Geography 291: Geospatial Analysis with Desktop GIS

Chapter 9: 

• 9.1– Straightforward. I understood the applications. 
• 9.2– Pretty easy and straightforward, similar to the 9.1 application. 
• 9.3– In this tutorial I was having trouble changing the color of the polygons to the chips colors. I ended up changing them to a blue variation but didn’t understand where to find the needed color scheme. Once I got the calculate field in the polygon table I kept getting an error message and I don’t know what was going wrong. I couldn’t figure out how to continue once I got the error message. 
• 9.4– Easy tutorial. I understood the steps and application. 
• 9.5– I understood the contents of this tutorial. 

Chapter 10: 

• 10.1– Straightforward and easy to understand. 
• 10.2– When I put the symbology information in my map it had different colors than the book stated. This tutorial wasn’t too bad once I found where certain tools and applications were. 
• 10.3– Straightforward until. I got confused once I had to put in the expressions for the raster calculator. Therefore, I had to stop because I got confused and couldn’t figure out how to continue.
• 

Chapter 11: 

• 11.1– This tutorial was really cool to see the 3D dimensions and how to move the map in different ways. 
• 11.2– This was straightforward and I understood the process. It was interesting to see different layer colors. 
• 11.3– The create features tool wasn’t working and I wasn’t sure what was happening. Because of this I wasn’t able to fully complete the section. 
• 11.4–  Towards the end I couldn’t find the bridges in the created features. I was able to finish the tutorial but by the end portion my line of sight wouldn’t become 3D and I couldn’t figure out how to change that. 
• 11.5– This tutorial went smoothly and was really cool to see the scaling aspect. 
• 11.6– This tutorial was going smoothly until I got the symbology pane. I was struggling to find this information. I was able to complete the rest of the tutorial. 
• 11.7– This was easy to understand and  really cool to see the animations. 

Delaware Data

• Survey– This is a shape file that combines data from the recorder’s office and the map department. It was stated that the points on the map illustrate the survey plats.
• MSAG– This data is known as the master street address guide. This data illustrates the 28 different political jurisdictions. This is used to find and analyze boundaries. 
• Parcel– This is data for the cadastral parcel lines in Delaware. These are represented by polygons. 
• Precinct– This data illustrates the voting precincts that are compiled by the county auditor’s office. Data is updated as needed. 
• Condo– This data shows all the condominiums in Delaware that are illustrated by polygons.
• Address Point– This data has all the certified addresses in Delaware. This data helps with emergency response, accident reporting and more. 
• Annexation– This is the annexation and conforming boundaries. This data goes back from 1853. 
• Tax District– This data shows all the tax districts that are determined by the Auditor’s Real Estate Office. Data is updated on a need basis and published monthly.  
• GPS– This file has data from 1991-1997 for the GPS monuments. 
• School District– This data shows the school districts in Delaware. The data comes from the Delaware County Auditor parcel records.
• Zip Code– This shape file has all the zip codes in Delaware County. This shape file is published monthly to provide up to date information. 
• Municipality– This is all of the municipalities in Delaware County. 
• Subdivision– This data contains subdivisions and condos that are in Delaware County. Data is published monthly and updated daily. 
• Building Outline 2021– This data has all of the building structures and was updated in 2021 and again in April 2023. 
• Delaware County E911 Data– This data is to help with the emergency response and accident reporting for Delaware County. This data shows the coordinates in relations to 911 agencies. 
• Township– This data is the 19 different townships that are in Delaware which are updated on a need-basis. 
• Recorded Document– This data is compiled of various information from surveys to boundaries and housing classification. This data is published monthly with weekly changes.
• Farm Lots– This shows all the farm lots for the US Military and the Virginia Military Survey Districts. 
• PLSS– This is the Public Land Survey System which shows the US Military and Virginia Military Survey Districts and certain boundaries. 
• Dedicated ROW– This data has the right of way information within Delaware County.
• Hydrology– This data shows the major waterways in Delaware County.
• 

Chapter 9

9-1 This tutorial was fairly simple and straightforward. I was glad that I was successfully able to add the buffers and tables in this tutorial since I had issues with it in some of the previous tutorials.

9-2 I had no issues with the first half of the tutorial. I think the multiple ring buffers were easy to apply and seemed to cut down the amount of work you’d have to do to create multiple buffers of varying distances from the same subject. However, when using the Spatial Join tool I was unable to find the ‘output fields’ option, which meant the results of running the tool were not what I was supposed to get.

