Geography 291: Geospatial Analysis with Desktop GIS

Chapter 7-

I found chapter 7 tutorials relatively easier. In this chapter, I worked on split features, zooming and formatting different buildings on a map. For example, I opened the Baker Porter bookmark and was able to split the polygon successfully.  Overall, I really enjoyed this chapter and found enjoyment in editing buildings on the map. 

Chapter 8

For some reason I could not how to navigate this chapter at all. I was unsuccessful in finding the create locator tool which was a major part of the tutorial. However, overall this chapter was about navigating different regions and geocode data by zip code.

Chapter 9

This chapter redeemed the last chapter. This chapter helped me learn about the pairwise buffer tool. I was able to successfully use it and use it for the whole chapter/tutorial. I also learned about the proximity analysis.

Chapter 7:

This chapter was one of the smoother chapters for me, and I found it pretty easy to navigate overall. The geoprocessing tools like Buffer, Clip, and Intersect felt familiar enough that I could often complete the steps without even following the instructions closely. It was satisfying to see how these tools could quickly answer spatial questions just by setting a few parameters. I also liked how the chapter showed the logic behind each tool which made sense on what they could do as I was working. Overall, this chapter boosted my confidence because I realized I was starting to think ahead of the tutorial and understand how the tools fit together.

Chapter 8:

This chapter took me a little longer to work through because some of the symbology steps didn’t look the same as they did in earlier chapters. I got stuck on a few parts where the panels or options had moved, so I had to slow down and figure out where everything was. A couple of steps even required some quick Google searches just to find the right table or window the tutorial wanted me to use. Even with those challenges, I still liked seeing how different symbology choices could change the way the data was interpreted. The chapter was manageable, but it definitely required more troubleshooting and patience than some of the earlier ones.

Chapter 9:  

I enjoyed working through this chapter the most because it felt really interactive and visual. I liked how you could see the map change in real time as you applied different tools and settings, which made the whole process more engaging. The steps flowed pretty naturally, and I felt more confident moving through the exercises without getting stuck. It was satisfying to watch the analysis build layer by layer and actually see the results take shape on the screen. This chapter felt smoother and more interesting than some of the earlier ones, and it made the work feel less like work. 

 

These chapters dive a bit further into the different kinds of analysis that can be done using GIS programs. Chapter 7 teaches us the formatting of different polygon overlays that can be used in an informational GIS analysis. These formatting tools include creating, deleting, editing, and reframing different polygons over satellite images of buildings. Chapter 8 goes over data and data points a little more in-depth than before. With this, we match data points to their accurate match on the map using ZIP codes and confirm the program’s success in matching these points correctly. I found chapter 8 particularly useful for the future, as matching data points is a crucial part of GIS mapping and creating an accurate model for your intended purposes. Chapter 9 was also rather helpful in figuring out different ways to categorize zones of coverage. This chapter covered a variety of ways that zoning coverage can be done and provided very useful steps in completing the chapter. Overall, I think I am starting to get the hang of the ArcGIS program and am fairly confident I will be able to implement such programs in future work. I am eager to implement a GIS map from scratch using my own data inputs rather than provided files as well.

Chapter 7

This chapter was easy for me and I actually figured out how to use certain features before being told to by the tutorial. This chapter included a lot of practical skills that I think will be useful to know how to do. This includes moving and rotating polygons as the software is not always 100% accurate and so I know this will be useful. It was fun to be able to create a new feature and is a useful skill.

Chapter 8

This chapter was focused on geocoding and was very short. We learned how to rematch addresses and use other various new tools. Geocoding is the process of converting text-based location descriptions into precise geographic coordinates to plot them as points on a map. This chapter was fairly simple for me. 

Chapter 9

This chapter showed us how to use buffers which is a zone around a feature. These are used for drug-free buffers around schools, food deserts, etc. We also learned how to use multiple-ring buffers which are used to create various buffer zones inside each other. We used service areas to estimate a gravity model of geography. 

