Geography 292: Geospatial Analysis with Web GIS

Chapter 7: The textbook explanation of the difference between XR, AR, MR, and VR seems like it could be increasingly more relevant in today’s modern world (I previously was not aware that the terms XR and MR even existed). Also, the fact that an ArcGIS program was used to build cities in several movies is not something that I expected to read, but it makes sense given the abilities of the program. The state population density map visual turned out really neat, but I could not figure out how to resolve the issue with Alaska’s mountains sticking out through the polygon extrusion (I could not locate the elevation mode setting that the book said to use to fix the problem). While the 3D features might have some advantages, I definitely had issues with this specific Fun Park scene. Some of the feature placements and counts just seemed strange- the parking lot was a solid sea of cars (with some the size of buildings and others the size of chickens), I could not locate any helicopters, and there were giant cars in the lake and picnic tables in the middle of the road. The final link was not any better and included a sky overwhelmingly full of helicopters in addition to the hundreds of Teslas. Overall, the provided scene was messy and inaccurate, but the features of the 3D scene viewer could make a great visual if used properly.

Assignment: I think it would be really cool to use this program to plan out a park on an empty plot of land. The possible 3D marker shapes make this entirely plausible and the ability to realistically scale objects to size would make it an excellent planning tool. For example, I could take an empty spot on campus and plan a small garden/path/seating area using the ArcOnline tools. I could also use the program to mark already existing features like we did in the tutorial, which I could apply to a section of campus like the area in front of Slocum.

While chapter 7 was really interesting and fun to get into, it was definitely really overwhelming as it almost felt like there was an entirely new version of the programming to learn. When I first started, I saw that there had in fact been an update, but during the tutorial, it was a bit difficult to find different things that had been mentioned. Beyond that though, the different additions that can be added to maps like bushes, trees, cars, bodies of water that almost have their own animation style, and so many other things was really cool to see! In this 3D version of the GIS program, previous content learned can be applied to an even further and more realistic way. There are different forms, such as VR, or virtual reality that can be more accessible, convenient and in some instances, reliable for users when this augmentation is applied. 

Application Idea: Seeing how much I was able to do after reading chapter 7, I think it would be a cool idea to map where all the Ginkgo Trees are on campus as when they begin dropping the putrid smelling fruit during the colder months of the academic year, a lot of students become nauseated at the smell. I thought that it would be cool to jot down the areas where the trees are, both on academic and residential sides of campus so students could be more aware of where to watch their step to avoid stepping on the smelly fruits, as well as being aware of what areas might be the stinkiest depending on how populated the density of the female Ginkgo trees are in that area! This map could have a simple outline of the academic buildings, different walkways, benches, parking lots, and possibly even some of the statues and boulders we have around campus!

The additional dimensions that 3D GIS offers over 2D serves as a better vehicle for a lot of different applications like urban planning or defense simulation. It helps people understand size and relative position of objects. Photorealistic 3D scenes use photos to texture features, while Cartographic scenes take the mapping techniques of 2D and applies them to 3D using height, size, color and transparency to display features like population density or earthquake magnitude that aren’t viewable from a 3D representation on its own. 3D scenes are composed of surfaces that provide a foundation for other content, features that are anchored above or below the surfaces (these are the operational layers), textures that provide the exterior or interior covers of the 3D features (often with aerial imagery or cartographic symbols), and finally atmospheric effects like lighting and fog. 3D scene layers can be used to present simple representations of buildings (textured or untextured), more complex digital models of buildings that let you interact with its components and look at its specific properties, category layers (windows, walls, etc), or filters that let you select elements with specific attributes. Integrated mesh scene layers construct complex images just from stitching together drone footage by matching angles from different data points together into a single synthesized projection. Point cloud scene layers quickly display large amounts of symbolized point cloud data, usually collected via lidar (This one looks like a heat map). Point scene layers thin out the dataset from point clouds to increase visualization speed and visibility. Voxel layers create a volumetric vizualization, often used for atmospheric or oceanic data.

There’s not an Elevation mode to select in 7.2 so Alaska’s gonna stay a little funky.

I’m really curious why some of those cars are such different sizes when so many others are at-scale.

Assignment idea: I think it’d be interesting to make a 3d web scene of one of the parks we run at for cross country.

