Final Evaluation

W1 M J 12 – INTRODUCTION TO COURSE

W1 W J 14: SCHURMAN CH. 1 - no notes

PERSONAL INTRODUCTION & GIS APPLICATION OF INTEREST

W2 M J 19 – MLK DAY

W2 W J 21:  de Smith et al. – no notes

W2 W J 21:  de Smith et al. – no notes

W3 M J 26: MITCHELL CH. 1

W3 W J 28 – SNOW DAY

W4 M F 2: SCHURMAN CH. 2 & 3

W4 W F 4: SCHURMAN CH. 4 & 5 – no notes

CLASS PROJECT PROGRESS

W5 M F 9: MITCHELL 2-4 - no notes & CLASS PROJECT PROGRESS

W5 W F 11: MITCHELL 5-7 – no notes & CLASS PROJECT PROGRESS

More Class Project Progress

W6 M F 16: ISOTYPE INSPIRED DISORIENTATION MAP – no notes

W6 W F 18: PRELIMINARY COURSE PROJECT PROPOSAL – sent by email

W7 M F 23: ARCGIS TUTORIAL

W7 W F 26: ARCGIS TUTORIAL – no notes

W8 M M 2: ARCGIS TUTORIAL – no notes

W8 W M 

4: ARCGIS TUTORIAL & DELAWARE DATA INVENTORY

W9 M M 9: SPRING BREAK

W9 W M 11: SPRING BREAK

W10: NO POSTINGS DUE

W11 W M 25: MID-SEMESTER EVALUATION - sent by email (pdf.)

W12: PROJECT TIME LINE – no notes

W13: NO POSTINGS

W14: NO POSTINGS

W15: NO POSTINGS

W16: PROJECT PROPOSAL – send by email

ArcGIS Tutorial

Chapter Three- Displaying Map data

This is the first time I have ever used software such as ArcMap.  I am surprised with the relative ease of the exercises, although it is the first one and there are complete directions.

Chapter 4-

Chapter 5-

Chapter Six- Classifying features and Rasters

This picture represents nothing in particular, but it sure is pretty.

This chapter discusses the quantification of data, which is data that can be counted, measured, or estimated.  Colors, symbols, dot density and proportions are used to define different ranges of numerical values.  I liked this chapter because my brain registers colors and symbols much better than something in list form.

Chapter Nine- Joining and Relating Tables

Layer attribute tables hold the descriptions of features like names of towns, prices of houses or anything else that can be described.  Spatial information is what allows ArcMap the ability to draw out these features and display them on a map.  Against what I said in chapter 6, tables suck.

Chapter Twelve- Analysing Spatial Data

Problems solved with GIS are from the conclusions  gathered from different map layers.  A buffer is an area drawn around a feature on a map representing areas such as floodplains, school zones and nature habitats.  Overlays prove to be very important as they can show the overlap of two layers to show a common area between them.  This overlapping section (after union) can create an “intersect,” which is the new layer that was created from union of two previous layers.  I was thinking of everyday applications of this process and I thought of weather predictions.  I constantly see weathermen showing overlays of possible snowfalls for certain areas or sections of a storm that will be exceptionally powerful.

Chapter Fifteen- Creating Features

Features can be digitized in two ways; one being the actual tracing by hand on a computer screen by tracing a photo.  Second, ArcGIS program has tools that can create shapes like circles and rectangles that can be placed on the map to show the same feature.  I messed around tracing images on the maps by mouse.  I concluded that I don’t have a steady hand and using the tools given by ArcMap like the rectangles is much easier to use and visualize

Chapter Eighteen- Making Maps from Templates

This chapter took forever, but probably just because it’s chapter 18 and I feel like I’ve been doing this for eternity.  A map template sets you up with the critical elements you need in order to produce a map on relatively shorter notice or time restrictions.  The elements are things such as data frames, legends, title, directional arrows(north, south, east, west), background color, etc.  Furthermore, ArcMap already has numerous templates of the world and other specific places that can be used instead of creating your own.

