Geography 292: Geospatial Analysis with Web GIS

I made an app based off of the first few chapters we read. I made an app that allows people looking specifically for condos in Delaware to do just that. It is interactive so it allows you to click the locations of the condos. It will tell you the name and the numbers of lots it has in total. My plan was for this to be a mobile app so people looking for condos could do it with ease. I think I turned the data into a scene and then uploaded it to the final app. 

https://owugis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/3dviewer/index.html?appid=132633a1a10e4bb39714dd17acf158c5

This map is sort of an exhibit map. I used the 911 data from Delaware county to show others the heavily populated areas and if they were to build a new police station, where I would put and why. It is a neat concept and you can go through each slide that I presented and see what specific area I am talking about. This could be useful if presented in a better manner to the government if they were planning to build more police stations. 

https://owugis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/exhibit/index.html?appid=67c83c5ef3c3428c88a80d9fe9287bf2

Chapters 1-4 App:

https://owugis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/attachmentviewer/index.html?appid=1df466deebe8476e86a28f4c0d4ace68

For my first app, I decided to create my idea for Chapter 1. It is very similar to the Redlands Attractions Map Tour, but I decided to do a tour of some of Ohio’s State Parks. First, I had to compile my data and create a CSV. I picked 5 state parks: Salt Fork and Mohican because I love to go camping there, Wingfoot because I worked there, Alum Creek because it’s so close to OWU, and Hocking Hills because the geology is so unique! After I decided on my parks I created columns for their longitude and latitude and filled them. Then, I made a column for a Description/Caption. I described each park based on the ODNR website information or on what I already knew about the park. I then embedded the link to the website. I then went to ODNR’s public Flickr account and found a picture for each park. I downloaded this CSV from Excel and uploaded it as a hosted feature layer. I then enabled attachment on the layer and added my images. Then I configured the symbology for the points and chose which fields to include in my popups. After that, I created an Instant App with the attachment viewer template. I chose to use an attachment-focused view instead of a map-focused view like we did in the exercise because it looked aesthetically better. After that, I published the app. I think this app would be really useful for people who are visiting the state or just looking for parks to visit!

Chapter 6-8 App:

https://owugis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/slider/index.html?appid=333c829c01d04c5889cd37dacec4c463

I made this app based on the content in Chapter 6. My original idea was to do a time series on freshwater usage around the world over time. However, the time field was not working on that data, so after trying to clean and modify it I decided to just find a different dataset. This one was for a Store in the United States and it tracked their sales and where people ordered from overtime. So, I created a hosted feature layer and then configured my map. I symbolized each sale with a shopping bag and set the attributes I wanted to display in the popups. If you click on a sale it will now show things like who’s order it is, the price, the location, what they ordered, when they ordered, and shipping information. I then made sure the Time Settings were enabled for my layer. After this, I created an Instant App with the Slider Template. I customized the color of the time slider to match my sale icon and I added the legend to the map. Then, I was finished and published the app! I think this would be really useful for employees at all levels of this business to see what type of products are selling, where they are selling to, when they are selling, and for packaging and shipping items.

Here is the link to the store data I used: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/blurredmachine/superstore-time-series-dataset/

 

https://owugis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?webmap=d48f82d6a2e844f4958f5b265a9abe55

For my first application I created a map of Delaware County, OH and the zip codes within. I then used ArcGIS online to search for all water wells in Ohio. All of the blue dots are locations of water wells sites. I feel this application would be useful seeing how many people still use a well today or are reliant on city water.  

https://owugis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappbuilder/index.html?id=e49e6fc8084544b3ba7ae7202b161b8

For my 2nd application I used the ArcGIS Web AppBuilder to display an interactive web page display of Ohio and all oil and gas fields. Using the App builder and this theme you can search for an address or place, find the legend, filter, and also have directions from one location to another. I think an application like this would be useful for having to visit multiple locations in a short period of time.  The blue dot is  your current location and is a feature you can choose to add. 

