Fire Station Project

In this map, you can see the LA County which I got from the DEM online[1] and the shapefiles[2] from the “All Fire Parameters” website. This is where I found the fires of the summer of August 2009 to the beginning of September. My parameter map shows the spread of fires at which times and my thematic map shows the fires and has major highways and freeways and cities in the LA County. As one can see on the thematic map that there are freeways and cities close to the fires. Also one freeway runs right through the fire. This can show potential danger to those cities close by and the freeway that runs through the fire.

Starting with freeways, freeway 2 which is called the “Angeles Crest Highway” runs right into the middle of all the fires. This is obvious that people in the cars that are on that freeway driving by on August 2009 are in danger of getting burned or dying from the exposure of the wildfires. This fire burned the mountains through which this freeway travels. The fire damaged signs, guardrails, and lanes. It left large boulders and other debris on the road. As a result, the highway was closed until November 30, 2009[3]. It was briefly opened again but was closed again because mud and rock slides occurred in 2010[4]. It reopened on June 3, 2011. Possibly freeway 2 could burn down. This shows the potential danger to people, cars and freeway 2.

Because this freeway was closed, it definitely affected people who planned to take a fun road trip there. The Angeles Crest Highway is one of the “most scenic and picturesque mountain roads in the state”[5]. Because it is famous for having such a beautiful scene and landscape, it is a top choice for taking a road trip for tourist and adventurers. In general, who ever wanted to or planned to go on that freeway to get to their desired destination would be affected because the freeway was closed for so long.

Aside from the 2 freeway being affected by the Station fire, the 210 freeway runs right alongside this fire. It shows that the 210 freeway was very close to the fire and in fact there were many clear pictures taken from this freeway of the fire, proving the fire’s close proximity to the freeway[6]. Because this freeway was so close to the fire, it was in danger and the people driving on this freeway would also be in danger.

This thematic map also shows major cities and as one can see, Burbank was right next to the fire. Thus, many people, communities and homes were in danger. “Two fire fighters had been killed and at least at least 18 homes in Tujunga Canyon which is part of Burbank area had burned as of the morning of August 31”[7]. Also, about four thousand homes were ordered to evacuate which impacted everyone’s day because they had to leave their homes. There was a lot of damage to houses so owners had to do a lot of repairing and fixing.

Because this fire was huge, it affected freeways such as the 2 and 210. These freeways especially the 2 were in danger or potential danger. People who planned to use the 2 freeway were affected because it was closed and people driving on the 210 could have been in danger. Homes and parts of Burbank were burned. From this map you can see how big the spread of the fire was and how places and freeways were affected.

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[1] “USGS Seamless Data Warehouse”. http://seamless.usgs.gov/index.php

[2] “Los Angeles County Enterprise GIS”, last modified: September 28, 2010 http://egis3.lacounty.gov/eGIS/index.php/category/gis-data/fire/

[3] “Caltrans”, last modified:2011 http://www.dot.ca.gov/

[4]“California Department of Transportation” http://www.dot.ca.gov/cgi-bin/roads.cgi

[5] “Angeles Crest Highway” http://angelescrestscenichighway.com/

[6] “Flikr at Yahoo” http://www.flickr.com/photos/cleo5678/3868475965/

[7] “Earth Observatory”. Last modified: August 31, 2009  http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=40011

2000 Cesus

The Asian population percent of continental North America is shown on this map. From this map one can see that the highest percentage of Asians is located in California. And this is shown through the dark brown color on California. To be exact, the darkest shade of brown is in the bay area and in Los Angeles. From this information, people learn that Asians usually live in the North Bay or in Los Angeles. This information can be applied and be useful for many things such as advertising. For example, now that people know where most Asians are, companies that have a lot of Asian customers might want to put their companies or ads in California.

There is a lot of “some other race” living west of North America. The highest percent of “some other race” is located in California, Washington, and New Mexico. Again this information can be used in the same way as with the Asian percentage map. Overall, it shows how diverse different places in North America is. In this map, it seems that Central America does not have “some other race”. This can mean that Central America is not very diverse.

Black population seems to cluster in the east- south of North America. Also, since the color shade is pretty dark or concentrated in California, it means there is still a high percentage of blacks in California but just not as high as in the south east. This information can give us information about the progress of blacks moving from place to place. From history, Africans were slaves and most were brought to the south east and from this map, it seems that Africans have not disbursed much and that they remained from they were.

In conclusion about census data, it helps as a visual aid to prove several points. People can use this information to do many things such as locating stores, or anything that attract a particular race or ethnicity group. And it can be done with other things besides race such as level of education, marital status, age group etc. Because different things attract different types of people, using census to see where these types of people are can help determine where the best and most efficient location to place something is.   

My overall impression of GIS is that it can be very useful but it is difficult to use because there is so much to learn and so many functions to this program. You can do many things with it and because of so many options, it isn't user friendly. GIS makes maps that can inform people about a topic and it can serve as a visual aid which is very helpful. However, much practice needs to be put into this program if someone wanted to use it in a presentation or to prove a point which can be time consuming. 

Week 7 Lab DEMs in Arc GIS

This area is the North Bay of California. The top portion of the map is the cities Vallajo which is located on the upper right hand corner, and San Rafael which is on the upper left hand corner. The bottom right portion consists of Hercules, Pinole Valley, Richmond, Berkeley, Oakland and Alameda. The bottom left portion is where The Golden Gate National Park and Sand Francisco are located.  This area has many small hills. Near Berkeley which is the bottom right corner is where one of the tallest hills and highest elevation are. The famous San Andreas fault line lies here. Another very hilly place is the Mill Valley and Tamaipais- Homestead Valley which is north of the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. The extent of this map is 2106 columns and 2018 rows of raster data. The resolution in x direction is 0.000277777777796473 degree and resolution in y direction is 0.000277777777796473 degree. Coordinate system is top edge native is 38.2366666660223 degree, bottom edge native is 37.676111110429 degree, left edge native is -122.680555555471 degree and right edge native is  -122.095555555431 degree. The file size is 18 MB.