9-3 Once again, the first half of the tutorial went smoothly but I ended up stuck at the same point as in tutorial 9-2. I retried several times to use the Spatial Join tools, following the instructions on the book, but I was never provided with an option to ‘output fields’ and therefore also not a ‘merge rule’ setting. I compared my screen to ones online and mine was missing an entire input box, which was supposed to be located under the fields category.

9-4 This tutorial went pretty quickly and was easy to understand the process of. The end results look professional and clean, so I could see it being used for many different types of projects.

9-5 I was able to do this tutorial without many issues. I think the clusters and labeling groups is pretty similar to processes that were in previous tutorials. It also seems like it could be a pretty good tool to know how to use in the future.

Chapter 10

10-1 This tutorial was lengthy but easy for me to understand, despite the initial tutorial screen being a bit overwhelming at first. I was able to follow along all the different parts and think that the book did a great job of teaching how to use many different tools and visual effects in a singular tutorial.

10-2 Similar to 10-1, I think this tutorial was fairly easy to follow. I did get a little lost with the purpose of some of these tools or what they meant, but I’m sure that I’d be able to gain understanding by looking through the tutorial again.

10-3 I encountered one issue when doing the ‘calculate field’ option for the PittsburghBlkGroups table, as it sent me a warning sign after I ran it and left the ZFHHChld column as all ‘null’. I believe it may have been an issue with entering the information below the Fields List, but I’m not sure how I’d fix it. However, this didn’t seem to impact the rest of this tutorial because I was able to follow the rest of the directions smoothly. I think it was a good introduction to the complex ModeBuilder tool, which seems very useful.

Chapter 11

11-1 This tutorial helped me learn how to navigate the map in a 3-D view, which was really neat to look at. It was a fairly short and simple tutorial.

11-2 I also didn’t run into any major issues for this tutorial. Once again I find the 3-D maps entertaining, and this one only being a manipulable slice of land was fun to work with.

11-3 This tutorial was also short and simple. The ability to add 3-D features is both cool and useful, along with being relatively simple to implement. I could see using this for planning placement of objects or for visualization purposes on the map.

11-4 This tutorial took a bit longer than the other ones from chapter 11, but it also held a lot of information about using and manipulating rasters and 3-D models of buildings. It was very cool to see the model build itself up and the city unfold from a dataset. I didn’t have any major issues or concerns when completing this tutorial.

11-5 I didn’t have any issues with this tutorial and was able to understand it pretty well. I think the slider feature to navigate between floors was probably my favorite feature highlighted in this tutorial, but I can see how visually interesting and useful all the other parts of this tutorial are too.

11-6 The only issue I had with this tutorial was that my building was stuck appearing very short (it looked like the roof was the first and only floor) despite typing in the settings exactly as the book said. Everything else both appeared and functioned properly and the building manipulation features are pretty interesting. Before doing this chapter I was unaware that ArcGIS had this many options for building appearance and placement.

11-7 The animation and movie feature is very cool- it’s something that I never would have expected to be able to do directly in the GIS program. The animation was also surprisingly smooth between frames (I was expecting a slideshow) and very easy to create.

Chapter 4: File Geodatabases

4.1 + 4.2

• File geodatabase: Esri’s simplified database for storing geospatial data, including features, classes, and raster datasets for single users for small groups
• In ArcGIS, data management and processing in a file geodatabase is done through the Catalog pane -> tools -> user interface
• They have no practical limits for numbers and sizes of feature classes or raster datasets stored in them, and are optimized for data processing and storage in Arc. They also allow data tables to be related and joined 
• Note: Attribute, Field, Variable, and Column are interchangeable names for the columns of data tables
• Note: Record, Row, and Observation are interchangeable names for the rows in a data table
• Shapefile: A spatial data format for a single point, line or polygon layer. 
• Connect a data folder through the catalog pane -> folders -> right click -> add folder connection
• Shapefiles need to be converted to a feature class and stored in a geodatabase because it doesn’t support advanced capabilities. Do so with the export features tool in the geoprocessing group in the analysis tab
• Deleting tables/feature classes from a file geodatabase is permanent, but removing a layer from the Contents pane removes it only from the map and leaves the feature class in a file geodatabase
• Fields in a data table in gray font are essential and cannot be modified
• Joining tables requires each table to have an attribute with matching values stored with the same data type

4.2 Note: A bug in 4.2 with ‘Tracts’ I think? Something weird going on here, got through as far as I could, but data was not showing up and it would not let me get past running the calculation of the sum of fields for PopYouth.