Chapter six was a welcome change from last week. It was more within my level of understanding and comfort compared to working with 3D maps and mobile apps. There were a couple things that tripped me up, such as the coding. Initially, I had made a mistake with my coding because I was having trouble understanding the directions in the tutorial. Luckily, the changes that the codes made were immediate, so I could act accordingly once something did not appear or appeared incorrectly. Though, the heart icon would not work at all, so I proceeded despite that hiccup. I do wonder about how the emergency information is input and updated so frequently. Do dispatchers input the information, and it is input into GIS in tandem? Or is there another process? While putting together the animation for the population change, everything went as it should. The final animation was a bit anticlimactic, though. The slider moved itself and showed how populations moved west into the states and so forth. I am not quite sure what I expected, but the slider did precisely what it was supposed to. It showed the change in population within the US over the past two hundred years over a few seconds.

An application idea that I have from chapter six could be to use the Delaware Data to show how parcel plots in the county- or maybe just the city- have changed over the past ten or twenty years since the county has been growing so much. Another idea that I have could be to document all of the places I go to throughout a regular day- perhaps a week- and make a time slider of that to see where I go to and how much time I spend in each place throughout the day.

Chapter 3: Experience Builder

This is mostly for a more complicated way to create apps, maps, and more. Things an experience builder could include: components such as pages, windows, and outline views. It could also include various widgets such as functional & layout widgets. Widgets are classified into two groups, message actions & data actions. When using a message action, it listens to various triggers and performs assigned actions. For data actions, they provide actions to a button that users are able to click on, a usage could be to export records to a file. 

• Tutorial 1: Creating a basic webpage that included 2 different maps, an image, and methods of switching between the two of them through a view selector. 
• Tutorial 2:This was more about how to create various actions for the data, in this case it was the action of making sure the the maps of 2d & 3d match, and with selections when the 2d points are selected, only those ones will appear on the 3d map. These are done by utilizing the action tab that appears once map tabs are selected under the outline window.
• Tutorial 3: This was mostly about how to add a text box that included statistics. It is fairly similar to things we have done in ArcGIS pro, except as a presentation-like format. From this point forward, I have realized I am messing up the styles/formats of the web experience, however I am going to just add the features & try to salvage it as best as I can.
• Tutorial 4: This tutorial was about how to create a table & how to make it so it displays certain fields in a specific order. Also adding a search bar & filters for the data.

• Tutorial 5: When adding a filter I will want to use an SQL expression to ensure that the map itself flows. I can choose various criteria that I want my maps to be filtered by. I got pretty lost halfway through, but from what I am able to judge, I am also able to make filters for the table that I had added in the previous tutorial  & also be able to make a donut chart. And when going through the actions, I am able to trigger something to spawn a chart for various data that I give said chart. 
• Tutorial 6: This felt like it brought everything that we have made together, and I believe I misunderstood some instructions referring to the cosmetic effects of the main page. This tab was about making a header & more pages with the ability to swap between them.

Chapter 4: Mobile GIS

There are many reasons why Mobile GIS is useful, such as mobility, locational awareness, ease of data collection, real-time info, large user volume, and many ways to communicate. GIS is useful in a bunch of different technologies. I will want to be careful in concern to the utilization of the web interface as phones are needing more simplistic designs. There are three main schools of thought when it comes to app development strategies: 

1. Browser based – which is using apps through mobile web browsers. This will be fairly limiting the user’s experience as it will not be utilizing the phone’s features.
2. Native-based approach – which will be using a mole app, a disadvantage for that would be learning skills for the coding languages 
3. Hybrid-Based approach – A combination of both native & browser based approaches

• Tutorial 1: To get to the ‘set rule’ option, go into edit, then find ‘behavior’. And instead of ‘If show’, go to the thing you want to see, and then select the conditional. This is very similar to a software such as Google Forms
• Tutorial 2: I thought it was fairly cool that I could use Survey123 to submit data from my phone. It seems fairly intuitive to collect data & be able to check them out using the page.
• Tutorial 3: I had gotten very lost early on in this section. I think it is because I screwed something up within the tutorial section for the surveys. However from what i can gather, thiss will be tying the survey itself to sync with a feature layer by going into where the survey is collecting responses. I can add a new field for the various different types of data being collected and make them appear as points on the map. And they will appear as lines within the map. 
• Tutorial 4: Same issue as tutorial three, but here is what I was able to gather from the tutorial, this will be adding some form of visibility layer with conditional statements. This will be done by adding another layer, and adding various expressions to make it “Incident_Type == Pothole”, for example. And this will allow a user to filter the different types of data within the map. 
• Tutorial 5: It appears that in this tutorial I am able to use another app in order to compile data to put directly into my field map rather than filling out a form to put into the map by using skills from tutorial 4.
• Tutorial 6: In tutorial 6 we are using the map created in tutorial 3,  this will be using the quick capture software to do. And this will be a great way to include a user-friendly app interface that includes icons for each type of thing you want input on. 
• Tutorial 7: This is just showing how to utilize what was made in Tutorial 6.
• Tutorial 8:  Utilizing AR will be a way to add more context for the things made in the previous sections. 
• Tutorial 9: Utilizing AR will be a way to add more context for the things made in the previous sections.