Chapter 7 is much easier than some of the other chapters we have done in this GIS program. For the first tutorial, we had to move specific buildings to align them with the building shapes on the map we were looking at, which was very easy and took only a few minutes. Example two of Chapter 7 began by creating a specific point in the University parking lot, ensuring it was a specific color and could be shown on the map. The other part was that we were deleting specific things and making sure they stayed deleted. In tutorial three, we had to use a smoothing tool to smooth out Flagstaff Hill, which was very confusing at first because I couldn’t find the specific tool they asked for. I looked it up, found it, and it didn’t take me much longer. After that, the specific tutorial asked me to smooth out the specific areas it specified. for tutorial for we had a specifically put the colors on the specific building and have them make sure they were correctly color coordinated at first they didn’t come through due to the layering on top of it, but the tutorial showed us how to make sure that the layering didn’t cover them completel., this one was specifically really fun to figure out as it made identifying specific things in the building more interesting and you could figure out an office space a classroom hallways restrooms and this kind of shows out how building planning works, which is very interesting. Out of all the other chapters we have done, I think chapter 7 is probably one of my favorites. It adds onto things that we’ve already learned how to do, exactly as well as adding some new things on top of what we’ve already learned, and keeps expanding the specifics of what other chapters already showed.

 

Chapter 8 had only two tutorials, but both were somewhat long, especially the first, which asked us to build specific features based on ZIP Codes in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, and Maryland. in the tutorial, we may have started out very big with those four states, but it’s specifically broke down into defining the specifics in a very quick manner where we specifically went down into major cities like Pittsburgh, which was very interesting because we went from very large very quickly to very small, and I only a matter of minutes and only a few clicks between each one. Compared to the first tutorial, the second tutorial was a little easier but a little bit more tedious. We specifically had to put many things down, like our left address and the locator house address, which was very confusing at first when reading the specific tutorial. Compared to tutorial one, this one definitely took me a little bit more time, but it was definitely worth it. It was very interesting to see how, with just a few numbers, you can point out so many different places in such a major area. Both of these tutorials were a little confusing, but after a little bit of time, I figured them out with very little problem and felt like I completed a harder assignment compared to chapter 7, even though chapter 8 only had two examples; these two examples were a lot more complicated compared to the chapter 7 examples

Chapter 9 is kind of like Chapter 7 in that the tutorials didn’t feel as hard, but there were many of them to do in tutorial one of chapter 9, we were trying to find the pools in the area of Pittsburgh, which was really interesting because at first we had a plug-in we were looking for pools directly and then we put them all into .5 of a mile which the map shows us and these giant blue circles, which areas in a .5 mile each other have a pool and some of these areas overlap with each other but certain areas have a pool to them in tutorial too we do almost the exact thing is tutorial one but instead of .5 a mile we switch it to a mile. This gives us another set of circles inside the larger circle we made in the first example. This adds an additional buffering ring to our original circle. in tutorial three of chapter 9 instead of having the circles it’s this time we have the map of Pittsburgh and each pool is labeled with its big dot and where it relates to all the other pools and we can kind of see any more colorful pattern, where each pool is compared to the other one in distance darker the color it has meaning it is the pool and the lighter color it is is how far it is away from a pool. It has to calculate the average of a pool of values that are not adjacent to each other. In Example 5 of Chapter 9, we did a data clustering analysis. We collected data from specific areas in the city of Pittsburgh on crimes committed by age and on how likely people were to commit those crimes in those areas.

Chapter 7

Chapter 7 walks the user through the process of managing a map that contains real imagery. I found this to be a valuable chapter and relatively easy to understand. It taught me how to rotate and move polygons to match the satellite images, as well as create different polygons for new features. The chapter also began to familiarize me with the Edit ribbon, which I feel as though I had not interacted with much in prior chapters. The edit ribbon contained the move and edit vertices buttons. The edit vertices buttons allowed me to add and move vertices to morph a polygon to match the satellite image. There were other ways to edit polygons, though, such as the trace and split buttons. The trace button allowed me to create a selection using the streetpaths as a guide, while the split button allowed me to make two separate polygons out of a single polygon. I had some trouble with the last tutorial of the chapter when asked to import data for a building polygon. I will say that this chapter seemed to easily explain how to change the visual features of a map when needed, which I feel will be quite helpful when building my own maps. 