Chapter Twenty- Creating Models

ModelBuilder, a geographic design tool, is used to solve spatial analysis problems(like the problems encountered in chapter 12).  It is based around input data and a certain tool you use on the input data.  When the tool is applied to the data, the result is your output data.  The “tool” is referred to as the buffer which is the median between the input and output data.  All outputs of the buffer process now become inputs into the union process.  In the union process all of your output data is funneled by the union tool, which generates the union of the buffers.  This continues until your final data set is produced.  This model can save you a lot of time if you are constantly performing repetitive spatial analysis.  This chapter was a bit confusing because of all the possibilities and variables that can be entered into a model builder.

Delaware County Data Review

Master Layer- Data represents all registered addresses in Delaware County.

Annexations- Delaware County’s Annexations and Conforming Boundaries from 1853 to present time.

Archaeological- Shows all of the archaeological sites in the county.

Bench Marks- The outline of national GPS indicators systematically placed through the county.

Building Outlines- Represents all standing structures in Delaware County.

Census Blocks- Shows all of the locations for the population count in Delaware.

Census Block Groups- Similar to Census Blocks, shows a broader, larger definition of the surveyed area.

Census Tract- Used to dissect the county into areas for census reports.

Farm lots- Shows all farm lots in the US military district in Delaware.

Floodplains 100yrs- Shows all of the current 100 year floodplains in Delaware County.

Floodplains 500yrs- Shows current 500 year floodplains in the county.  Covers a much smaller area than the floodplains of 100 years.

Flood ways- Shows the areas that would be greatly effected in the chance of a flood; these are lower elevation areas.

Historical Local- Shows the location of all the local historical areas in Delaware County.

Historical National- Shows the same variables as Local, but on a national scale.

Hydro- Shows major waterways such as lakes and main rivers in the county.

Hydro Detail- More microscopic; in this layer you are able to see smaller water sources, even ones as small as the Delaware Run

Landmarks- Shows all Delaware landmarks including churches, golf courses, and schools.

Municipality- shows all municipal or public areas in the county.

Natural Heritage-wildlife, plants, natural habitats that can be found in the county

Orthophoto- can be used to measure true distances, because it is an accurate representation of the earth’s surface

Orthophoto Detailed- A more complex, strait down view of the geographic area, focusing on sections of the county.

Parcels- This layer is used to help value properties in Delaware County

Precinct- The precinct layer can show the location of all polling areas in the county

Public Land Survey- Helps survey the area to define property lines and ownership rights to land.

Railroad- Simply shows all of the railroad tracts running through the county.

Road Center Line- Portrays the exact center of the roads in the county; this removes what could be a confusing variable of where a road actually is.

Road Right of way- Shows the direction on roads that vehicles must travel.

School Districts- Identifies all school districts within the county and determine which school kids of age will go to.

Soils- Shows the soil patterns within the county and where there is soil and where there is not.  It also identifies different types of soils within the county.

Subdivision- Apartments and Condominiums within the county.

TaxDist- Shows the Tax distribution areas, for things such as school taxes.

Topography- Shows all the different elevation levels in the county, including things like roadways.

Townships- Shows the boundaries of all current townships in the county.

Townships Historical- Shows the historical presents of old townships that used to inhabit the area.

Watersheds- Shows the path taken by tributaries on their way to larger bodies of water.

Wetlands- Shows all areas that are permanently saturated with water all year round.

Woodland- Represents all of the scenic woodland areas in the county, not necessarily all of the wooded areas.

Zip Codes- Shows the boundaries that define the zip codes in Delaware County.

Zoning- There are many zoning areas that have specific regulations and this layer shows all of those different boundaries.

