Schuurman (finally) Chs. 1-5

Ch. 1

This chapter talks about GIS in general. Nowadays, it is becoming more common and recognizable. More fields are using GIS as an everyday program. GISystems and GIScience are talked about, but I talked about them in my midterm. It is used both for categorizing numerical data and to project this data into an easy-to-read map for the average person.

Ch. 2

This chapter talks about how human geographers and GIS combine to produce a something bigger. It also talks about epistemology and ontology. “Epistemology is the lens through which spatial phenomena are observed and studied. Different epistemologies such as positivism, realism, or social constructivism result in the apprehension of different entities or ontologies.”

Ch. 3

This chapter talks about how data can be manipulated to show what the mapmaker is trying to show. It can be used as propaganda. It can also be inaccurate. This happens more often than not. An example of this is the lithography and stratigraphy descriptions from well drillers. Some drillers are trained to identify the different strata, while other are not, causing a discrepancy in the data.

Ch. 4

This chapter talks about using GIS to analyze and model spatial phenomena. It talks about vector and raster data and how GIS differs from cartography in that it can show changes, while a single map cannot because it shows data from a single time. It brings everything from the first three chapters.

Ch. 5

This chapter talks about what you can do with a GIS background. It talks about the many realms of possibilities that include GIS. You’d be surprised at how many different things can be analyzed through GIS. It’s not just map making, it spatial analysis.

Project

My final project consisted of mapping air emission concentrations of each county in Ohio.  I found the data, but learned that I had to manipulate it in excel in order to find the total emissions for each county from multiple plants in that county where emissions were measured.  Once I got the data manipulated, I tried to join it to the Ohio layer I created, but it would not work.  The FIPS codes were all correct, but when I selected to match the FIPS codes in the Ohio layer, I was only given the ability to match the county names in my file.  I finally took the time to painstakingly put the ObjectID number in my table and was then able to match the data by the OID number.

Ridiculous.

However, it worked out and I was able to create three maps that showed the CO, SO2, and NOx emissions in each county, along with the general population of that county.

All of my data is on my personal laptop.

Getting to Know ArcGIS Chs. 17-20

These chapters covered geocoding addresses, making maps from templates, making maps for presentation, and creating models.  I had a hard time with finding the Address Locater, so I went to the GIS lab to see if it was on one of the computers in there, found the same way the book describes.  No luck.  But I explored and was able to find how to create a new address locater and went from there.  Everything else went very smoothly though.

Getting to Know ArcGIS Chs. 14-16

These chapters covered building geodatabases, creating features, and editing features and attributes. I didn’t have any trouble with the tutorials at all, and was able to use these chapters for the last problem in the midterm.

Getting to Know ArcGIS Chs. 10-13

These chapters covered selecting features by location, preparing data for analysis, analyzing spatial data, and projecting data in ArcMap.  I didn’t have any problems except for Chapter 11.  I didn’t have the tutorial data, even after reinstalling the data, it never appeared.

Getting to Know ArcGIS Chs. 8&9

These chapters covered querying data, and joining and relating tables. I understood how to join tables, but relating the tables were confusing to me. However, I did eventually figure it out.

Getting to Know ArcGIS Chs. 3-7

These chapters were exploring ArcMap.  The tutorials went by without a hitch. I especially liked chapter 5 when we added the animal symbols. I didn’t know that there were so many symbols in ArcGIS. It was pretty cool. I also thought that it was really cool to display the topography!

Getting to Know ArcGIS Chs. 1&2

Chapter 1 was a nice review to Geog 353 (which I also did as an independent study).  I was glad that this chapter reviewed layers, features, and surfaces.  Chapter 2 introduced ArcCatalog to me, which I found interesting.  I also liked how this chapter went over how the ArcGIS system works.

Longley Chs. 1-2

Ch. 1

Why does GIS matter?
Location

Health care managers in deciding where to locate new clinics and hospitals

Delivery routes

New highway routes

Retail sites

Land use

Tourism

Data, information, evidence, knowledge, wisdom

Manage what we know

Organize

Store

Access

Manipulate and synthesize

Solve problems

Information- devoid of meaning, synonymous with data.  Anything that can be digitized.

Knowledge- information to which value has been added by interpretation based on a particular context, experience, and purpose.

