assigning street segments to center, setting travel parameters, specifying more than one center, and selecting the surrounding features to make the map. “Calculating the cost over a geographic surface” lets you find what’s nearby when traveling overland by creating a raster layer with the value of each cell being the total travel cost from the nearest source cell, and how and why to do this.

Mitchell Chapter 1-

I found this reading much easier to understand than the previous week’s reading. Its format, how it breaks down the information, makes me feel more confident about the information presented. I especially appreciated the step by step guide on the process of GIS analysis- frame the question, understand your data, choose a method, process the data, and look at the results. I learn best when steps are clearly laid out for me to re-write to help memorize them. Also, geographic features are broken down into discrete- pinpointed locations, continuous phenomena- values assigned between points or enclosed boundaries, and summarized by area- a data value applied to an entire area instead of any specific location within it (ex. demographics). You also represent geographic features in GIS through either a vector- features are rows on a data table, or raster model- features are a matrix of cells in continuous space. There are subsections of the geographic features I previously mentioned, which are called geographic attribute values. The types of attributes are categories- groups of similar things represented using numeric codes or text, ranks-which put features in order from high to low based on feature attributes, counts and amounts- which shows the actual number of features on a map or any measurable quantity associated with some feature, ratios- show the relationship between two quantities, created by dividing one quantity by another for each feature, and common ratios are proportions and densities, continuous (not including categories and rank attributes) and noncontinuous values- which is a way to know how the values are distributed to help group them. The last part of the chapter shows how to use the data tables in the GIS software with a step by step process. The common operations you use in data tables are selecting- choosing features to work with a subset of them or assign a new attributed value to those features, calculating- to assign new values to features in a data table, and summarizing- to summarize the values for specific attributes to produce statistics.

Chapter 2-

This chapter focuses on mapping where things are and beginning to understand why things are the way they are. The first subsection is “why map where things are” describes the benefits of looking at a distribution of features on a map, which help you more easily identify patterns, in comparison to looking at just individual features. Mapping where things are can show you where on a map you need to take action, or the specific areas that meet your criteria, and explore causes for the patterns you see. The next subsection, “deciding what to map” states that in order to look for patterns in your data you need to map the features in a layer using different types of symbols. What information you need from your analysis will help you display the features, like where they are and are not, map the location of different types of features and if certain types occur in the same place. You should use the map based on your intended audience for the issue you’re addressing. The next subsection is “preparing your data,” which is making sure your features have geographic coordinates assigned to them- either using the databases or mapping it by hand, and that your features have assigned category values- a code that identifies its type, and can be divided into subtypes as well. “Making your map” is the next subsection, which describes the features you tell the software that you want to display, the symbols to use to draw them, and that you can map all your features in a layer as one type or show them by their categorical values. It also describes what the GIS does for each way to map features. This subsection is very in depth and I will most likely refer to it fairly often. The last subsection is “analyzing geographic patterns,” and describes multiple ways features in a category can be presented as, such as a clustered, uniform, or random distribution, for example. Patterns can be the result of multiple factors, and any patterns that you can’t see just by looking usually need statistics to measure and quantify the relationship. 

Chapter 3-

This chapter describes what mapping the most and the least entails, how to do it, and its benefits. The first subsection, “why map the most and the least,” explains that people map where the most and the least are to see the relationships between places or to find places that meet their criteria, by mapping features based on a quantity associated with each. “What do you need to map” is the chapter’s next subsection, describing what you need to do to decide how to best present the quantities to see the map’s patterns. You can map quantities associated with the geographic features listed in chapter one, and make sure to remember the purpose of your map and its intended audience when deciding how to present your information. The next subsection, “understanding quantities,” describes how you need to assign symbols to features based on an attribute that contains a quantity- amount, ratio, or rank. Counts and amounts show total numbers and allow you to see the value of each feature and its magnitude compared with others, ratios show the relationship between 2 quantities and can even out differences between small and large areas, or areas with many or few features, so the map more accurately shows the features’ distribution, and ranks put features in order from high to low and care useful when direct measurements are difficult or if a listed quantity represents a combination of features. “Creating classes” helps you decide two to represent your quantities on a map, either by assigning each value its own symbol or grouping values into classes, typically based on which feature you choose to map your data. The 4 most common classification schemes, natural breaks, quantile, equal interval, and standard deviation are also explained and compared to each other in depth. “Making a map” is the next subsection, and describes the options GIS has for creating maps to show quantities- graduated symbols, graduated colors, charts, contours, and 3D perspective values, along with creating the view, z-factor, light source, and perspective view very in depth. “Looking for patterns” tells you to either look at the transition between the least and most are, whether values cluster or not, to see how the phenomena behaves.

Hi, my name is Maddy Howard and I am a sophomore majoring in Environmental Studies & Geography. I am from outside of Cleveland, Ohio- Avon Lake, on the west side. I like coffee, hanging out with my friends, and occasionally photography. My campus activities include being a part of Delta Zeta Sorority 🙂

I knew that GIS was something very important, but didn’t exactly know why, or really anything about it. I took this class to get a better understanding of GIS, as I knew that it was a skill to learn and know about, so I wanted to understand it more. This article really helped me understand more about the subject, including the background of it. I had no idea how many uses GIS truly has, from the well known use of navigation, to what you eat, to Starbucks using it, to police officers being trained in it, and so much more. Also, its foundations going all the way back to the 1960’s and that it didn’t even use a computer was quite surprising to me. The fact that the development of GIS was happening simultaneously within multiple different countries not knowing of the others is also quite interesting. The background of GIS involving landscape architecture and surveying, not purely geography, and that its history doesn’t involve just technology, plus the actual history of GIS being of contempt, is also something I didn’t expect. The complexities between GISystems and GIScience is something I might need more clarification on, as even though broadly GIScience is the theoretical basis for GISystems, it is not as simple as that. I know it is explained a lot in the reading, but sometimes elaboration about certain topics just confuses me more. I also never thought about spatial analysis and relationships in GIS. Using that to predict future events is extremely interesting but also seems hard to actually do. Overall, learning about all the different ways you can use GIS makes me more excited about the class itself. Its complexities will surely be hard to understand, as anything that is woven into everyday life seemingly unnoticed that much of the time should be, but it will be interesting to try to figure it all out.

At risk terrestrial plant and animal species in the U.S.- This online GIS map shows the total number of species that are either listed as G1, G2, or federally endangered residing in each U.S. watershed. The data is from NatureServe in 2011. The owner of this map, Enviroatlas, is part of the EPA and provides geospatial data, tools, and resources about ecosystem services, ecosystem chemical and non-chemical stressors, and human health. This website, https://www.epa.gov/enviroatlas , provides more information about the map owner and creator.

https://m.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?layers=c481510217f347b7b026febd15839dca

Invasive species in Vermont- This online GIS map I came across shows sightings of invasive species. This data is from the State of Vermont Agency of Natural Resources Invasive Species Database, which provides information about invasive species and how to identify them for the public at https://anr.vermont.gov/special-topics/invasive-species.

https://www.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?layers=b1ae7b7b110447c3b452d9cacffeed36