In this course

My first application was built on the skills I acquired in Chapter 2 of the smart mapping unit. Within this application, I displayed the gdp per capita for each county in Ohio. My interest in economics fueled my choice of this specific data set.

https://owugis.maps.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=c2ac9bf71d7c403982eb222dfd6c2fea

My second app was built upon the skills I learned in the previous chapter on web scenes. I created a dynamic 3D map that visualized the growth of wholesale versus retail trade specifically within the state of Ohio.

https://owugis.maps.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=5ab7f3709fbf44999b1a86d0a83b820b

For the two apps I created I came up with my own data. The first, I used StoryMap to take viewers through my travels in Barcelona, Spain. The map has 8 different locations pinned, and for each location there is a picture and description corresponding to what was done/seen at that spot. The locations are in chronological order to when I visited them, and so if you scroll through the images or click on a number, it will take you to where I was located and what happened in that spot. I also have a line connecting all of the locations so viewers can more easily see the distance travelled and which order the locations were visited. To create this app, I used the Online Atlas to get a map of earth, then I zoomed into  Barcelona and locked that location so the map will stay in that spot. I then selected to pin different locations and added the pictures and descriptions to each location I created. This was a pretty straight forward process and I did not have a hard time creating this. I actually found it fun to do. This app corresponds to the second chapter of the GIS book. I’ve included images and a link to the app below.

The second app I created was a 3D viewer of the student body populations at each university in Ohio. To do this I first created a web scene with a BaseMap featuring Ohio, then I used ArcGIS online and found a layer to add that included all Ohio Universities with their student body populations. Next, I changed the layer style to show a 3D count of the student body population of each college. You can individually click on each university to get the each number, or you can look at the bars and see which schools have the highest populations. The schools with the highest number of students will have the tallest bars with cooler or blue toned colors, and schools with less students will have smaller bars with warmer toned colors. I then used an Instant App to convert the scene into a 3D viewer Web App. I also found this process pretty straight forward. This app corresponds to chapter 7 in the book. I have included a few pictures of the app and a link below.

https://owugis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/3dviewer/index.html?appid=c81f529af9954cf69f29f117af350e95

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/7bf9546d573a479dbb52d2eb847222ad

 

Chapter 7:

Two types of visual effects:

• Photorealistic: Aims to re-create reality using photos to texture features.
These types of scenes often use imagery as the texture and are extremely
well suited for showing visible objects, such as a city.
• Cartographic: Takes 2D thematic mapping techniques and moves them
into 3D. These types of scenes often use attribute-driven symbols (extrusion
height, size, color, and transparency) to display physical, abstract, or
invisible features such as population density, earthquake magnitudes, flight
paths, zoning laws, solar impact, and air corridor risks.

Four Types of Elements:

• Surfaces: Surfaces are continuous measurements, typically elevation,
with one value for a given x,y location. Surfaces provide the foundation for
draping other content.

• Features: Live on, above, or below the surfaces. They can be 2D layers
or 3D scene layers. These features are the operational layers of your 3D
app.
• Textures: Provide exterior or interior covers of your 3D features. Textures
often use aerial imagery or cartographic symbols.
• Atmospheric effects: Examples include lighting and fog.

VR: VR is a computer technology that uses headsets or multi-projected environments to
generate 3D views, sounds, and other sensations that simulate a user’s physical
presence in a virtual or imaginary environment.

X(extended)R(reality): XR refers to all real-and-virtual combined environments and human-machine
interactions, generated by computer technology and wearables, where the X
represents a variable for any current or future spatial computing technologies. (Includes AR)

Chapter 7: 3D Web Scene

The basics:

Scenes can be grouped into two main types

Photorealistic: Aims to re-create reality using photos to texture features. These types of scenes often use imagery as the texture and are extremely well suited for showing visible objects, such as a city.
Cartographic: Takes 2D thematic mapping techniques and moves them into 3D. These types of scenes often use attribute-driven symbols (extrusion height, size, color, and transparency) to display physical, abstract, or invisible features such as population density, earthquake magnitudes, flight paths, zoning laws, solar impact, and air corridor risks.

Main elements in scenes

Surfaces: Surfaces are continuous measurements, typically elevation, with one value for a given x,y location. Surfaces provide the foundation for draping other content. Surfaces are often referred to as a digital elevation model (DEM), digital terrain model (DTM), or digital surface model (DSM).
Features: Live on, above, or below the surfaces. They can be 2D layers or 3D scene layers. These features are operational layers of your 3D app.
Textures: Provide exterior or interior covers of your 3D features. Textures often use aerial imageries or cartographic symbols.
Atmospheric effects: Examples include lighting and fog.