4.3

• Attribute queries are based on SQL
• A simple criterion has the following form: 

attribute  name <logical operator> attribute value

• The attribute name can be any column heading or field name in the attribute table, and several logical operators are “ =, >, <, =>, =<”. The attribute table specifies what you’re looking for. For example: the following simple criterion selects all cries that are robberies where robbery is a value of the crime attribute:    Crime = ‘Robbery’ 
• Numeric fields do not need quotation marks like text does
• OR and AND can also be used to select and specify criteria
• The use of parentheses, like in algebraic expressions, is essential because logical expressions are run one pair at a time for simple expressions, generally working from right to left, but with certain logical operators going first, such as AND being run before OR. This can result in incorrect information unless you use parentheses to control the run order
• Crime analysis use three kinds of attribute queries: ‘What and when”, specific when such as time of day, and specific who or what or how 
• Queries for event locations, such as crimes, almost always use date-range criteria
• The ‘qry’ prefix is the standard prefix for database inquiries

4.4

• Spatial join tool was easy 🙂

4.5

• The centroid pf a polygon is the arithmetic mean of all points within the polygon. If you want all center points to lie within their polygons, the remedy in ArcGIS is to use central points instead of centroids

4.6

• Sometimes a data table has a field name that uses a code that, by itself, isn’t easily understood. Therefore, you need a code table with all the codes in one field, along with their descriptions in the second field. This join is called a one-to-many
• Use the Create Table tool
• 

Chapter 5 Spatial Data

5.1 

• Geographic coordinate systems use latitude and longitude coordinates gor locations on the surface of the earth, whereas projected coordinate systems use a mathematical transformation from an ellipsoid or a sphere to a flat surface and a two dimensional coordinate
• Geographic coordinates are angles calculated from the intersection of the prime meridian and the equator. 
• Longitude measures east – west and ranges from 0 to 180 degrees, latitude measures north and south and ranges from 0 to 90 degrees
• The network of lines on the map os called a graticule and has 30 degree intervals east – west and north – south
• The Robinson World projection is the most accurate at the mod latitudes in the N and S hemispheres where most people live, and minimizes distortions 

5.2

• When working with projections, you can either get accurate shapes/angles or accurate areas, but not both at the same time
• As a rule, use projections that give an accurate area (even if it causes some distortion in shape or direction), such as the Albers Equal Area or the Cylindrical Equal Area projection. Albers is the standard for the US Geological Survey and the US Census Bureau

5.3

• For medium and large scale maps, use localized projection coordinate systems tuned for the study data, that have little/minimal distortion
• This tutorial set the projected coordinate system (state plane) for a local map by adding the first layer to the map and specified the display units
• The first step to using the State Plane coordinate system is to look up the correct zone for your area and the specific projected coordinate system tailored to your study area
• You can set the default coordinate system using the Choose Spatial Reference option, regardless of what layers you add to it

5.4

• A shapefile consists of at least three files with the following extensions: .shp, .dbf, or .shx
• Shp file stores the geometry of features, dbf file stores the attribute table, and shx file stores an inde of the spatial geometry
• X = longitude; Y = latitude
• KML file is the file format used to display geographic data in many mapping applications, is an international standard, and maintained by the Open Geospatial Consortium
• KML files can be converted into a feature class by inputting the KML in the KML to Layer Tool, outputting to the data file, and then naming the  new data file.

5.5

• Discrepancy with the data we have to download from the internet compared to what is written in the book for Tutorial 5-5. Column JK written in the book for the “male transport to work via bicycles” is actually column EG or code S0801_C02_011E on the spreadsheet. Column SE in the book for “female transport to work via bicycles” is actually Column IQ on the spreadsheet.
• Lots of free data is available to download from the US Census Bureau website
• Using Topographically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing shapefile (TIGER)

5.6

• You can download data from many government websites such as the USGS National Map Viewer  or Data.gov, or USDA, DOC, NOAA, US Census Bureau, DOI, EPA, NASA, ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World
• This chapter involved searching for and adding a land use raster layer from ArcGIS Atlas
• In ArcGISPro, you can add data from the atlas using Catalog Pane -> Portal -> Living Atlas (or the Add Data button)
• Rasters are large files
• If you want to extract a subset of data, use the Extract by Mask tool
• 

Chapter 6 Geoprocessing

6.1

• Geoprocessing is a framework and set of tools for processing geographic data. Generally, it must be used to build study areas in GIS and perform tasks. 
• This section focused on dissolving features, which retains the outer boundary lines bt removes interior lines from the block groups
• The Pairwise Dissolve tool can aggregate block group attributes using statistics such as sum, mean, and count. The PwD Tool needs data as the Dissolve Field. For example ‘Name’

