Summer 08 Class Final Projects: Highlights

Been working my fingers to the bone teaching 9 credits last Spring, 6 credits this Summer, and getting ready to teach 6 more this Fall (next week, gulp!).

This past Summer was exciting and really stood out, however, as many of the final projects from both courses were exceptionally great. I taught Seminar: Advanced GIS Topics for Real Estate Research and Understanding Geographic Information Systems (an intro to gis course).

Real Estate Project Highlights:

• Automated Foreclosure Selection Model. This project incorporated MLS and foreclosure listings and conducted a failry sophisticated comparable market analysis to whittle down the hundreds of available foreclosure listings to a select few worthy of consideration and further investigating. The analysis would have been sufficient for an excellent grade, but they went the extra mile and automated the process with a custom toolbar, geoprocessing models, and some VBA programming.
• Site Selection (suitability analysis) for a New Mixed-Use Development in Arlington Texas. Of note here is the clever way they included traffic pattern data in their analysis.
• Analyzing the Correlation Between Crime and Property Values. What set the project apart was the student's in depth use of SPSS and linear statistical analysis in conjunction with ArcGIS.

Understanding GIS Project Highlights

• Estimating Surface Runoff Volume. Wow is all I can say about this one. This project used ArcGIS to calculate the Soil Conservation Service Curve Number for a local area in Fort Worth. Landuse, zoning, aerial images, and city-defined drainage areas were used in this analysis.
• Site Selection for an Environmentally Friendly Park in Dallas. Completed by a graduate Landscape Architecture student, this project focused on soil runoff, amount of sunlight, and various other parameters necessary to create a Green park.
• Analyze the Relationship Between Geology and Oil Fields in Texas. This project made extensive use of the Geologic Atlas of Texas to search for common geologic types underlyiing oil fields. This in itself was a great project, but the student went the extra mile and created a Google Maps web page showcasing the results, which was fantastic.

Like I said, this was a most excellent summer in terms of the quality of student final projects. There were of course many other great projects, but these are the six that stick the most in my head at the moment. ;)

Mapping Oak Cliff's Realities, Possibilities

Dallas Morning News Article: Mapping Oak Cliff's Realities, Possibilities (08/16/08)

This recent article spotlights student Charles Jackson's use of GIS in an undergraduate project on the Oak Cliff neighborhood in Dallas, Texas. Charles is a student I assisted with on may GIS projects. For this one in particular, he used GIS to create a Google Map webpage of various resources available in this low-income area. Charles' online project is entitled Oak Cliff Interactive.

Background information about this project and the technology used can be found in a blog entry I wrote last year.

Academic Cycle: Projection Time!

GIS projects must be due soon in many of our classes as folks from all over campus are coming into the GIS Lab for assistance with projecting their data. Funny how everyone from different departments and different classes are all focused on the same thing. Wonder if this has any relationship to how women's menstrual cycles sync after living close together? Does this mean the various departments are psychically, biologically, or spiritually moving in unison? Ha!

Anyway, by far the most popular question in the lab recently has been confusion about defining and projecting data. Map of Texas showing up in the Pacific? Saw this a few times in the lab yesterday. Always the same cause. An undefined shapefile, most of the time geographically referenced, was projected to some form of Lambert Conformal Conic without defining the projection first!! ArcMap can not transform a projection without defining the initial projection first. Students from many disciplines are having a tough time understanding when and why it is necessary to define their projection before re-projecting their data.

As stated in the ArcGIS 9.2 Help, the projection definition "records the coordinate system information for the specified input dataset or feature class including any associated projection parameters, datum and spheroid. It creates or modifies the feature class's projection parameters."

So, how can you know when your data's projection needs to be defined? Well, first clue is ArcMap will give you a popup letting you know. These are not ads. Read them. Second clue is that your data will not be in the correct position, such as a map of Texas in the middle of the Pacific. However, if all of your data is consistently un-defined, then you will only notice this if you add another layer that is properly defined. Tough part is that if a student adds 10 layers whose projections are undefined, and then adds another layer that is properly defined, it might seem as if the defined layer is the one in the incorrect position. Like a democratic vote, un-defined wins 10 to 1.

Why is this confusion happening more than it used to? My opinion is the loss of ArcMap's assumed geographic projection definition. ArcMap 9.1 (and previous versions) would detect and assume that un-defined shapefiles were geographically referenced (decimal degrees). If the data is indeed geographically referenced, then ArcMap's assumption removes the need to define the file before projecting it. However, 9.2 makes no such assumptions. Undefined data must be defined, whether it is geographically referenced or not. Which is better? I sure do not know, but I do know that this is forcing our students (and faculty) to give a lot more thought to projections and datums than they needed to in the past.

Oak Cliff Interactive - Student ArcMap2GMap Project

Student-Created Map: Oak Cliff Interactive

Want to discuss this political science student's work to show an example of the effectiveness of our library's GIS workshop program and our endeavor to create customized tools to increase the access and attractiveness of geospatial resources.

Have been working this semester with Charles Jackson, an enthusiastic political science student to develop an interactive map for an undergraduate public affairs course. Charles, (who gave me permission to discuss his project here), first attended the Google Maps workshop I held earlier this semester. He was so excited about the idea of creating an interactive map that he spent countless hours (at least 80) in the GIS lab learning how to access business location information, various demographic datasets, pull them all into ArcMap, and create an interactive map using our ArcMap2GMap script. I tell you, his enthusiasm was so infectious and always got other students (at nearby computers) and myself excited as well.

Oak Cliff is an old neighborhood south of Dallas, and Charles is working to develop a revitalization plan. The Oak Cliff Interactive map is the community services component. He explained to me numerous times that there has never before been a comprehensive analysis of the services/resources available to Oak Cliff's residents. This interactive map allows users to view various business, non-business, and housing facilities in Oak Cliff. If an address is geocoded, the 10 closest facilities of each visible facility type is listed, along with links to driving directions.

Hopefully, the professor will be impressed enough to begin encouraging future students to integrate geospatial resources within their projects. I will follow up with the professor and see what happens...