Frisbee Golf Course Links and Images

Disc Golf for Fun and Fitness http://www.naturalawakeningsmag.com/natural-library/september-2008/disc-golf-for-fun-and-fitness

Colored Course Map http://delaveagadiscgolf.com/images/stories/course_maps/DelaveagaColorMap1.pdf

Black and White Course Map http://www.delaveagadiscgolf.com/course-info/course-maps.html

Individual Hole Discription http://www.delaveagadiscgolf.com/course-info/hole-descriptions.html

Course map in Columbus (crappy map) http://recparks.columbus.gov/Asset/iu_files/SPORTS/Griggs_layout.pdf

History of Frisbee Golf

So, Who First Played Disc Golf?

There are many historical accounts of people playing golf with a flying disc, some of which pre-date the plastic flying discs by many years. Each account was an individual instance of recreational disc golf play, and none of the participants knew of anyone else playing disc golf. Most of these instances were isolated not only geographically, but in time also, so they couldn’t have known about each other.

The first known instance of anyone playing golf with a flying disc occurred in Vancouver BC in 1926.  A group of school age kids played a game with tin lids, which they dubbed Tin Lid Golf. They played on a fairly regular basis on a disc golf course they laid out on their school grounds.

As they got older and into the more standard school sports, the Tin Lid Golf play faded out of the picture, only to be remembered many years later by one of the participants when they heard of the organized disc golf play of today.

Other similar accounts, both pre and post the advent of plastic flying discs, occurred in the 1930′2 through the 1960’s, each ending in a similar way. One 1960 instance of disc golf was even a commercial attempt to market a packaged game of Sky Golf by the Copar Plastics company in Chicago. However, the Frisbee culture was just in its infancy at that time and the Copar game just didn’t catch on.

The most interesting discovery of disc golf that fizzed out came right at the point when the modern day Frisbee culture started to bloom into its current state of being.

In 1965, George Sappenfeld was a recreation counselor during summer break from college. While playing golf one afternoon, he realized that the kids on his playground could play the golf game with Frisbee discs. He remembered his idea when in 1968 he finished college and became the Parks and Recreation supervisor for the Thousand Oaks, CA Parks and Recreation Department.

George contacted the Wham-O MFG Company about his idea and asked if they could help out with his plan to hold a Frisbee golf contest for his recreation program. They sent Frisbees and Hula Hoops to use as targets. The next year, he talked Ed Headrick of Wham-O into including a Frisbee golf event in the big All Comers Frisbee meet that Ed Headrick and Wham-O was planning to hold at Pasadena’s Rose Bowl fields.  But that was the last that Frisbee golf was heard of from Wham-O for seven years. Even Goldy Norton’s Official Frisbee Handbook of 1972, in which is listed all the activities and events that could be played with a Frisbee, there is not one bit of information or acknowledgment about disc or frisbee golf throughout the entire book.  Disc golf didn’t fit into the promotional plans that Wham-O had for its Frisbee brand flying discs at that time.

But the game of disc golf did indeed exist. A small group of people from Rochester, NY who had never heard of the IFA or Goldy Norton’s Handbook of Frisbee had been playing disc golf as a competitive sport on a regular basis; tournaments, league play and all. They had started in August of 1970, and by 1972 had promoted the Second Annual City of Rochester Disc Golf Championship.

In 1973, this group of avid disc golfers found out about the IFA newsletter, and was amazed to hear of the Frisbee culture that existed beyond their little sphere of disc golf activity. They decided to make their annual City of Rochester Disc Golf Championship a big national tournament to see just how many other people were playing disc golf or would be interested in trying the game. They called the event the American Flying Disc Open and put up a brand new 1974 car to be awarded to the winner so as to attract the attention of the Frisbee community.

The same Ed Headrick took another look at disc golf as he assessed the burgeoning interest in the game as it was played at 1974 American Flying Disc Open.  After observing the explosive growth in disc golf for about 9 months after that, Ed Headrick hired the winner of that 1974 AFDO, Dan Roddick, to head up Wham-O’s new Sports Promotion Department. Upon Dan Roddick’s urging, and feedback from the fledgling but rapidly growing disc golf community, Ed Headrick decided to include Disc Golf as an event in his upcoming 1975 World Frisbee Championships.

Ed became so convinced that disc golf could be big, resigned from his position at the Wham-O MFG Company and start up his Disc Golf Association Company in 1976.