Chapter 8

Chapter 8 was shockingly short, with a heavy emphasis on zipcodes and other floating techniques. One technique is the geocode addresses tool, which helps to create dot plots on a map using specific zipcode data. There is also a tool called a collect events tool that does something similar, placing dots, this time with a greater variety of dot sizes. Much of the chapter was a simple walkthrough of different tools, with almost all of them adding or altering points on the map in some way. I find this valuable as it is important to strategize what the most effective way to visualize your data is, and the creators of the GIS platform recognize this by providing the user with many different ways to do this. Additionally, there was some more use of the attribute tables, which is always a good thing to refresh my mind on. I was a bit surprised that ZIP code data points had been covered so late into the textbook, as I would think that this is a form of data that I will be utilizing relatively frequently going forward in my work with the GIS platform. 

Chapter 9

A large aspect of Chapter 9 was to create different types of buffers around different data points on the map. It walked me through how to change the radius of the buffer and what tool to use to create a buffer, which were the pairwise buffer and the multiple ring buffer. The pairwise buffer tool creates a standard radius around the data point, while the multiple ring buffer can create a greater number of buffers, and also provides the option of making them overlap. A lot more was done in the analysis tab within this chapter as well. One of the features from the analysis tab is the service area option, which can change the visual attributes of the data measured within the map. I personally thought that was a cool feature to introduce, and it was interesting to see how different layers of data can be shown in that way. It was also a good way to show how the data can change depending on the distance from a particular point. Another important topic covered within the chapter was the visualization of data in the sense of creating different types of representations, such as tables and dot plots. It felt very appropriate to finish the tutorials off with some additional support in creating tables and such. 

Chapter 7: This chapter was pretty easy and went well for the most part. I ran into an issue in the first tutorial where I could not select the outlines of buildings, but after resetting I was able to complete the tutorial without issue. I encountered no other problems with this chapter.

Chapter 8: Didn’t have any issues with the tutorials for this chapter, the only thing that went wrong was in the second tutorial the computer froze while running the geocoding addresses tool. I waited several minutes for it to unfreeze but ultimately had to power off the computer and restart the tutorial. Afterward, I encountered no issues in this chapter.

Chapter 9: I only had to restart tutorial 3 in this chapter due to making a mistake early on, I think it was with the spatial join tool. Other than that, there were no issues in this chapter. I feel like after completing all these tutorials I am getting a better understanding of how tools work and what they can be used for.

Chapter 1:

Starting with a completed map and working backwards is an interesting tactic to teach beginners how the system works. That way the maps are already mostly constructed and the learning is very specific/ centered in a certain task within that map. Connecting to that, the “Your Turn” sections of the book is a smart way to ensure the reader is actually grasping the material. It makes you use your own brain to work through what was just done as a tutorial on your own. Also, the textbook including photo examples alongside the tutorial is very helpful in making sure I haven’t messed something up. It’s a good visual guideline. On the contents pane, the way it’s arranged to be from what’s drawn first and “on the bottom of everything” makes a lot of sense in regards to a map and layering. I knew everything had its own layer from reading the earlier chapters, but the tutorial extended that thought even further by having this particular overlay. It makes a lot of sense to me that the layers are drawn on top of one another, it’s almost like altering a physical map by adding marks directly on top  of the paper.

A personal connection to the system of GIS that I had thought about when working was the shortcuts. Taking “snapshots” and using Ctrl S to save the project is something I’ve instinctually been drawn to do after spending years working in Photoshop with a similar shortcut interface. I never wanted to lose work, and from that I learned to always save my work, which I’ve found really carries over to this system as well. By having an original base saved/ snapshotted, it lowers the impact a mistake might have on the project, ensuring there is always that beginning point to return to if needed.