6.2

• This section worked through extracting and clipping features for a study region when there were more features than needed by first creating a single polygon, using the new polygon and select by location to create features of block groups in the study area only, and then use the Clip Tool

6.3

• This section merged several adjacent water features to build oe water feature as a single layer by using the Merge Geoprocessing Tool

6.4

• The Append Tool adds features to an existing feature class, considering that both have the same attributes, or the same schema
• The schema is the table (field) structure. This allows you to choose the option for matching the input table’s schema to the target table’s schema

6.5

• The Pairwise Intersect Tool creates a feature class combining all the features and attributes of two input (and overlaying) feature classes, like fire companies and streets
• The Intersect Tool excluses any parts of two or more input layers that don’t overlay each other
• Studying the attribute tables of each feature class familiarizes you with the attributes before you intersect features
• After intersecting features, you can go through the attribute table to create a summary with the Summary Statistics Tool

6.6

• The Union Tool overlays the geometry and attributes of two input polygon layers to generate a new output polygon layer. This can be useful for things like urban planning, allowing you to calculate things like land use type
• The Calculate Geometry Attributes Tool can be used for calculating value such as acreage

6.7

• The Tabulate Intersection Tool makes estimations by making apportionments proportional to the areas of split parts of polygons, such as block groups, and assumes that the populations of interest are uniformly distributed by an area within polygons
• 

Chapter 7: Digitizing

7.1

• This section introduced the editing process for existing facets of a GIS map, specifically, the editing of polygon features, by splitting polygons, through the addition of vertex points, and revising them to match existing features such as a building on the World Imagery Basemap. 
• To move a polygon, use Select and then under the tools section in the Edits tab, choose move to adjust its position
• To rotate a polygon, select it, click ‘Move’, and then in the Modify Features tab, choose Rotate
• Vertex points can be added to reflect a building’s true shape. Select by the same steps, but under tools, choose Edit Verticles
• Polygons can also be split using the “split” tool

7.2

• Point and line feature classes can be created with similar steps
• Polygon features can be created and deleted
• Feature classes can be created directly from the Catalog pane and attributes can be added, but the Create Feature Class Tool could instead be used with attributes later added in the attribute table
• Select and use the “Delete” button under the Edits tab to delete polygons
• The Trace Tool creates a polygon using parameters like streets as guidelines

7.3

• A useful tool to improve the aesthetic or cartography quality of polygons is the Smooth polygon Tool. 
• Smoothing Tolerance: A shorter length will result in more detail, but will take longer to process

7.4

• Computer Aided Design (CAD) are commonly used but not geographically referenced to a coordinate system
• Transforming features in GIS makes aligning CAD drawing to GIS maps easy, regardless of the coordinates and units
• CAD drawings contain color coded layers. You cannot edit CAD drawings directly, so you have to export them as a feature class by right clicking the polygon in Contents -> Data -> Export Features. The saved polygon will be automatically added to Contents, and the old CAD can be removed
• The result of exporting a CAD drawing are that the properties of the drawing are added as fields in the attribute table. To alter this, use the Apply Symbology From Layer Tool
• 

Chapter 8: Geocoding

8.1

• Geocoding is a GIS process that matches location fields in tabular data to corresponding fields in existing feature classes. Examples include street addresses + zip codes, or transaction data collected by organizations. 
• The software uses Algorithms to identify possible incorrect entries for things like misspelled street addresses and attempts to problem solve inconsistencies.
• The following components are used: Source table, reference data, geocoding tool, locator
• A geocaching locator is a set of files that stores parameters and other data for the geocoding process. Use the Create Locator Tool. High parameter values allow fewer match errors, while low parameter values allow more match errors. 
• Geocode Address Tool can be used to use geocode data by zip code
• 

Chapter 4:

• Tutorial 4-1: introduction to working with file geodatabases
• Tutorial 4-2: Messed up what I removed from the contents pane. Attempted to go back to fix this mistake, but it doesn’t seem like an easy fix
• Tutorial 4-3: three primary kinds of attribute queries
  • Most fundamental type: addresses the what and when. Often combines several crime types with the use of logical operators
  • Secondary type: adds criteria such as time of day or day of the week 
  • Third type: adds criteria based on the attributes of the people or the objects 
  • SQL button: SQL shows the criteria that the query builder built
• Tutorial 4-4: introduction to aggregating data with spatial joins
  • 
• Tutorial 4-5: using central point features for polygons
  • 
• Tutorial 4-6:creating a new table for one-to-many join
  • 

Chapter 5:

• Tutorial 5-1: my coordinates were 17oW, 14oN for the western most tip of Africa. Country Senegal. Worked with world map projections
  • The network of lines on the map is called graticule and it has 30-degree intervals east-west and north-south
  • 
• Tutorial 5-2: worked with US map projections
• Tutorial 5-3: set projected coordinate systems 
  • 
• Tutorial 5-4: worked with vector data formats 
  • Shapefile extensions: .shp, .dbf, .shx
    • 
• Tutorial 5-5: 
  • https://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/geo/shapefiles/index.php?year=2020&layergroup=County+Subdivisions
  • https://data.census.gov/
  • Code for male: S0801_C02_011E, Column EG
  • Code for female: S0801_C03_011E, Column IQ
  • Tutorial five simply is not working the way that it says it’s supposed to be. I’ve been running into so many issues with it. 
• Tutorial 5:6 I was not able to complete this section because https://apps.nationalmap.gov/downloader/ was having a “national outage” or something like that when I tried to access the data

Chapter 6:

• Tutorial 6-1: dissolving features to create neighborhoods and fire divisions and battalions 
  • 
• Tutorial 6-2: extracting and clipping features for a study area
  • 
• Tutorial 6-3: merging water features 
  • 
• Tutorial 6-4: appending firehouses and police stations to ems facilities 
  • 
• Tutorial 6-5: the “your turn” section data joining deal was not data joining dealing aka not working.
• Tutorial 6-6: using union on neighboring and land-use features 
• Tutorial 6-7: using the tabulate intersection tool 

Chapter 7

• Tutorial 7-1: edited polygon features
  • 
• Tutorial 7-2: created and deleted polygon features. The your turn section was not your turning aka not working
• Tutorial 7-3: used cartography tools 
• Tutorial 7-4: transformed feature

Chapter 8

• Tutorial 8-1: geocoded data using zip codes
  • 
• Tutorial 8-2: geocoded street addresses
  • 

Chapter 4: 

I ran into some issues at the beginning of chapter 4. I had no problem making the folder connection and converting the shapefile to a feature class. This main issue began when there was no Tracts feature class under YouthPopulation.gdb. Another issue I ran into was that I did not have Tracts in my content pane. This meant that I had trouble doing the majority of tutorial 4-2. The tutorials afterwards had much less issues. I thought that the select by attributes tools was interesting and a good way to narrow down larger data sets to find exactly what you are looking for. I was really impressed with when the Select by Attributes tool was used to figure out who may have committed the unsolved burglary. Another odd issue I ran into was in tutorial 3, when I changed the burglary symbol to dark red. The points still showed up as a teal color unless I was actively zooming in or out, then they would change to red. This didn’t affect my work, but was odd.

Chapter 5: 

I thought that the ability to change the map from a rectangle to an oval/ more 2D sphere shape was useful. This was done by clicking properties for the map, going to coordinate system, Projected coordinate system, world, and then clicking Hammer-Aitoff(world). I’m curious what the other options under the Projected coordinate system look like. I noticed that looking at some of the zone abbreviations for Ohio cities the zone abbreviation has the state abbreviation(OH for Ohio) and then the letter after it seems to be what part of Ohio ( North, East, South, or West) the city is found. I ran into a few issues in this section but got them figured out. I found that sometimes when I downloaded data into a folder and then tried to open it in Arc, the file and data would not be there so I would have to close and reopen Arc and then I could find the folder with the data I needed to add.

Chapter 6

In this chapter, it introduces new tools like the Pairwise Dissolve tool and the Pairwise Clip tool. The Dissolve tool removes the inner lines from a neighborhood while maintaining the outer boundary. The Clip tool can be used to create street segments that can be added to your study area. I could not figure out how to save the Streets as UpperWestSideStreetsForGeocoding with the Select by Location tool but somehow the streets still ended up getting cut cleanly for the neighborhood. This chapter also uses the merge tool, to merge feature classes into one, and the Append tool, to add features to feature classes that already exist. I thought section 5 was cool where we intersected the Manhattan Fire Company and Manhattan Street feature classes and this allowed us to see what streets were served by which fire station. The Union tool was also introduced which allowed us to combine table data together on the map. This section seemed to go by pretty quickly and gave me fewer issues than the last chapter.

I thought it was cool that you could adjust the outlines of the buildings with the buildings by using the select tool and then move in the edit tab. I had issues getting the lasso tool to just move one point and not the whole polygon, but was able to fix the issue by selecting the stretch proportionally button. This chapter introduces the smooth Polygon tool to make the edges of the polygon more rounded instead of straight segments. 

