ArcMap 10 & ArcScene 10 Used to Assess Visible Land Cover

 

 

Using a Tin Model, a Hillshade has been done to assess the visible land cover blocked by high elevated grounds, such as the Niagara Escarpment or highway overpasses.

The above layout displays the (Viewshed) area of sight from the respective vantage points. Seen in the viewshed map are pink areas representing not visible land and grey-green areas representing visible lands. Elevation is the factor the affects visibility.

 

This relationship is also seen in the line of sight viewport- where red represents land not visible and green represents visible lands. In this case, higher elevated grounds will be visible from the particular vantage point the line of sight tool stems from.

 

Seen below is the 3D visualized layout of the above map. The elevated grounds can be seen in ArcScene 10 as the Hillshade and all other features have been draped over the Tin Model. 

 

Product of ArcScene Drape Over: Hillshade atop Tin created in ArcMap 10

Urban Application Example: Street lighting where lighting can be buffered for distances, but a line of sight will need to be used to assess the grounds blocked by high elevated areas.

Software: ArcMap 10, ArcScene 10

Enjoy. Thank you for viewing

 

 

 

A Fun Small Project about ESRI Canada

How GIS software uses other software to gather and display spatial info

I put this video together that shows the spatial distribution of ESRI Canada offices spanning from Vancouver, BC to St. John's, Nova Scotia.


I apologize for the lack of subtitle- 
* Video Song: By Moby called Extreme Ways and DJ Tiesto Instrumental



* The vid begins in Google Maps- to access Latitude and Longitude data for each ESRI office
* That info is entered into an MS Excel Spreadsheet along with other data fields. Ie. Address
* I show the final product of what we will end up with - then start a new project from scratch
* In ArcMap 10, I used a file geodatabase, and in it a point data feature class was created to hold the attribute data for all the ESRI offices (point data) locations
* The data from the MS Excel table is loaded into the feature class and the points are displayed in the data frame window of ArcMap 10 after I display using XY data. 


          -usually I would include domains, datasets and subtypes where applicable, but they are not included for the purpose of demo simplicity.


* Once the points are visible on the map, ESRI's basemap bing imagery is loaded to obtain a spatial reference for the point data.
* This gathered information is applicable in many cases:
- Potential employees or clients seeking knowledge of ESRI office locations
- ESRI's marketing ability to spatially assess their national reach
- With an increased attribute catalog more data can be used to relate/ compare spatial relationships
- A Buffer/Query can be created to assess distance of offices in Canada- as ESRI grows GIS can facilitate growth spatially from a distance. 

The following map displays the location of ESRI Canada's Toronto location in ArcMap 10. However, as a printed map it can only provide so much info- in geospatial software I can build on the analyses.

* With increased data comes increased information- and this is how I found ESRI's ArcMap 10 and the use of MS Excel and Google Earth to help in my pursuit of gathering info on ESRI Canada.

2012 Niagara College Grad Reception

After a long day of volunteering with the Environmental & Horticultural Studies & GIS display, our team had a great time at Niagara College's Grad reception (March 30-April 1, 2012). Fun for GIS!

In the picture below, I have my colleague Nicholas Menard (far left), co-Chair Al Unwin (middle), and me (Alicia Samuels far right).

This is what GIS is about- socializing,  exchanging knowledge and more. Niagara College makes volunteering with what I love easy.