Web scenes and web scene layers

3D object scene layers: These layers can be used to represent and visualize 3D objects, such as textured or untextured buildings. 3D object scene layers can be created manually or automatically using procedural rules.

Building scene layers: Building scene layers allow you to visualize complex digital models of buildings and interact with all the components of the building. With building scene layers, you can explore a building’s composition, properties, and locations of structures in a building digital model.

• Overview: Optional layer that allows you to view the 3D building as a single layer. The overview can be created from the exterior shell defined in the building layer.
• Discipline: Combines category layers into the various work disciplines of a building, such as architectural, structural, mechanical, plumbing, or electrical.
• Category layer: Represents individual categories, such as windows or walls, organized in disciplines. Category layers are 3D object scene layers. You can change the symbology or change other properties of the layer.
• Filter: Allows you to view details in complex buildings. With a filter, you can choose to show only elements with specific attributes as solid or show others in wire frame mode.

This particular section seems like a lot of fun. the first thing that comes to mind when considering how I would use it is creating a plot of property that I hope to one day achieve at some point in my life, we’ll see though. I really like the idea of having space for a home, a few animals, a pond and a small community space where individuals could sell locally made goods, as well as an outdoor education space for kids. I would like to just lay this out and play around with what this could look like structurally.

 Chapter 7 –

Basics of 3D GIS- 

In ArcGIS web maps are referred to as web scenes or 3D scenes. GIS is a critical component for research frontiers and hot spots including digital cities, geodesign, indoor mapping, AEC, VR, AR, and the metaverse. I think this is all really cool because this is becoming our future very quickly. 

A web map can have many layers. 

Photorealistic: Aims to recreate reality using photos to texture features. These types of scenes often use imagery as the texture and are extremely well suited for showing visible objects such as a city. 

Cartographic: Takes 2D thematic mapping techniques and moves them into 3D. These types of scenes often use attribute-driven symbols to display physical, abstract, or invisible features such as population density 

Main elements in scenes: 

Surfaces: Surfaces are continuous measurements, typically elevation with one value for a given x,y, location. 

Feature: Live on, above, or below the surfaces. They can be 2D layers or 3D scene layers. 

Textures: Provide exterior or interior covers of your 3D features. 

Atmospheric effects: Examples include lighting and fog. 

 

Other key definitions: 

 

Building scene layers: Building scene layers allow you to visualize complex digital models of buildings and interact with all the components of the building. 

Overviews: Optional layer that allows you to view the 3D building as a single layer. 

Discipline: Combines category layers into the various work disciplines of a building, such as architectural. 

Category layer: Represents individual categories such as windows or walls. 

Filter: Allows you to view details in complex buildings. 

3D across ArcGIS- ArcGIS provides a suite of 3D products to support the creation, visualization, analysis, and sharing of 3D scenes. 

ArcGIS Pro: A desktop app that provides comprehensive tools for managing 2D and 3D data and authoring and sharing 2D maps or 3D scenes. 

ArcGIS CityEngine: A desktop app that provides advanced 3D creation capabilities. 

ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Enterprise: Web GIS platforms that can host scene layers for online and on-premises 3D web GIS apps, offer scene viewer.

For this, I would create a web scene using 3D objects and symbols. This could help with the distribution of students who are in a certain school district. Some of the school districts are really big and others are really small. Creating a web scene would allow me to plan the school districts differently and see how it would look in a realistic setting. You can even add trees and walls.  

Chp. 6

Time is an important dimension of GIS Data. You can imagine how time is important to GIS data including showing change throughout a certain time period or just when and where an activity was observed. That’s all time. There’s four keywords to this. 

Moving: cars, ambulances, airplane feeds

Discrete: criminal incidents. Earthquakes, instagram feeds. 

Stationary: wind speed, highway and street traffic speed

Change: flooded areas, land use and land cover changes 

In spatiotemporal GIS data, the time of an event can be duration or a point in time:

Point in time: The moment a lightning strike occurs

Duration in time: When a wildfire starts and ends. 

Key terms:

Time measurement in other words: Time can be expressed in many units such as in years, months, days, etc. 

Time reference systems(time zones): The most often used time zones are GMT and UTC. Both reference the prime meridian. 

Time representations: Time can be represented in different formats and languages 12/18/2020 or write it out. 

Temporal resolution: refers to the time interval at which events are sampled. 