Chapter 8

I ended up having a lot of trouble with this chapter. I’m not sure if others had a similar issue, but when I was using the Create Locator tool, it would not accept the Output Locator name even when I tried to save it to different places than the book listed. This was an issue because the locator was needed to do the other work in  this chapter. I met with Krygier and we still were unable to figure it out so he told me to skip this chapter.

Delaware Data & Inventory : Map with 3 layers (Parcels, Street Centerlines, and Hydrology)

Chapter 4

4-1 — This tutorial taught how to add new data to a project and make it readable by the program.

4-2 — I had an error with this tutorial. The book says to type “!GEOID10!” in the section where you calculate field for GEOIDNum, but in actually “!GEOID!” without the “10” worked perfectly fine, and gave me the ID without the leading zeros. Additionally, there was another error where they asked me to create 3 text fields through the attributes table which is not where you add fields.

4-3 — Much of this tutorial felt repetitive, as I believe we already learned (or at least it was very straightforward) how to select a range, and then only view selected items in the attribute table. Learning SQL was helpful, though.

4-4 — 4-4 Was about how to use Spatial Join to aggregate data.

4-5 — I simply could not get this one working, the tool would not run and I was unable to figure out why.

4-6 — I had accidentally broken the data value once when I wrote the inputs/outputs wrong, as the book did not disclose which was the proper logic. I managed to fix it later, though.

Chapter 5

5-1 — I’m a really big nerd for Map projections so this tutorial I found really interesting. It was fun to play with the different world maps.

5-2 — This chapter was the same as the previous, more or less, but for the U.S. instead of the world.

5-3 — I felt pretty confused over the purpose of this tutorial. I understand that it was to change the Coordinate systems the map used, but it had a bunch of extra information or things it wanted me to do that felt completely arbitrary or irrelevant.

5-4 — This was a confusing and conflicting Chapter. I couldn’t find the “Display XY Data” option they were talking about. Then, they said to delete the Libraries Table, but there were later steps that required the Libraries Table.

5-5 — Completing this section requires waiting 40 minutes for a 1.4 Gigabyte download.

5-6 — I received an error message when trying to access NLCD that said “Network Error: Cannot Access NLCD”

Chapter 6

6-1 — This tutorial was incredibly confusing, and I was barely able to figure out what it wanted for the final part of it. My only question is what does normalization do? The final “Your Turn” asked for symbolizing with graduated colors using the field Sum_TOT_POP and normalizing it with Sum_SQ_MI.

6-2 — This taught how to select certain features within an area, then how to clip them to fit entirely within it.

6-3 — I encountered an error at the end in which I was unable to merge the NYC Waterfront Parks into one layer. There was not much information on the error message so I was unsure how to fix it.

6-4 — This showed how to use the append tool to merge data.

6-5 — This section showed how to merge data from an area feature to streets. It seems useful to be able to know what streets are in what division.

6-6 — This was more about merging and summarizing data from tables.

6-7 — When told to do the summary statistics for the total number of disabled people per Fire zone, I was able to figure out which was the correct Input, case field, and statistic field to input to get the proper summary statistics without looking back at the book.

Chapter 7

7-1 — This quick section covered how to edit polygons on maps. It’s nice to finally learn how to edit features after 7 chapters of tables and computing

7-2 — Learning to create the features for the feature class finally was also nice.

7-3 — Having smoothing done by an algorithm seems to be helpful so I wouldn’t have to worry myself about making it perfectly smooth.

7-4 — The transform tool was slightly hard as I could not find the exact vertex of the layer I was transforming.

Chapter 8

8-1 — I wish that more often the book would tell us exactly what each part of each tool does and why it’s needed. It can be confusing just filling out these tools without it. This chapter’s introduction was very helpful in understanding the tools, though. I feel like I was really understanding what the tools did and how they worked rather than just confused clicking.

8-2 — This section I feel the same way, although this was slightly more confusing, as none of the fields were explained fully for the create locator tool. I think that maybe a table or chart that fully explains each tool we use would be helpful.

Chapter 4: This chapter was informative in describing what databases are as well as what they are useful for. It taught me how to import data into file geodatabases into new projects, how to modify attribute tables, and use the field tool. I found it useful how it walked me through how to join tables, carry out attribute queries, and aggregate point data to polygon summary data. I like how there were some parts where I could use creativity in the presentation of the data/map using symbology.

Chapter 5: This chapter was beneficial when it came to understanding how to work with world map projections and even us map projections. I now know how to set a projected coordinate system and how to work with vector data and examine their different formats. It was interesting to see how US Census Bureau spatial and tabular data (map layers and data tables) could be used in Arc and the book aided in navigating how to work with this data. The only problem I had was with the spreadsheet!