One of Dan Roddick’s first moves as director of the IFA Sports Promotion Department of Wham-O was to incorporate disc golf as an event in the national tour of qualifying tournaments for the big World Frisbee Championship event that Wham-O was continuing to sponsor on a yearly basis. This move introduced the concept of disc golf to thousands of Frisbee players all in one fell swoop. It also opened up many big markets for Ed Headrick’s Disc Golf Association to sell disc golf courses all over the country.  The popularity of disc golf grew and each new course spawned more courses in nearby towns and cities.

Many players shared the dream of national tournaments and organized play. They got together and formed the PDGA to help oversee and guide the rapid growth of the sport.  The PDGA is now a worldwide force and is growing faster than ever. The sport of disc golf is becoming every bit as professional as its older brother the PGA and its traditional ball and club golf.

Info collected from www.pdga.com

Frisbee Golf at OWU

While reviewing the previous Frisbee golf project we noticed the course we have plotted is quite different from last years, however there are some holes that are similar to one another. Similar to last year our course only consists of holes that are on the residential side of campus and one of the major considerations we have pondered upon is the expansion of the course covering the entire OWU campus (both academic and residential sides).

After doing some research we found some really fascinating articles discussing the health benefits and the “green” benefits of Frisbee golf.

“Not only does disc golf provide a great outing of low-impact fitness-building, it encourages the player to keep at it longer. While any bout of exercise or individual sports practice might grow old after a half-hour, participating in a game of disc golf extends the session to an involving hour or two of gentle upper and lower body conditioning and aerobic benefits. Hand-eye coordination strengthens, as do concentration skills, all with less risk of injury than with many other sports. Even individuals with a low level of fitness or disabilities can join in, gradually increasing their activity as health recovers. The activity provides low-cost recreation to the community, while being low-cost for installation and maintenance.” Such benefits are important to park systems. Disc golf courses can cover a variety of terrains and no irrigation is required. Areas unsuitable for other activities can thus be used, affording players surroundings of natural beauty and inspiration that might otherwise be overlooked.”

Extract taken from “Disc Golf for Fun and Fitness” (http://www.naturalawakeningsmag.com/natural-library/september-2008/disc-golf-for-fun-and-fitness).

 A Professional Disc Golf Association (PDGA) has been established and on their website they have a section dedicated to Green Disc Golf. One of their main objectives is stated as: “The relationship that the sport of disc golf has with the environment is an integral part of the golfing experience and is one of the core reasons we develop satisfaction from playing.”

Chapter 3: The Devil is in the Data: Collection, Representation, Standardization

 

In This Chapter…

• Inner workings of GIS will start to become clear
• Data that fill GIS are described from multiple perspectives
• Show how combination of data allows us to see above and below the earth’s surface

The Politics and Practicalities of Data Collection

Data is Political-Census

• two forms; Mailed list of detailed questions and a statistical formula
• believed that responses from the questions produce statistically applicable info on other households
• Big debate is that these responses do not include a significant section of the population; Homeless, disenfranchised, people who don’t fill out the forms
• leads to underfunding  and underepresentation

ORGANIZING DATA

GIS data is stored in the form of tables

Tables can list numerous different variables

Several Key Elements of Spatial Data

• Location
• Consistency
• Scale
• Metadata

Location-

• Spatial analysis is essential in GIS
• ex: Hospital Data- Dates, Patient registration, Clinical symptoms, Diagnosis, Admissions are not good for spatial  analysis
• Location must be included

Attribute Data-

• Describes spatial data
• ex: using population, income, percent forestation are possible attributes of a spatial object(a state)

Consistency-

• key to good data
• fill in the holes; data in a field, time period or space

Scale- http://go.owu.edu/~jbkrygie/krygier_html/geog_222/geog_222_lo/geog_222_lo04_gr/scale.jpg

• Maps are produced at various scales
• fraction the indicates what distance on a map corresponds to that on the ground
• ex: 1:5,000
• Smaller scales are used for things like long driving trips
• Larger scales are used for placement of streets, schools, shopping areas, etc.
• Map users expect a far greather degree of accuracy associated with larger scale maps
• Point date is particularly subject to issues of scale, used to interpolate between known points

Metadata-

• its data about data
• the sharing of data
• answers questions like….

