(I originally published this to the wrong blog!)
A quick and fun project. After the mess I made of the previous two assignments, I need all the points I can get
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Deepwater Horizon Animation
Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
(I originally published this to the wrong blog)I had only a few problems with this project. The points I imported from Exel were a little off, so I adjusted them with the edit shape function. Drawing the polygons were not a problem until I got to the tracing. I strugled with that for about an hour, then just edited the polygon to the Fed/State line. The area and comparison were straightforward, and I did the chart in Excel.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
GIS and Disaster Planning
In the immediate aftermath of any disaster, there are always questions. The most urgent are: who needs help, where, what resources are available, and how will we get those resources to the people who need them. A great many decisions must be made in a short period of time. Any information that can support those decisions will be welcome. GIS has grown in the last decade into one of the most powerful decision-assistance tools.
The questions of who, where, what and how can all be stored, and when properly maintained and updated, can provide critical information to first-responders, volunteers, and those involved with long-term recovery. Relationships between locations and events can be analyzed and proper remediation can be planned. Areas that have been cleared will not be allocated precious manpower in pointless efforts.
At my workplace, South Florida Water Management District, the first week of June is 'Hurricane Freddy' (Freddy is our cartoon alligator mascot). This annual exercise is a dress rehearsal for the hurricane season, and includes testing the alert roster, assembling the EOC staff, and updating the GIS databases. All conceivable aspects of a potentially devastating storm are considered.
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill event is an excellent example of using GIS to assist the response to a catastrophe. It has the potential to affect millions of people and thousands of acres of sea and land, disrupting the economic and environmental balance of the whole Gulf of Mexico and beyond.
The most obvious use of GIS is to predict the movement of the oil with the known currents of the Gulf, and attempt to provide protection to the most sensitive areas of the coast. Records of what has been done and where will prevent duplication of effort and wasted money and resources. The hazard to health and safety can be tracked, and the specific members of the local population warned of impending danger.
The questions of who, where, what and how can all be stored, and when properly maintained and updated, can provide critical information to first-responders, volunteers, and those involved with long-term recovery. Relationships between locations and events can be analyzed and proper remediation can be planned. Areas that have been cleared will not be allocated precious manpower in pointless efforts.
At my workplace, South Florida Water Management District, the first week of June is 'Hurricane Freddy' (Freddy is our cartoon alligator mascot). This annual exercise is a dress rehearsal for the hurricane season, and includes testing the alert roster, assembling the EOC staff, and updating the GIS databases. All conceivable aspects of a potentially devastating storm are considered.
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill event is an excellent example of using GIS to assist the response to a catastrophe. It has the potential to affect millions of people and thousands of acres of sea and land, disrupting the economic and environmental balance of the whole Gulf of Mexico and beyond.
The most obvious use of GIS is to predict the movement of the oil with the known currents of the Gulf, and attempt to provide protection to the most sensitive areas of the coast. Records of what has been done and where will prevent duplication of effort and wasted money and resources. The hazard to health and safety can be tracked, and the specific members of the local population warned of impending danger.
Module 5 - Urban Planning
This assignment went pretty smoothly. I didn't have any of the usual problems. The ESRI VC assignments are informative and well laid out. I think I even undestood the consepts, even though I've never done this type of work before.
Module 4 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
I didn't have too many problems with this assignment, but it seemed to take a long time to accomplish. I did't have any projection problems because I did a lot of prep work before I opened ArcMap. I collected all the data files, checked the projections, then chose UTM 16N for the working projection. I projected each file and saved them in a folder called "Projections", then made a sub folder called "clipped" and clipped all the files to the Quad I was working in. I finished at 5:05 PM EDT and then uploaded the wrong file format to the dropbox.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Module 3 - Hurricanes
I'm really pretty embarrased by this product. I never did get past the elevation conversion. I fudged a flooding map by manually classifying the elevation in meters to display only the areas that would have been subject to the storm surge (2.4 meters). I could not do any of the analysis since that was all dependant on the conversion.
I was also dissatisfied with the resolution of the raster files when working at this large a scale. If I have any spare time (ha,ha) I' like to re-do the exercise with an elevation raster I stumbled on form work. It's a 10-foot DEM (as opposed to 30 meter) and it shows so much detail, looks almost like an aerial photo. I think I can get a High-resolution landcover file as well. I just need time to look.
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