Geography 292: Geospatial Analysis with Web GIS

The first chapter discusses applications of Web GIS in different fields and how its use is increasingly valuable in different scientific fields, businesses, governments, etc. People also use these types of applications in everyday life. Having this software on the Web makes data and different features more accessible. The tutorials were fairly easy and showed how to upload data, add fields, and add feature layers.

The second chapter has six tutorials and goes more in depth looking at feature layers and different ways that you can format maps to best display your data. These tutorials were definitely more challenging than the first chapter, but I didn’t have too much trouble with it. I think the software is very cool and I love the incorporation of all the different base maps and data.

I think I would like to do something with economic data since I am a politics and economics major. I think looking at employment data could be interesting.

Not too much to report, everything went smoothly. At one point I had to turn off my adblock for the timeline QuickApp which I thought was interesting. I think these programs could be used to chart the growth of invasive species populations like the Spotted Lanternfly as an assignment, though I’m not sure how readily available that data is to the general public.

I’ve run into the same issue with Dynamic Content in 3.3 that Haley described but can’t find a fix for it. The ESRI community post I’ve found didn’t help as I’ve already formatted it the way they’re recommending with no success. 11/08 I’m back, it was just hidden behind all the open panels and zooming out fixed it. The editor missed a https on a link in 3.6. Everything else went fine. I think in terms of the experience builder assignment I’m thinking about the work I did with the Ohio EPA: as a stormwater program intern I conducted inspections of construction sites and had to reach a certain quota of large and small sites for the agency. I think it would be interesting to document a chronology of those site visits and filling those quotas.

There isn’t an “Imagery Hybrid” option, I’m guessing it’s “Imagery with Labels?” There’s been a couple other issues that came up but I figured it out with 4.1 and 4.2. Visual and UI updates keep slowing me down. There’s not a Community Map option in 4.4, my keyboard is freaking out so I’m gonna return later. Based on other people’s work I’m just going to choose the imagery with labels. I wish there weren’t so many non-functional changes to this program that make the older versions of the textbook harder to follow. There’s just a lot of small things, like in 4.6 when I clicked on the name it opened up a little pop-up to the side of the page that did not have the visualization tab to select from. Everything else went fine.

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.