 

Application description based on Ch 3 & 4 using my data:

• Create a web experience. (Ch 3)
• Creating a survey form for a department to report suspicious activities will be a really good use for GIS tech, maybe creating something for Public Safety? (Ch 4)

Real-time GIS has the ability to ingest real-time data, real-time visualization of data, GeoEvent and velocity, alerting, update schema, add  additional processes, ArcGIS online feed items, and feature layers. In Chapter 6, these abilities are touched on as well as allowing the ability to see different patterns over time. For example, a map tracking real-time traffic in an area also has the ability to go back days, weeks, months and even years and display objects, traffic patterns, weather patterns, and accidents that allow people to use this information and make inferred guesses on how these patterns will carry out in the future.

Application Idea: Having previously worked at Planet Fitness for 2 years, a gym that alleges a no judgment zone, we had a popularity tracker that was on our website and app. On it, guests could see what hours were most popular pertaining to visitation rates, hours that were slower, and recommended times to go. All of this information was kept up to date with real-time statistics coming in based off of the check in swipes of guests. That being said, this information was not specifically Real-Time GIS, but the design is relatively the same. After seeing different maps based on population and traffic patterns, I thought a good idea would be to implement something for OWU students, or even just Delawarians that businesses and eateries could use for every customer and person either using whatever said facility or are present. This could help for busier times such as First Fridays, to let people know how many people are present, inferred wait times, and other places that are less busy. The same would be true for OWU campus in regards to dining halls.

Chapter 6: The introduction of chapter 6 talks about incorporating real-time data into ArcGIS Web apps and touches upon the idea that there is technology all around us that can be used in such programs (ex. all the technology in a smart home). I saw an example of this in week one when we looked for applications of ArcOnline resources when I found the web app that monitors weather stations throughout the United States (when the program was active).  When moving onto the tutorial, I found the dashboards feature to be pretty straightforward. I also forgot that I made one in 291 until I saw the dashboard under my Content page, but I think I understand the functions of the dashboard app more than I did in the Spring. I did have an issue with the advanced options while making my current dashboard and was not able to get the heart icon to appear despite double checking the code I entered compared to what the textbook instructed. This was a little disappointing, but I was glad that the other coding for highlighting and coloration did not give me any issues. I liked the resulting visuals from the instant app even though it took me a frustratingly long time to figure out how to change the title after a spelling error. I could see the slider being helpful for displaying other chronological data as well, but would also be interested in exploring other similar instant apps on my own time.

Assignment: One of the ideas that I could create using ideas from this chapter is a dashboard for people in Ohio to use before they would go on a hike or other outdoor excursion. The dashboard could include real-time weather updates and have a map that includes information about trails. Another option could be to use the Delaware data and create an animation similar to the one in the tutorial that shows the development and distribution of buildings and land parcels over time.

ArcGIS Experience Builder and Mobile GIS are powerful tools within the ArcGIS suite, offering flexible and user-friendly solutions for creating and using geospatial content across various platforms. ArcGIS Experience Builder enables users to create web experiences with minimal coding by using drag-and-drop functionality and integrating widgets to interact with both 2D and 3D data. Users can start with templates or build from scratch, customizing layouts for mobile optimization, adding themes, and employing a range of widgets (e.g., maps, legends, charts, and survey tools) to enhance interactivity. The tool’s flexibility allows for integration with ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Enterprise, and ArcGIS API for JavaScript, making it adaptable for diverse mapping applications.

Mobile GIS, on the other hand, brings traditional GIS functionality to portable devices such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops. It offers easy access to geospatial data, real-time updates, and interactive mapping through apps like ArcGIS Field Maps, which supports field data collection and management. Mobile GIS leverages GPS, wireless communication, and mobile operating systems to allow users to track, capture, and update data on the go. However, smaller screens can limit visibility and detail compared to desktop versions. Together, ArcGIS Experience Builder and Mobile GIS can support a variety of applications, such as studying and monitoring gas leak patterns in Delaware County. This project could ensure the safety of residents by using interactive maps, data analysis tools, and additional data collection methods beyond traditional surveys.

I messed around with an interactive soil map where my locations where i sampled soil for my independent study were marked and had pop ups with the photos of different land use in the area.