Alachua County, FL

These two maps show the best census tracts in which to live in for the two retirees based on proximity to their grandchildren, community centers, Unitversity of Florida, and North Regional Medical Center in Gainesville, Florida.

These four maps show the proximity of the criteria placed on the selected tracts that the retirees were looking for in Alachua County, Fl.

Map 1 is an overall depiction of Alachua County, Florida showing various places near the grandchildren of the two retirees to choose a house close to the criteria they have chosen.

Week 5: Urban Planning and Environmental ImpactAssessment

The week 5 deliverables include three maps from the ESRI Module 5 exercises from Urban Planning and Envrionmental Impact. The first map shows the student occupancy rate of Pewter City based on parcels and housing types. I had no issues with the first deliverable.










The second deliverable displays an Economic Impact Assessment (EIA)of Pewter City based on traffic results. The only issue was with the forementioned step 4 fix in which I could never complete so I skipped to step 6 and continued on.

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The third deliverable is an economic assessment map on a local scale using the calculation for local quotient. This map was almost entirely calculations using the field calculator function with the hardest part being which equation to use.

Part III of Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

GIS can play a very important and unique role in disaster response and management. "GIS technology is used to collect, store, analyze, and share geospatial information needed by agencies to effectively support operations and restore disaster-affected communities."(ESRI.COM) Because of it's specialization in geospatial information, GIS can make issues such as which areas are the most impacted as well as how wide of an area is impacted by a natural hazard or disaster much easier to identify. By identifying areas of potential affect geographically it can make first responders jobs much more efficient and possibly easier especially when lives are at stake. In the event of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill GIS is playing a major role in staging areas for incident command posts, boom deployment, environmentally sensitive land, as well as help in forecasting potential landing areas of oil for on shore and offshore clean up. Not only can GIS be used to help disaster response agencies such as NOAA, EPA, USGS, etc... but volunteers such as Waterkeepers know where they are needed the most with the production of specialized maps of general areas. GIS is essentially the ultimate technology for prioritizing in emergency response during a major disaster such as we face with today's man made catastrophe.

Here is a link to my oil spill animation from April 29th to May 26th, 2010. You must have the latest version of Window's Media Player to view the avi. file. Oil Spill Animation

I found that I could not get the layers to open one by one in a new grouped layer so I just added them one by one as usual therefore opening the background along with the oil data. There is also the issue with a flutter everytime it opens in WMP for the first time. Cool option though and could be very useful in a Power Point presentation.

Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

In this exercise I created two maps for the Garcon Point area of the Florida coast. The first showing environmentally sensitive land areas and wildlife which could be most impacted by the encroaching oil spill. As you can see much of the land around Garcon Point is important esturine or marshland that would be adversely impacted by the oil. Wildlife was not as abundant with the White-Tailed Deer being the only species to show up, although I do suspect there are many other species of wildlife that would be heavily impacted, especially marine life near and within the marsh. The second map shows boom operations and depicts the length of boom either in place or proposed around the Garcon Point area. The socioeconomic impact shown on this map was minimal but I am sure that is a matter of opinion.
This exercise was both interesting and challenging considering the direct impact this disaster is having on most of our lives at the moment. Once I got the projection problem worked out the rest was just a matter of designing the layouts. It was also the first time I had imported GIS into Google Earth which turns out to be very simple.

Week 3: Hurricanes

On October 19, 1995 Hurricane Wilma came ashore along the Southwestern coast of Florida bringing along with it Category 3 winds and a massive storm surge. In Key West, Florida most of the damage from Wilma was caused by the storm surge on the morning after the storm. Almost 90 percent of Key West was under at least 3 feet of water damaging near 60 percent of all homes and tens of thousands of vehicles on the island. Hurricane Wilma's storm surge came with waves as high as 8 feet and with the peak elevation of Key West being a little over 12 feet trouble ensued. The following map depicts the elevation and bathymetry of Key West.



As the above image suggests, the eastern end of the island is the most vulnerable to flooding in the event of a Hurricane. There is also the issue with the majority of the island being developed for either business, residential, or transportation reasons (70%). As the graphic below shows the developed areas of Key West were hit the hardest spiking the number of insurance claims made during the aftermath of Hurricane Wilma.



Infrastructure and health facilities on the island were also heavily damaged by the flooding on Novemeber 19, 2005. Two hospitals located on the western side of Key West were damaged during the storm surge event disrupting essentials like gas and electricity from generators, communications from down cell towers and utilities, and potable water and sewage disposal. Infrastructure such as highways, airports, and bridges were directly affected by the flood and could not be used, making the recovery response almost impossible during the first few hours and days after the storm. To make matters worse, Key West International Airport is located in one of the lowest lying areas on the island and has the potential to flood frequently in the event of a tropical system. This would make the major roads on the island first priority when considering which elements to restore. Interstates and Highways can be built above ground to help with the potential destruction from storm surge.
Both the hospitals and schools are clustered around the western portion of the island and should be less likely to stay flooded once a storm passes. Because the health care facilities on the island are limited they should be given first priority in terms of building restoration, then schools. Even though they are important to some people for mental and emotional support, churches can be given a low priority and restored once the infrastructure is back to normal.


In summary, the distribution of the flooded areas appears to be the heaviest on the eastern portion of the island where a lot of open water areas are located. The rest of the island is heavily developed and with the exception of a small area on the western end flooded as well. Considering that nearly 90% of the island flooded during only an 8 ft. storm surge, the long-term sustainability of the region is not good. Around 60% of homes flooded and thousands of vehicles were damaged assuring that all residents and business owners on the island should be required to own supplemental flood insurance. In the eventuality of another major hurricane hitting Key West the best plan is to evacuate all non-essential citizens and vehicles and stage relief and restoration efforts on the western end of the island to insure a quicker response to the most heavily flooded areas on the eastern end of Key West.

Project Response from the Author:
This project was extremely time consuming for me thought it seems that it should not have been. I constantly had problems with my outputs even though I organized my directories and environments exactly like the directions said. For some reason the elevation raster would not work during a math conversion then once I got that to work the land-cover raster would do the same thing. It was very frustrating and I had to find alternative ways to get to my outputs so if the numbers are different from what they should be this is why. The original elevation raster showed more than just Key West and when I converted it to feet it dropped the other data and just projected Key West which is what I went with for the calculations and final layouts for deliverables 2-5. All and all I learned a lot about why you would want to keep a process summary or notes and stay organized while creating a GIS project. It also helped me fine tune some little details about labeling and symbols that I had not been able to do in the previous class. Bring on the oil spill!