Community GIS Applications

1. An enhanced scavenger hunt of physical and cultural attributes of Tucson

The game at http://www.pimaxpress.com/gisday/ will be converted to ARC/IMS so we can do more interactive spatial activities with it. It will be enhanced with more sites, and we will build panoramas for all the sites. Behind those panoramas we can hot-link to other information about the site. We can also add more spatial queries to the game, like buffering to find multiple sites, and routing between the sites.

GIS skills acquired: finding locations, distance mapping and routing, buffering

2. Neighborhood Sustainability/Asset Mapping,

This project will be centered on building "desireablity" quotients for different neighborhoods in Tucson, based upon a reduced stress model, and other themes. Students will learn how models work, and will be permitted to adjust the coefficients in this model. They will be asked to offer suggestions for improving the neighborhood, including rerouting traffic, reducing crime, and proposing beautification projects. The latter can include actions that will raise ethnic pride or document cultural histories of certain areas. The decision making will be based on spatial analysis, for example, determining that an open space needs to be created in an area of great density.

Targeted neighborhoods will be downtown, West University and Santa Rosa. We will build panoramas for these, and virtual walk-throughs and fly-throughs using 3D models. The latter will be generated from othrophotos. Below this report is an example of a 6" resolution ortho of Sacramento, from the Eastman Kodak collection.

We will need partners like Eastman Kodak and Oracle on this project, to provide data, or help us integrate data from each of the project players. For example, at the University, work has begun on a plant image database that can be used with the panoramas. Users click on a plant in the panorama, get a better image, instructions about care, etc. (for example, The Eucalyptus in Panorama 11 at http://ag.arizona.edu/agnet/cte/panoramas/, which is the biggest tree in Tucson, could have a link to a plant image database, with information on eucalyptus, and the ability to do queries on similar plants, and so forth.)

In this project, we can ask the students to collect data, especially photography. It should be a project that is exportable to other neighborhoods of Tucson.

GIS skills acquired: acquiring data, inventory, overlay, integrating GIS with other databases, image acquisition and manipulation, 3D, visualization

3. Using models to address complex real world issues

The examples above teach the value of building spatial models and manipulating them for specific tasks. We also want to teach users how to accomplish complex tasks with multiple variables involved. Here are some of the models we will be working with:

• Neighborhood stress model
• City green cost benefit of tree planting
• Detecting and treating hot spots in park for more efficient watering
• Wildcat dumping/flood control detection and control

GIS skills acquired: complex modeling

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Last update: Monday, 06-Oct-2003 13:23:04 MST