Chapter 6: This chapter showed me how to dissolve block group polygons to create neighborhoods and fire battalions and divisions meaning the interior lines from the block groups are removed but the outer boundary lines are preserved. It also showed me how to form a study area through the extraction and clipping of a neighborhood using its attributes. I learned how to create a single water map by merging several water features as well as how to create one layer of fire and police stations by appending their separate layers. It was helpful to gain practice and understanding in using Union, intersect, and Tabulate tools to combine features and tables for geoprocessing.

Chapter 7: This chapter introduced GIS tools that helped me gain an understanding of editing, creating, and deleting polygon features and creating and digitizing point features. With the tutorials, I was able to spatially adjust features and use cartography tools to smooth features. It also had me work with CAD drawings, or computer-aided design drawings, changing their features to align them with GIS maps. I don’t think I did the aligning properly but I found the process to be really interesting and useful.

Chapter 8: In the tutorials in this chapter I learned about the geocoding process and geocoding using zip codes and addresses using streets. I learned that you can use geocoded survey data for many things like marketing, philanthropy, or just forms of communication with users.

4.1  In this tutorial I learned how to set up a GIS project and create folder connections. I also learned how to convert outdated filetypes into ones used by modern GIS, import data tables, and modify geodatabases.

4.2  I learned how to sort information a whole bunch of different ways in attribute tables. I can add new fields, calculate them using values from other fields, sort them, remove them.

4.3 was corrupted, even after redownloading.

4.4 This was a very short tutorial about creating spatial joins.

4.5 Another very short tutorial about creating central points for polygons and making point layers.

4.6 Another short tutorial about creating a new table to join new information to existing data.

5.1 Now I know how to change the coordinate projection method on a global scale.

5.2  Now I know how to change the coordinate projection method on a continental scale, these really could have been 1 tutorial.

5.3 Learned how to find and set a coordinate projection for a smaller local system

5.4 Learned about X,Y format for coordinates, how to integrate it into a map, and how to convert more file types into feature classes.

5.5 This tutorial isn’t working

5.6 Same for this one

6.1 Learned how to use the pairwise dissolve tool create new groupings.

6.2 Learned how to use the pairwise clip tool to cleanly select an area.

6.3 This tutorial isn’t working

6.4 Short tutorial, learned to append features onto different datasets.

6.5 Learned how to use the pairwise intersect tool.

6.6 Learned how to use the Union tool to combine feature classes.

6.7 Learned how to apportion data from two feature classes using the Tabulate Intersection Tool.

7.1 Learned how to manipulate and edit polygons. Making all the buildings line up was very satisfying.

7.2 Learned how to create my own polygons, also very satisfying.

7.3 Broken.

7.4 Also Broken.

Chapter 4

I had a little bit of difficulty with 4-1, but 4-2 was interesting and I enjoyed being able to edit the attribute table. It made me feel like I understood what I was doing. Being able to edit and condense the material made the tutorial much easier. It was definitely a long winded section of the tutorial but I felt like I learned a lot in this section. 4-3 was confusing because I kept getting the time and dates wrong when I would input it into the expressions. Once I got that it was much better. The pictures in the tutorial were helpful during this section. 4-4 and on were all on one map. I liked getting to play around with the map and use the symbology to create the most digestible map.

Chapter 5

5-1,2, and 3 were all relatively straightforward. My map ended up looking very similar to the map that was in the tutorial. 5-4 was difficult because whenever I would input the features it would say that it did not exist. This is becoming a trend that I see as I get deeper into the chapters. I plan on addressing this later in the week. 5-5 was easy to download and deleting the excel columns was easy thanks to Liberty! I saved the file and did everything as the book asked, but once again I would not import the files. I’m not sure if I missed a step, but I have reread the book and tried downloading it a different way and I can’t seem to figure out where I went wrong. For 5-6 I was in the process of quitting and deciding I didn’t know how to do it. I ended up figuring it out. It was gratifying figuring out how to download something off of the internet and successfully finishing the module

Chapter 6

This chapter was pretty smooth sailing. I didn’t spend too much time on any particular section. 6-3 was the fastest because we really had to merge the different water datasets so that it can all be displayed as NYCWater. We used the attribute table a lot more often in this chapter and I have definitely gotten much better at moving throughout the table and knowing what to do. I noticed myself working through bits of the sections without needing to read every single word of the tutorial. I feel like I’m getting the hang of it.