Map Projections

Different projections of maps are used for different things so picking the right map projection to use really depends on what your map is intended for or intended to do or show. Every map projection has its potentials and limitations. Some ways to determine preciseness and factors that play into picking a good map are showing the correct distance between locations, showing directions, showing the correct shape of the earth or the place you are looking at compared to real life, area and proportions are accurate and seeing how little the map is distorted. But really, it depends on what the purpose of the map is for in order to pick the right projection that fits.

A type of projection is equal area projection. As the name suggests, it is a map that shows all the places in an equal ration area and places are proportional to each other. Because it is it is proportional, it lets us know how big or small a place is relative to another. The Hammer and Craster map preserve the real relationship of size between one place and another. The Craster map does not have any distortions at latitudes 36°46' N. and S. at the central meridian. Thus if someone wanted to focus on the central meridian or this latitude, they would pick the Craster map because it doesn’t distort. The Hammer and Craster map can be good for thematic maps because since areas are proportional, when giving information about a population, someone can compare the population to the size of the place.

The Azimuthal and Equidistant Conic map projections are considered equal distant projections. Equidistant map projections show correct scale between points on the map or along every meridian. For the Azimuthal map, distances are correct between points along straight lines. On the map it shows that the distance between Washington DC and Kabul, Afghanistan is 13,413,685 meters which is the actual distance because they are equidistant maps. Compared to equal area maps such as Hammer that said the distance was 13,398,532 meters and Craster that said 13,018,095 meters, the Conformal maps such as Stereographic with distance of 15,897,194 Meters and Polyconic with distance of 11,823,160 meters, the distances are different due to distortions. It shows the distance from the center of the projection. This map is commonly used for polar aspects and to find correct distances between two places. The conic projection has the same spacing between parallels or lines so the scale would look the same and constant. Because scales are not distorted, distance between places is accurate so if someone wanted to use a map to find the distance between two places for travelling, they can use equidistant maps.

In conformal maps, the meridians and parallels cross at right angles. Because the scale is kept only when this happens, this map is good for local mapping in a large scale and small area. Conformal maps are not equal area so it would not be good to use it for statistics in an area, area density or population size in a place. Conformal maps also preserve angles so if someone wanted to find angles where the meridians and parallels, then conformal is useful. It is also useful when viewing a local map because it is not distorted.

Lab 4 AcrGIS

Proposed Airport Expansion

There are many advantages and potentials in using ArcGIS. This is usually for environmental calculations. People can learn more about their surroundings using GIS. For example, on the tutorial, GIS gives me geographic information such as where things are (schools, airport layout (runways), routes and county boarders) so I know how big the county is. GIS shows arterial roads which are high traffic streets. This can really help in deciding if it is a good idea to expand the airport because I can see how many roads there are and how many are going to the airport. GIS helps in seeing if there is a good balance, thus, to predict whether too many or too few cars would go to the airport. I can see if it is convenient for cars to get to the airport on arterials and which arterials. The map also allows me to see schools in the county and where they are. This is important because schools can be affected if the airport is expanded. The school, students can be negatively affected if expanding the airport causes more planes to fly in and out. This way, traffic will increase and there will be a lot of noise from planes.

The second map tells the viewer how the area is being used. We can see how the airport expansion would affect everything in the county. There seems to be many residential areas near the airport and this suggests that airport expansion is not a good idea because people will complain about the noise. However if you look at the population density map which shows how many people live in a certain area, we can see that maybe the airport expansion is a good idea because it is an urban area with many people, so a large airport would be nice to have for business trips and personal travels.

One pitfall of GIS is that one mistake can wreak and cause the whole project. It is very easy to make a mistake because GIS is so complicated and there are so many options to pick from in every step. If you pick the wrong tab, the map can show you a totally different point of view or calculate the information in a different way, giving you different results. Because there is so much to learn from GIS and how to use such advanced technology, industries and companies that use GIS must employ careful and detail oriented professionals. Employees and the technology are very expensive so the price to use GIS is very high.

Living Healthy in Down Town Los Angeles

After using Google Maps to create my own map, I learned that one pitfall of using this tool is that I cannot add specific or remove specific features to and from it. For instance, freeways are unimportant on my map, however, unfortunately, its point and emphasis will still be there on my map because I can’t take them out. Another consequence of using and relying on Google Maps is that sometimes it is unreliable because anyone can post and create a map on there. This means that anyone can pin a place and write a wrong destination, place name or place at a wrong location. Also, some maps created by people are not useful so it becomes a waste of time to look at them. Google Maps also has the limitation of looking into the interior of buildings and the blueprint and layout. I know if Google Maps was able to do this, it would be invading privacy, however, if I wanted to make a map of a confusing building like the UCLA Medical Building, I could not. In addition, Google Maps limits the amount of space you get for writing and describing a place or pin.

Aside from disadvantages and consequences of Google Maps, there is potential to it. Because anyone can create a map of their own they can choose where they want to remember and pinpoint. For example, if I borrow a tour book and get a list of the city’s attractions, I can pick out everything that interests me and pin point them on Google Maps and make my own tour that suits me the most. Google Maps allows people to take notes on the pins so their location will be revealed with just one click. People can also choose an icon to represent their place so they can better remember the point or have an idea of what that point is.

Website: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&vpsrc=1&ctz=420&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=202664028242823768863.0004af0f94b432003c44b&t=m&z=15