Austin, TX

This week, I did my project on Austin, Texas with a focus on the University of Texas at Austin because I'm deeply considering it as a destination for post-UWF next summer. I really enjoyed this project and how personal I could make GIS. It was very cool. The map on the left shows commuting distances to the school, and the map on the right is a general map of Austin including surrounding neighborhoods.

Week 6

This week, I found it challenging just dealing with eDesktop and ArcGIS itself. It wasn't so much the project. For whatever reason, both were going extremely slow. The project I found very interesting though, and I liked the application of GIS on such a small scale of just a couple.

Oil Participation Activity

I found the Oil Animation activity relatively simple. I definitely thought it was cool to see the final result.

GIS is crucial for identify critical areas effectively. GIS can demonstrate the damage caused by a natural disaster or project potential damage for an anticipated disaster. In this way, infrastructures can spend less time debating who should receive support and aid and more time actually getting assistance to the people. People can quickly get the resources that they need, especially medical attention. An example, found in the readings, describes a situation where interpreters would be necessary to go into an area after a natural disaster because the city is very diverse and the home of many languages. Utilizing GIS, it could be identified where different interpreters are needed to ensure the people have the information that they need.

GIS can help not only in the initial aftermath, but in the long term aftermath and the preparation for further disasters. After collecting data, GIS can be used to recognize areas that received critical damage and that could be improved to avoid severe damage upon another disaster. It can help leaders determine how to allocate funding and labor to rebuild infrastructures based on priority. It can also help to discover patterns in areas that all received similar levels of damage thus acknowledging a problem that not only can now be improved but would not have been seen otherwise.

Oil Spill

I was interested in this week's topic, but I found the assignment especially difficult. I continously got error messages. However, it was interesting to work on a project that relates so close to home.

Hurricanes