Chapter 7

Chapter 7 introduced the move tool which has been my favorite addition so far. I feel like I actually got the hang of it very quickly and I probably spent too much time trying to make the polygons and the map line up exactly. The only problem I ran into was in 7-4. I lined up all of the links and hit transform but it never moved. I let it run for quite a while and still the pieces did not move. I moved on from the project after a while because I was at a standstill.

Chapter 8

Chapter 8 was really short and only had two modules. Doing all of the toolbars is getting much faster. If this chapter had been earlier in the book I probably would have had a hard time moving through the chapter. It definitely took focus. If I did incorrectly input something there was a red message which I thought was helpful. That’s definitely better than if it just let you run it and the whole system would just be wrong. That happened in 8-2 but once I realized the mistake it was a very simple fix and my map ended up looking just like the tutorial. 

Chapter 4

4.1 I had a little trouble when I was inputting my data because I couldn’t see my contents tab. Eventually I figured it out and was able to open the tab. Because I tried so many times to import the data, I had to delete a few files that were duplicates. 

4.2 I had a small issue with calculating the GEOIDNum column. The book says that the expression should read “GEOIDNum = !GEOID10!” but when the system created it, the “10” did not autofill, so I wrote it in myself. This gave me an error so I just took out the 10 and it worked fine. I also had a small issue when calculating the TractName but it was a quick fix. I just had to click “Apply” instead of “Ok.”

4.3 I had to go back and redo work a few times in this section. I don’t know if it was me, or if the directions were unclear, but I kept messing up.

 

4.4  This section was very easy for me. It was quick and simple.

4.5 This section was also pretty quick and easy. I tried to figure out how to increase the point size of the burglaries by neighborhood because they seemed too small to be useful… but I couldn’t figure out how to change the size. 

4.6 I almost immediately got stuck in this section. Once I went to the fields design view, I wasn’t able to edit the field to add any new fields (this was instruction from the “Your Turn” part). I couldn’t figure out how to add a field so I just moved on. The rest of the section went fine.

Chapter 5

5.1 The first thing I noticed about the world map was the lack of great lakes in the US 🙁 There are SO many different map projections!!!

5.2 I am surprised again at how many different map projections there are. When I clicked on different projections within Continental, North America, it would always load very slowly and look like the below image for a few seconds before fully processing. 

5.3 This whole section went pretty smoothly until the “Your Turn” section. Those are hard for me sometimes just because of the lack of detail. I got through it eventually though.

5.4 This section was fine. My favorite part was taking the color out of the NYSchoolDistricts Polygon.

5.5 This section was a bit frustrating. I couldn’t figure out which columns to keep (they did not match up to what the book said). After asking Krygier, he was able to share what Liberty found (thank goodness) and then it was no problem. After that, this section didn’t really get any easier. I had trouble using the Calculate Field tool and kept getting an error when I would run it.  

5.6  When I zoomed in and out, it took a while for the data to fill the page. It was very slow. It was fun to play with the other files in the Atlas. The “old timey labels” were cool. The later part of this section felt a little difficult because it wasn’t as specific with the directions, but I guess it made me figure it out and learn more. 

Chapter 6

6.1 This part went smoothly. At the end, when I had to symbolize the ManhattanFireBattalions with graduated colors, I was confused for a minute because I forgot how to change from single symbol to graduate colors. Then I remembered and it was fine. I couldn’t figure out the very last part, though; labeling the battalions. 

6.2 This section was not fun.

6.3 This part was nice and short and easy. I did have a little trouble with the “Your Turn” section though.

6.4 Loved this section. It was so simple and quick!

6.5 This was also a pretty straightforward section.

6.6 This section was fine. I forgot how to join the fields for a minute, but then I remembered.

6.7 It was cool to be able to use two maps and investigate how they relate to each other. 

Chapter 7

7.1 This section was fine. It was easy to play around with the edit tool to match the building up correctly. I didn’t have any problems until using the split tool. Mine looked a bit different than the books and I’m not sure if it worked. I think I did it right though because the next section went smoothly.

7.2 Doing the your turn section, I couldn’t figure out how to place the bus stop symbols. It took a minute of clicking around, but eventually I found it.

7.3 It was cool to see the shapes get smoothed out. I anticipate being able to use this tool in the future.

7.4 This part was very cool. Matching the edges up in order to make the figure smaller was cool.

Chapter 8

8.1 I forgot to save my file right away so the original file is gone. Oops! I liked this section though. While I completed it all ok, I feel like I might have not fully understood this section. 

8.2 This section was also a bit confusing and I’m not sure if I fully comprehended it. Yay I’m done!