Evidence- multiplicity of information from different sources, related to specific problems and with a consistency that has been validated.

Wisdom- individualized.  The top level pf a hierarchy of decision-making infrastructure.

Science of Problem Solving

Knowledge about how the world works is more valuable than knowledge about how it looks.

How it looks or forms.

How it works or its dynamic processes.

Ideographic geography- focuses on the description of form and emphasizes the unique characteristics of places.

Nomothetic geography- seeks to discover general processes.

Technology of Problem Solving

GIS is a computerized tool for solving geographic problems.

The Business of GIS

The software industry

The data industry

The GIService industry

GIS education

GISystems, GIScience, and GIStudies

Systematic study constitutes a science in its own right.  Information science studies the fundamental issues arising from geographic information, as a well-defined class of information in general.

GIS and Geography

GIS technology offers a solution to the problems inadequate computation and limited data handling.

Many geographers remain suspicious of the use of GIS in geography.

Ch. 2

A Gallery of Applications

GIS is used to improve many of our day-to-day working and living arrangements.

Science, Geography, and Applications

Understanding and resolving problems entails a number of general data handling operations.

GIS is fundamentally about solving real-world problems.

Representative Application Areas and Their Foundations

Mapping

Measurement

Monitoring

Modeling

Management

Used mostly in government and public service, business and service planning, logistics and transportation, and environment.

Environmental Justice

According to this website, environmental justice is “the right to a safe, healthy, productive, and sustainable environment for all, where “environment” is considered in its totality to include the ecological (biological), physical (natural and built), social, political, aesthetic, and economic environments. Environmental justice refers to the conditions in which such a right can be freely exercised, whereby individual and group identities, needs, and dignities are preserved, fulfilled, and respected in a way that provides for self-actualization and personal and community empowerment This term acknowledges environmental “injustice” as the past and present state of affairs and expresses the socio-political objectives needed to address them.”

According to the Surface Transportation Board, an environmental justice population is “a population within an Area of Potential Effect whose minority and low-income composition meets at least one of the following Criteria: (1) the percentage of minority and low-income population in the Area of Potential Effect is greater than 50 percent of the total population in the Area of Potential Effect, or (2) the percentage of minority and low-income population in the Area of Potential Effect is at least ten percentage points greater than the percentage of minority or low income population in the country of which the Area of Potential Effect is a part.”

Environmental hazards are not always equally distributed. According to this website, in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, a report was published saying “Communities where people of color make up 15 percent or more of the total population average more than four times the number of hazardous waste sites as communities with less than 5 percent people of color.

Communities where people of color make up 25 percent or more of the total population average nearly five times as many pounds of chemical emissions from industrial facilities per square mile, compared to communities where less than five percent of the population are people of color.

Communities with median household incomes of less than $30,000 average nearly seven times as many pounds of chemical emissions from industrial facilities per square mile than communities with median household incomes of $40,000 or more.

Communities with median household incomes of less than $30,000 average nearly 2.5 times more waste sites than communities with median household incomes of $40,000 or more. They also average more than four times as many waste sites per square mile.”

Obviously environmental hazards are not evenly distributed. We don’t even need to look for printed proof, just take a look at your city. You know that minorities are exposed to more environmental hazards just because their neighborhoods are located near factories and the like.

This problem can be fixed and a few places are already implementing ideas. California being one. There is an idea called Building Healthy Communities from the Ground Up. This “is the result of It is possible to fix these problems. It may take a while, but there are some places that are already implementing ideas. discussions between environmental justice organizations in California who participated with other labor and social justice organizations to explore and strategize possible statewide efforts and collaborations. The five environmental justice organizations – Asian Pacific Environmental Network (Oakland), Communities for a Better Environment (SF Bay Area/Los Angeles), Environmental Health Coalition (San Diego), People Organizing to Demand Environmental & Economic Rights (San Francisco), Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition/Health and Environmental Justice Project (San Jose) – have long histories working together in coalitions and have begun to proactively develop collective analyses and explore possibilities for action at the state level. This report represents our initial shared understanding of the landscape of environmental conditions and policy in California and our working framework to address these issues.”

South Bronx is another place implementing ideas to clean up environmental hazards. Sustainable South Bronx (SSBx) is a non-profit environmental justice organization in New York City’s South Bronx neighborhood, founded and led by Majora Carter.