Finally, I had a slight moment of frustration at the end of the tutorial when it came to the labeling. The program is such a large system, and it has a crazy amount of buttons, so simply locating where all the different buttons and options are was a lot to process. It was frustrating when I couldn’t figure out where something was hiding in the interface.

 

Chapter 2:

This chapter diverged from the 2D maps, into adjusting them to be seen as a more prominent 3D. I really liked the way that the interpretation of the maps can completely change between 2D and 3D. How some details that may relay a certain type of information isn’t the same linear with the two styles, or how an aspect of the 3D model can bring to light information that couldn’t be seen the other way. This really brings to light the idea of understanding your map. Knowing who/ what the map is for, in order to adjust and label it in a way that will relay the kinds of information needed within its purpose. This chapter really focuses on clarifying the details of the map. By making the subject notable while also adding the necessary context to the background.

Something that I found interesting while working on this chapter, was the mention of color blindness. Which was something I hadn’t actually thought about once when creating all these models of colors. It was neat to see the inclusion of altering how a map is displayed so a person with color blindness could achieve the same aspect of detail when mapping, even without using bunches of colors. It also doubled as a lesson in understanding how to change the symbols of a map, and explaining that a variety of shapes can be used instead of colors to convey the same knowledge of the key.

I will add as a side note, that I absolutely love playing around with the different colors! Obviously the purpose of a map is to convey information, but I find it fun to adjust the colors in an aesthetically pleasing way, or to pair associated colors with the topic of the map.

Chapter 3:

This chapter was interesting because we pivoted even more and went from working within the ArcGIS Pro, to learning the Online system. On that topic, I feel as though in a way, ArcGIS Online is a much smoother/ easier interface to work with. I don’t know exactly how to explain that, but maybe it’s due to the fact that it’s online and available for anyone to access. Perhaps it’s made a bit simpler and cleaner for anyone to play around with and use. Before that section of the tutorial however, I really liked following the detailed explanation of how to create layouts from scratch. This is a very useful skill, in being able to make any style of chart or map view of the project for easy download and display. I liked how the textbook described going about making these layouts. To think about retaining this goal of designing it in a way that anyone could understand it, like you’re sharing the maps to those with no experience in the software. It reminded me of the explanatory mindset of teaching something in a way a child or an alien could grasp.

I have a creative mindset, so I adored the section of the chapter that revolved around storytelling within the StoryMaps. We were giving the map’s their story. In a sense, this is leaning into the analytical aspect of the “Geospatial Analysis.” I appreciated the angle of art, from adding a cover image, to having the potential to completely change the design/ layout. This part, just like creating layouts, is highly important to know how to do. The uses for the completed story and layout are endless. My first thought was using it for a website, or some form of journalism as I thought it resembled an article in a way. It’s returning to the idea in the first textbook of the many everyday uses that GIS has.

The quote from the mathematician, John Tukey, “minimize ink!” is very applicable to mapping on GIS. And I rather enjoyed the idea of never deleting any values even if they don’t add anything to the image. It’s like with art, you might take a hundred photos or create notebooks of sketches, and only a handleful could be things you actually like and will use. You don’t just throw the others out though, because they still hold power in what they don’t show. It’s better to keep something and not use it, then to delete it and realize you really did like it, or did need it after all.

Chapter 7:

This chapter focused on digitizing, which meant that most of it was spent converting various forms of data into forms that work best in ArcGIS. This is super important because there is no universal method of data presentation, and being able to convert and create data of the desired form is crucial for any mapmaking. I was already familiar with many aspects of this chapter from working with other drawing and graphic design apps. I had a lot of fun with it!

Figure 7.1 Drawing a polygon for the parking lot. 

Creating polygons and using the Trace tool were my favorite parts of this chapter! Honestly, making polygons was easier than I was originally expecting. From the readings earlier in this course, I thought I was going to have to input geographic coordinates to put polygons into the correct spot. I learned that ArcGIS is much kinder and allows you to simply drag and rotate polygons. It’s also very helpful to have a matching basemap or base layers to which you can size your polygons.