1. When was the data collected?
2. what time period does it cover?
3. what scale are the data applicable to?
4. What projection was used?
5. How was the data collected?
6. What quality measures were taken?

Without metadata, it is very difficult to combine datasets that were collected by differnet organizations of individuals

Sharing of dataessential as a means of broadening analyses.

 

Sharing Data: Interoperability

its the persuit of a common language for computational enviornments, based on common spatial grammer

Benefits- reduced costs, time to transform, manage data

even with metadata, it is a time consuming and costly process to merge data from multiple sources.

addresses not only data compatablitity, but rather systems and network compatability

it is inevitable that data be integrated from multiple sources; it is not economically feasible for ever GIS project to acquire proprietart data for specific projects

COLLECTION, STANDARDIZATION, CLASSIFICATION

Standardization is very closely related to classification becuase in order to standardize data, one must create categories or classes of spatial entities or attributes

Classification is a political process that reflects the Exigencies and cultures of particular institutions

GIS uses well defined spatial entities especially when in a voector of object enviornment.  these entities are described using strict, linear boundaries

• The Problem: the boundaries of such objects from forests to urban areas are often controversial

Standardization and classification prepare data for use in models but not for the politics that accompany their implementation

CONCLUSION

• data is compiled with a particualar purpose in mind and reflect the assumptions and preconceptions of both the data collectors and data users
• The challenge of standardization emerges when data collected to tell different stories about the world must be synched to produce something completely new
• In order to transform these data so that theny can be used to tell a different story, they must be highly refined through standardization and classification processes.

Chapter 1- Introducing GIS Analysis

WHAT IS GIS?

Its a process for looking at geographic patterns and relationships between features.  Steps include coming up with a question, analysing your data, choosing a method of attack, processing the data and then interpreting your results.

 

THREE TYPES OF FEATURES

1. Discrete Features- defining if a given spot is present or not

2.Continuous Phenomena- Data that can be continuously studied such as rainfall in an area or temperature

3.Features Summarized by Area- Represents the counts or density of individual features within a given boundary.

 

GEOGRAPHIC ATTRIBUTES

Categories, amounts, ranks, counts and ratios help identify what a feature is, describes it or represent some magnitude associated with the feature.

Business GIS

GIS in Business Processes – http://www.gisdevelopment.net/application/business/business_2.htm

Three Major Issues

1. what is the best movement beyond GIS implementation practices of today in order to reach/discovery the future best practices;
2. where will keep getting new ideas for improving the implementation of GIS applications to adapt to a continually changing world;
3. what is the best way to understand and exploit the new GIS possibilities due to the dramatic developments in information technology and communications (high speed networking, data compression, complex spatial data types, etc.) which can enable significant organizational improvements.

Routing Analysis of Plaza Shoppers – http://www.gisdevelopment.net/application/business/ma04119.htm

GIS technology can promote the…

1. capturing, manipulating and displaying business information that involves location and dimension, e.g. walking distance, travel distance, degree of spatial aggregation or dispersion;
2. analyzing existing or creating new networks that are pertinent to the business concerned; this can be very specific like a fashion consumer network, or a general form like a shopping plaza network;
3. simulation and projection of flow quantities along the network based on changing variables.

GIS Industry Trends – http://www.gisdevelopment.net/application/business/bus0013.htm

Discusses significant trends in the developement and use of GIS systems.

Introduction

Skiing with my brother

My Name is Bennet Newman and I am a Senior at OWU from Chagrin Falls, Ohio.  I am majoring in economics management and plan to move to Colorado after graduation.  I enjoy playing golf and tennis and I am a huge baseball fan.  I am a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity and I am on the Greek Week planning committee.