The internship with the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) at District 7 Headquarters has been quite eventful. I got started a bit later in the semester through the Volunteer Program, so I am approximately one third through the hours for GIS. Beyond mandatory training for state employees, I got started on putting together a training manual for ArcGIS Pro desktop to be used by the GIS Department in future classes [...]
What a last two weeks it has been this semester. Hurricane Helene threatened the area during the final week of September, shifting everyone's focus to preparation and expected impacts. The storm center passed approximately 90 miles to our west. While coastal impacts were severe, we were spared the brunt inland, even keeping electricity throughout the storm. Followed that with a preplanned trip for AARoads to Puerto Rico. Then got [...]
There are numerous spatial interpolation methods used to generate surfaces in GIS. This is the prediction of variables at unmeasured locations based upon sampling of similar variables at known locations or true points. Related, spatial prediction is the estimation of variables at unsampled locations based partly on other variables and a collective set of measurements. Comprised of spatially continuous data, surfaces could be topographic, a measure of air pollution, soil moisture, air temperatures [...]
Finally got started with my GIS Internship with the Florida Department of Transportation at District 7 (D7) Headquarters last week. The position affords me the opportunity to work on several GIS related tasks and with multiple departments. I am working with a great team and providing assistance to others with ArcGIS Pro. Settling into my internship position at D7 went very smoothly. My initial task is working on a [...]
Moving on from Spatial Data Quality in GIS Special Topics, the next Lab focuses on surfaces with a comparison of the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) and Triangular Irregular Network (TIN). A surface in GIS is a geographic phenomena represented as continuous data. Continuous spatial data references geographic objects characterized by very gradual boundaries such as temperature or elevation. The most common way to represent elevation data is with contour [...]
Continuing the focus on Spatial Data Quality in GIS Special Topics, Module 1.3 covers the Accuracy Assessment of Roads. Road networks are widely used as the basemap for many applications. This factors into expectations for positional accuracy and completeness, which this week's lab covers. Road networks are also used for geocoding and network routing. The usability of such is dependent upon robust attributes such as street names, address numbers, [...]
The GIS Internship part of the UWF GIS Certification program is something I have looked forward to since the start of classes last Fall. While working on AARoads is rewarding, the lack of a team to work with, especially in recent years, has been increasingly discouraging. Also my previous work with GIS Cartography and Publishing Services (GISCAPS) is 100% remote, so the interaction there is limited to phone calls. [...]
When viewing a map or working with geospatial data, it is generally assumed to be accurate. But this may not always be the case, and many factors can affect accuracy. Unaccounted bias may be present, data may have been digitized at a coarser scale than was required, errors present on a previous dataset used to update a new one could be carried over, etc. So how accurate is a [...]
The first module of Special Topics in GIScience covers aspects of spatial data quality. Furthermore, the associated lab defines and contrasts the concepts of accuracy and precision in spatial data. Quality generally represents a lack of error, where error in spatial data is the difference between a true value and an observed or predicted value. Rather than unrealistically attempting to know the exact error, an estimated error based upon sampling or another statistical [...]
The final scenario for the lab of GIS Applications Module 6 is to determine a potential protected corridor linking two areas of black bear habitat in Arizona's Coronado National Forest. Data provided included the extent of the two existing areas of known black bear habitat, a DEM, a raster of land cover and a feature class of roads in the study area. Parameters required for a protected corridor facilitating [...]
