Plugging in the Power- Analyizing the Power Transmission Corridor

Here we are already at the end of our First Semester of GIS. It has come so fast.  This last project was great.  It combined my actual skills as a title attorney using tax parcel data from the assessor's office and serving as co-counsel at a local city council's monthly meetings.  Oh what questions the public could ask.  I took the joint perspective as counsel and the gis analyist.   Easily I could have worked on this one for another couple of weeks to fine tune so much.

Here's an example of one of the maps.  The powerpoint carries the rest.

Here are the links:  hopefully the powerpoint will work.  Another first to learn at the last minute. How to post pdf & powerpoint to the web.

having trouble getting the right stuff on this one.  it's been accepted on scribd.com but having difficulty getting the link to connect. 
This one looks better

 http://www.scribd.com/doc/91478678/Intro-Final-Power-Present


A slide by slide breakdown is added here by pdf.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/91479095/kfm4-SlidebySlide-IntroFinal
If I copy & paste this one works.

Too tired to work . Nite.

Google Earth- Hunting for needles in a haystack

Now let me tell you of an adventure we have had to take.  Given all the available information on the wide web, our assignment is to locate a place along the Great Lakes to put a "wind farm".  Now this seems quite small at first. However, given the perimeters of the now defunct BERR from the UK, it was harder than it sounded.   

1- Needs wind speed of at least 6m/s.
2- Not within a conservation zone. It creates too much social flack to get one approved. In addition, birds and bats have issues with tall structures, lights and moving objects in their paths.
3- Not within the shipping lanes.
4- Preferably in a field, wide zone.
5- Not within a residential zone for noise perimeters.  Upon researching, the original buffer was 300 meters.  There has been recent US legislation which has widened this to 1km. 

I found a location near Freda, Michigan. Pinned a field in google earth, named Freda MI Site, a couple of miles north at  47 10' 03.28"N/ 88 44'12.97"W, elevation 763 feet.


This one had great wind speed, was not located in a conservation zone, was outside of shipping lanes and has an open area of 68 square acres.  I was pleased to find it was not directly in any major recognized migratory flyways, which was a tremendous deal killer for several sites I was scouting.    The hesitation is there are a few houses in the area which may be the final determining factor. 

Freda, MI

 The caption inside which did not show up says " Freda MI Site
Freda, Michigan  " This site has an average wind speed at 80m of 6m/s to 7/ms. At 100m it averages over 7m/s, which makes it a windy location. It is not in a protected conservation zone and is outside of the shipping lanes. The open area is 68 sq ares with few dwellings around it."


Enjoying looking.  Karen

Week11 Cart - Dots are easier with a paint brush!

Dot mapping has a long history.  It is best performed by hand without the use of a computer. They said it back then and I will say it now, that is it still true.  I'm older than the computer, they knew what they were talking about.  This time it wasn't the dots that were the issue, although mine are too small. It was preparing the base map in illustrator which caused me to lose time (much time).

It was an attempt to show the housing units in 15 southern counties in Florida.  Each dot represents 5790 housing units.  Much of the area is covered by inhabitable marshland.  Our placement did not account for federal lands, state parks, industrial areas or other areas not permitting housing.   Using the 2000 census information was fairly straightforward. 

Looks like my map did not translate very well to the blog. 

Here's a description of the process.

Process Summary

·       Started Illustrator, made a copy of the base map before making changes. 

·       Studied layer structure of map. Created separate layers for north arrow, Had no clue how to begin the map part. Chose to do a housing unit map.

·       Based on data chose 5790 as the unit measure for the dot.  Determined the number of dots for each county:  Manatee 24, Hardee 2 , Highlands 8, St Lucie 16, Martin 11, Palm Beach 96, Broward 128, Miami-Dade 147, Monroe 9, Collier 25, Hendry 2, Lee 42, Charlotte 14, Desota 2, Sarasota 31.    This was the easy part. I used excel & made several extra columns to determine later that they were already in the chart just not labeled very clear.

·       I zoomed in on the southern zone to determine the livable areas, with the water layers turned on.  Wanted to put a small map of Florida with the highlighted counties, then do the dot map on an enlarged area of the southern counties.  Ambitions were high. 

·       Started over 3 times in various stages of data disappearing (counties, water, etc.) 

·       My dot size was 0.7 which turned out to be too small with the enlargement I was able to create.  I put the dots in a separate layer, sub layered by county to hold their individual dot count.  I was able to make a 10 count & 20 count dot template which I copy/pasted into the counties. This made counting the dots much quicker & was actually the quickest portion of the lab. (The base map eventually turned out ok).  I lost the water layers which were carefully lassoed into groups and moved to the base map.  It would have been best if the marshes could have shown up.

