Lab 5: ArcGIS Tutorial

GIS, or geographic information systems, is an advanced computer mapping technology used by a wide variety of people for a wide variety of reasons. For example, GIS is used by city governments in order to map the locations of residents’ homes, it is used by 911 operators in order to accurately locate the destination of an emergency and it is used by students and scholar’s alike as a tool to enhance their research projects. As the GIS field continues to expand and technologically advance at increasing rates, mapping programs, such as ArcView, do tend to come with both technological benefits and pitfalls.

One of the main benefits of GIS is that it allows the user to accurately locate points on a map. By being exposed to the accurate location of places, users become more geographically aware of their surroundings, especially those within their mapping area. Another benefit of GIS technology is its ability to allow users to create personalized maps. Instead of having to conform to the standards and layout designs of USGS topological maps or other projections, GIS users can generate maps that are specific to their own preferences for scale, colors, fonts, legend designs, etc. With the ability to personalize maps, people may actually desire to use mapping technology more, for the personalizing of preferences will not only make maps more relatable to the user, but personalization may also aide in making cartography more interesting and entertaining to people other than cartographers.

Despite all of the benefits of mapping technology, GIS does still come with a few pitfalls. One of the main pitfalls is created due to the field’s ever expanding technological advancement. With so many new programs and upgrades entering the field on a regular basis, it may be hard for both experts and general users to keep their mapping skills up to date. These upgrades are many times very complicated and take a while to master, therefore making it difficult for many GIS-applicable fields to continually upgrade to the best program, for upgrading would require time a business may not have to spend for employee training on the upgraded programs. Another pitfall of GIS programming is found when considering that many users do not know how to create layers for mapping purposes. This discrepancy many times leads business or organizations using GIS to hire an expert in order generate the desired overlays. If GIS programs made it easier to create your own overlays, ordinary users would be able to generate almost every portion of their map, thus eliminating the need for an expert position.

The ArcView GIS program is both very interesting and very applicable to everyday life. I personally was very excited to be introduced to the program. I intern with the Santa Monica Community Forest Division and am constantly using ArcView in order to generate maps of trees in the city. It was nice to finally be able to learn the ins and outs of the program and I hope to be able to use the information I learned in the tutorial to increase the quality of the maps I create at my internship on a weekly basis.

Lab 3

View Fast Food Restaurant Locations in South Los Angeles in a larger map

Neogeography can be defined as the application of geographic information to the internet for mapping purposes, or allowing non-expert users to generate maps based on accurate geographic information via Web 2.0. Web 2.0 brings mapping capabilities to the general public by allowing them to create mash-ups, or place information from a variety of sources onto a single map. Though the field of neogeography is constantly evolving on a daily basis, it not only comes with added benefits, but also comes with technological pitfalls and consequences from its application.

As mentioned before, since the field of neogeography continues to evolve, this form of technology and accessibility has great potential. By making high-quality, inexpensive and easy-to-use geographic information available to the general public, people from a variety of backgrounds are now presented with the ability to create maps that not only allow them to plot locations, but also allow them to view real-time traffic maps and crime incident locations; with this type of availability, mapping and geographic information are posed as central information data bases to the general public’s every-day-life. Internet-based mapping also allows for personalized videos, photos, and other forms of media to be integrated into mapping applications, thus deepening the connection between public users and geographic locations. Internet-based mapping also helps create location-aware communities and facilitate the coming together of people with similar tastes and interests.

Though the ever-advancing neogeography technology has broadened community access to GIS on indescribable levels, it is not safe to say that the field does not have some technological pitfalls as well. One of the fields pitfalls pertains to the difficulty of fitting natural items, such as rivers and streams, accurately onto internet-based maps. This becomes a difficult task because many natural landforms are obviously too large to fit properly on the screen due to advanced zoom-in technology, and some natural features even have blurred boundaries that make them difficult to map out. Other pitfalls also occur when considering neogeographic map terminology. Mash-ups many times have issues with the use of homonyms, where topographical interpretations of words such as pool, stream, ocean or channel, can have multiple meanings to the internet-based technology. This makes it difficult for the map to distinguish between them. Vague space relations also pose another problem to mash-up technology, for the scale of the term “near”, “far” and “close by” are vague and full of variations depending on the user. Presently, there is no solution to this problem.

Not only does neogeography have both potential for growth and technological pitfalls, but it also has a handful of consequences that comes with its wide-availability to the general public. When mash-ups first became widely available on the internet in 2005, many people were concerned that the now easily accessible, high-quality geographic information would be used by terrorists in order to plan attacks on the United States. Another consequence arises out of the issue of personal privacy. Many people feel as if mash-ups such as Google Earth have placed their families in danger, for by just typing in an address anyone can look up street, satellite and aerial views of a location.

Lab 2

1. Beverly Hills Quadrangle

2. Canoga Park, Van Nuys, Burbank, Topanga, Hollywood, Venice, Inglewood

3. 1966

4. North American Datum of 1927; North American Datum of 1983; National Geodetic Vertical Datum of 1929

5. 1 : 24,000

6. a: D = 1,200 m: D = 5 x 24,000 = 120,000 cm/100 cm
b: D = 1.89 mi: D = 5 x 24,000 = 120,000 in/39.37 in
c: d = 2.64 in: d/24,000 = 63,360/24,000
d: d = 12.5 cm: d/24,000 = 300,000 cm/24,000 cm

7. 20 feet

8. a. Public Affairs Building:
- Latitude:

• 34 Degrees 4' 49" N
• 34.0803 Degrees N

- Longitude:

• -118 Degrees 26' 35" W
• -118.44302 Degrees W

b. Santa Monica Pier:
- Latitude:

• 34 Degrees 00 ' 31" N
  
• 34.0086 Degrees N

- Longitude:

• -118 Degrees 29' 52" W
• -118.4974 Degrees W

c. Upper Franklin Canyon Reservoir:
- Latitude:

• 34 Degrees 7' 10" N
  
• 34.123 Degrees N

- Longitude:

• -118 Degrees 24' 37" W
  
• -118.4027 Degrees W
  

9. a. Greystone Mansion:

• 570 Feet or 173.736 meters
  

b. Woodlawn Cemetery:

• 140 Feet or 42.672 meters
  

c. Crestwood Hills Park:

• 750 Feet or 228.60 meters
  

10. Beverly Hills is located in UTM zone 11.

11. 361500 East, 3763000 North

12. 1,000m x 1,000m = 1,000,000 sq. meters

13.


14. 14 Degrees

15. North to South

16.