IoT: The network of physical objects, or things embedded with sensor and network connectivity that enable these objects to collect and exchange data. This can be in airplanes, heart monitors, taxis, and more. 

Enterprise IoT applications: Include smart cities, infrastructure management, environment quality monitoring, small retail-inventory management, and precise agriculture. 

Consumer IoT: include connected cars, connected health and smart homes. 

ArcGIS Analytics for IoT and GeoEvent Server share similar components. 

Ingest: This component interacts with various data sources. IT provides ways to communicate with IoT platforms, sensor networks, and more 

Process: This component processes the real-time data received and translated by the ingestion component. 

Outputs: The output component sends processed data to a variety of destinations. For example, sending alerts via email or SMS. 

Other key definitions

Feed items: Allows users to received sensor inputs

Real-time analytic items: Allows users to perform real-item processing of those inputs including triggering alerts and actions. 

Big data analytic items: Allow users to access and analyze big data repositories of historical observations.

Poll: the traditional approach in which a client periodically polls the server to retrieve the latest data. 

Push: a new way to serve data in near real time using the HTML5 WebSocket protocol. 

For this, I would make a dashboard app based on the voting precincts in Delaware County. We know that voting is becoming more and more important each election so making a dashboard based on this could be ideal. The app would just be taking the users location and showing them all the precincts in the area and what time they close. It would also point and give them directions to the closest precinct according to their app’s location. 

 

Chapter 7 Comments, Notes, Questions

1. The basic form of 3D GIS is 3D web scenes and scenes (these can have multiple layers)
   1. Layers: feature layers, map image layers, raster/vector tile layers, scene layers
   2. There are two types of scenes: (1) Photorealistic (recreates reality using photos to texture features) and (2) Cartographic (takes 2D thematic mapping techniques and applies them to 3D mapping)
   3. Displays: (1) Local (on a planar surface) and (2) Global (spherical surface)
2. Main elements in scenes
   1. Surfaces: continuous measurements with x and y values for location
      1. DTM (digital terrain model), DEM (digital elevation model), and DSM (digital surface model)
   2. Features: live on, above, or below surfaces (operational layers)
   3. Textures: exterior or covers of your 3D feature
   4. Atmospheric Effects: for example, lighting or fog
3. Web Scenes and Web Scene Layers
   1. 3D Object Scene Layers – represent and visualize 3D objects (can be created manually or automatically – procedural modeling)
   2. Building Scene Layers – visualize complex digital models of buildings and interact with their elements
      1. Structure: Overview, Discipline, Category, and Filter
   3. Integrated Mesh Scene Layers: turn raw drone imagery into valuable information and layers
   4. Point Cloud Scene Layers: display large volumes of symbolized point cloud data (usually collected from lidar or generated from Drone2Map)
   5. Point Scene Layers: display large amounts of point data not possible within a point feature layer
   6. Voxel Scene Layers: for multidimensional space and temporal data
4. VR, XR, and the Metaverse
   1. VR: available through ArcGIS 360 VR and 3VR
   2. XR: real and virtual combined elements (inc. AR and MR)
   3. Metaverse: a network of 3D virtual worlds focused on social connections (includes real metaverses for working)
5. Indoor 3D GIS
   1. Challenges: GPS doesn’t work well indoors, and space is often in complex 3D formats
   2. ArcIndoor components: ArcGIS Indoors for ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Indoors Viewer, Indoor Space Planner, ArcGIS Indoors for iOS and Andriod
6. ArcGIS Urban
   1. Applies GIS technology to urban planning
   2. Main content types: plans, projects, indicators, and ideas
7. ArcGIS GeoBIM
   1. ETL: requires ongoing maintenance, which is costly and difficult to scale
   2. BIM as 3D graphics: good quality visualizations, but eliminates BIM attribution, metadata, and georeferencing info
   3. ArcGIS GeoBIM: bridges the gap between GIS and BIM
      1. Provides organization and simple, streamlined communication between the 2.

Chapter 7 Application: For this application, I think I would like to make my own Fun Park. My favorite park from back home has walking trails, a lake, a marina, a library, a wildlife center, and lots of playgrounds, benches, and tables so, I think it would be fun to visualize it since there are so many different attributes and symbols I could customize. I’m also pretty sure they have a public GIS hub where I could get some type of point layer or map of the features to get me started, so I think it’s doable!