Also, I was pleasantly surprised by the capabilities of the Smoothing tool. Once again, I thought there was going to be some sort of complicated algorithm I would have to go through to get a smooth shape, but it’s thankfully just another tool! (I’m sure that the computer performs complicated steps, but I am grateful that I don’t have to do them myself.)

Figure 7.2:  Transforming the SpacePlan layer onto the StudyBldgs layer. 

It took me a few tries to get this right because I attempted to complete this step before looking at the reference photo in the tutorial. At first, I tried drawing an outline around the SpacePlan layer…which definitely did not work. Then, I tried transforming every single vertex, which was unnecessary. (That attempt is shown in the picture above.)

Chapter 8:

This chapter, focused on geocoding, was pretty short. However, there was still a wealth of important techniques and information within! Something that sounded super interesting to me in the beginning of the chapter was the use of Soundex keys to match attribute names (ex. streets) that are not spelled correctly. It seems like a really neat way to code and simplify language. The step I struggled with the most in this chapter was rematching attendee data. For whatever reason, when I tried to click on an individual location, I struggled to find the Match button and successfully rematch the addresses.

Figure 8.1 Distribution of Attendees using Collect Events tool.

I liked using the Collect Events tool. Being able to turn individual events within certain tracts into collective graduated symbols is a really helpful way to look at the data differently! The concept of match scores is also pretty neat. It’s proof that though the computer is faster at computing than humans, it’s not necessarily smarter. Though the computer does make conjectures and assumptions looking at local context in the data, it doesn’t have the natural reasoning or critical thinking of humans. So yes, mistakes (when inputting addresses, for example) are made by humans in the first place, but then humans go back in after the computer has done its best and apply personal knowledge and community context clues to fill in the gaps.

Chapter 9:

This chapter focused on applying advanced GIS technologies, but thankfully, I found it pretty easy. Tutorial 9-1 introduces the concept of buffers, which I recall reading about in the other text. I find the concept of mapping with buffers really useful and interesting! Buffers are great for determining if objects fall within a certain radius, which is particularly important in fields like public health when determining who may or may not have access to a particular service or facility. 

Figure 9.1: 0.5- and 1-mile buffers around public pools in Allegheny County, Pittsburgh.

There are 42, 548 youths in the city of Pittsburgh within 1 mile of a pool, which means 87% of youths in Pittsburgh have good accessibility to a pool. (There are 48,903 total youths in Pittsburgh.) In Pittsburgh, 10,718 youth have excellent access to a pool, 20,448 have good access, and 16,264 have fair or poor access. This corresponds to percentages of 22%, 42%, and 33%, respectively. Considering that more youths in Pittsburgh have fair or poor pool access than those with excellent pool access, changes should be made to ensure that more pools can be open for these kids. (Or alternatively, some areas with high pool density can close and those resources can be reallocated to open a pool in an area where it might be the only one.

In Tutorial 9-5, for whatever reason, some of the Cluster IDs were numbered differently, so I had to pay attention while relabeling the features to ensure they matched the data correctly.

Figure 9.2 Serious Violent Crimes by Age and Gender

The square shapes correspond to young age groups that committed crimes. The pink and purple shapes are females, and the yellow, green, and blue shapes are males. If I were to take this analysis further, I could impose these features on a streets basemap to determine where they are occurring in terms of area development, or I could create a graduated colors map measuring income to see if more crimes are being committed in lower income areas. 

All of the tutorials are done…hooray! I just want to give a shoutout to the geoprocessing toolbox…absolutely clutch! I would get so excited every time I saw that I could just plug in my inputs and outputs, units of measurement, and queries. Literal lifesaver. 5 stars.