·       In the process, the scale became invisible and lost its fill/stroke.  It took nearly to the end to figure this out.

·       Have had enormous challenges with Illustrator.  I’d like to bury the inventor of it who forgot to show the rest of us how to understand it.  Other than struggling to learn illustrator on the fly. This would have been an ok lab.  The final product is not as elaborate as I had attempted to produce.  

Week11- Georeferencing "Making Here Go There"

When you want to know where "Yonder" is, georeferencing is a good skill to know.  Using known points on the ground, matching them up with a known point on a picture connects the picture to the geographical coordinate systems on the ground.  That's also how they can find you through pictures taken by your cell phone.   Now I understand how they can get the two to line up.  We also added a building to the vector files and drew in a road.  Cool stuff.

 

Process Summary  

1-Created new folder for  s:\Introgis\ Week11GeoREF. Moved new georeferencing.zip, extracted files.

2-Began in ArcCatalog to obtain metadata information, see that GCS is NAD 1983 Harn Stateplane Florida North 0903 feet.  See that uwf_DEM and uwf_n & uwf_n1.jpeg will need coordinate systems added.

3- New map added  buildings & roads.shp, then  uwf_n.jpeg to map. Added georeferencing toolbar to  data frame. Received message there was no coordinate system.  Saved map as  Week11UwmGEO.mxd.

4- Verified uwf_n.jpeg is active layer in georeferencing toolbar.>fit to display, It appears.  

5-Task 5, began to add control points.  Before added first one, studied 3 layers.  First 5 RMS for first time with this was just over 7, added 5 more control points, RMs under 15. Chose to scrap all and do second set, much better.  Found that using full extent & zooming took time for the computer to process each strip of raster cells. Good idea not to rush computer or completion of adding control points. Best scale for adding control points is between 1:250-400. 

6- With the do over, I started with three points set out much like a three legged stool, which established a clean “plane”.  Added the extra control points,  the georeferencing  proceeded much smoother with much less distortion during the control point establishing process.

7-Task 6- Total RMS with 10 control points 4.32, using 1^st polynominal.  (RMS at 5 points 1.26357), updated georeferencing.  Checked layer, properties, source, has same GCS as buildings.shp.

8-Task7- Added uwf_s1.jpeg to map.  Can see right off that the image is quite distorted.  

First took time to study image. Chose three points in most outer regions of image to establish as original plane under 1 st polynominal.  After reached 6 total control points, viewed lin                                                                                                                                          ks table, moved to 2^nd polynominal , check RMS running high at 9.19275, tried to adjust image, moved it up in layers over uwf_n.jpeg did something & lost all my control points. Had not saved my work. 

9- With uwf_s1.jpeg back to originally distorted image again, started reestablishing control points. Started with same goal of three outer points in various locations on image to create “three-legged plane”,  having a little more practice at this task, it went smoothly.  Ending with 2^nd polynominal and 9 control points  my final RMS was 1.78562.  Saved work several times between points.  The image is square, used hand  ruler against screen to visually check it.  Updated georeferencing,  checked in properties>source> GCS was NAD 1983 Harn Stateplane Florida North 0903 foot.

10- Moved uwf_n.jpeg above uwf_1s.jpeg. Verified with enlarge tool that there was no gap or gore between the images.  In properties>symbology>display background value> left 000 as default values, then black areas around image were removed.

11- Task 8- Followed instructions, using editing tool from last week, enlarged area of gym,  digitized new building (gym) added to image, saved.  Same with road added, editing tool end>started editing>roads layer>attribute table>added data, checked snapping tool for end, vertex. Added road, it went in smooth.  Finally.

12- Task 9- Creating 3D scenes. Opened ArcScene, added layers, roads, buildings, uwf_n.jpeg & uwf_s1. In properties>base heights> set floating on custom as uwf_dem for each layer. In uwf_n.jeg & uwf_s1 properties >symbology> set display background value at default 000 for each layer. This cleaned up the map and removed a blackish strip between the uwf layers.   Before I began making  any changes, I saved a copy of the base file as Week11uwfcamp_copy.sxd.

13-Futher adjustments to map in Buildings>properties>Extrusion>checked extrude features in layer> in extrusion value or expression  typed [Height], in drop down activated  made sure “adding it to each feature’s maximum height is chosen.

14-To exaggerate the vertical dimensions, on main menu>view>scene properties>general tab>vertical exaggeration >5>ok.

15-Adjusted view to show the new building 072 & new road added. Exported from Arcscene10 in 2D to s drive as jpeg.  Saved as  week11uwfcamp.jpg   Added to arcmap in new map.  Eventually able to make map with elements, small map of whole area.  Once again had trouble saving, called IT, this is an issue which needs to be resolved.  Will send screen shot to IT when comes again.