Chapter 7

Chapter 7 was about digitizing, in which I learned how to edit, create, and delete polygon features, create and digitize point features, use cartography tools to smooth features, work with CAD drawings, and spatialy adjust features. I found it very interesting that 7-1 allowed us to edit polygon features on CMU’s campus buildings. I was able to rotate and move existing buildings into a layer, and add vertex points and split polygons to further edit them to match buildings on the world imagery basemap. I found this section to be very fun. I am still a little confused on vertex points and why they are important to use/what the purpose of them are. In 7-2 I was able to create and delete polygon features. I learned that campus planners need polygons of open parking lots for a permeable surface and transportation engineering study.  This section was interesting as I was able to work with parking lots and bus stops.

Section 7-3 was very straightfoward, where I learned about the smooth polygon tool, which is a useful tool to improve the aesthetic or cartorgraphic quality of polygons. I also learned that the features are digitized with just a few line segments and don’t match the true geography. Section 7-4 was the most difficult section, which was about transforming features. I learned about the importance of computer-aided design (CAD). CAD drawings and BIM models use Cartesian coordiantes (which I do not know what it is) and are not geographically referenced to geographic coordinate system, state plane, or Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinates (which I also do not know what this is). CAD drawings contain layers in one drawing and are color-coded according to the layer color assigned in the CAD drawinsgs. I did not know that you cannot edit CAD drawings directly, and in order to edit it, you have to export the drawing to a feature class after you georeference it to its approximate campus location- and this caused me to be stuck at first.

Chapter 8

Chapter 8 was about geocoding, and I felt as if this was the hardest chapter we have done yet. I have not heard of geocoding prior to this, but I learned that geocoding is a GIS process that matches location fields in tabular data to corresponding fields in existing feature classes, such as TIGER/Line Streets, to map the tabular data. I also learned that a problem with geocoding is that soruce data suppliers and data entry workers can write or type anything they want for an address, including misspellings, abbreviations, omissions, and place-names instead of addresses. I would like to read more and research more about what fuzzy matches and fuzzy methods are- I have heard about this in research articles before and was not too sure what that means. I learned that an algorithim computes a Soundex key, which is a code assigned to names that sound alike, and identifies candidate matches of source and reference street adresses to account for spelling errors.

In 8-1 I geocoded survy data collected by a Pittsburgh arts organization that holds an event each year attended by persons across the country. I found the process of building a zip code locator to be difficult. I’m not too sure what I was doing wrong, but I had a lot of trouble on step 3, as I could not find the locators tab in the catalogs pane. I was alos able to geocode data by zip code. I know the book stated to not select ArcGIS World Geocoding Service or Esri World Geocoder for Address Locater, however I am very interested in these two software systems and what they entail. 8-2 was interesting as I was able to geocode street addresses. It was very interesting to geocode attendee data by street address and select minimum candidate and matching scores, as this has broader implications to public health initatives and outbreak response.

Chapter 9

This chapter was about spatial analysis. I have heard this term being used in the first book we use, and in public health courses, but I have not known what the term means. I learned how to use buffers for proximity analysis. A buffer is a polygon surrounding map features of a feature class. I was able to run the pairwise buffer tool  through buffering Pittsburgh’s 32 public pools to estimate the number of youths ages 5 to 17 that live close, within a half mile, of the nearest pool.  I found 8-1 to be very straight-forward and easy to navigate. I also did do the “your turn” on page 216, which I also was found very easy to change the radius to increase buffer areas. Tutorial 9-2 was about using multiple-ring buffers.  I learned that a multiple-ring buffer for a point looks like a bull’s-eye target, with a central circle and rings extending out.

Furthermore, 9-2 annlowed me to use spatial overaly to get statistics by buffer area. This calculates the percetnage of youths with excellent and good access with the limited number of pools open. I found this was very interesting as the information was already readily available, and it is cool to see the differences between various buffer areas. In tutorial 9-3, I was able to create multiplering service areas for calibrating a gravity model. It was interesting to use service areas to estimate a gravity model of geography that assumes the further apart two features are, the less attraction between them. I did  enjoy making a scatterplot through ArcGIS Pro, as I can see myself utilizing this tool in the future.