GIS 4930: Special Topics; Project 4, Open Source Report

Welcome to the final post for the Special Topics in GIS course.  This last portion is dedicated to the report on Food Deserts that has culminated the last few weeks of preparation and analysis.  The overall objective for this project was to explore open source GIS software and web mapping applications to create a simple but custom web map to work in concert with standalone maps generated with other open source GIS software, specifically QGIS.

The culmination of the analysis results is presented in the fully narrated PowerPoint presentation linked below. Additionally, the independent web map, also linked below, is embedded into the presentation.

Central Brevard Food Desert PowerPoint Presentation


Central Brevard Food Desert Interactive Web Map


A brief overview: A food desert is an area in or around a city or urban center that is outside of 1 mile from a grocery store that doesn't offer fresh produce or other whole foods.  The lack of these fresh foods can lead to compounding health issues for those who might not have the means to travel farther to grocery stores with them and are stuck with local potentially unhealthy options. My project involved investigating the city of Rockledge, Florida for the presence of food deserts.  The data was investigated at the census tract level, looking at the population information from the 2010 census.  The center of the census tracts was evaluated to determine those outside of 1 mile from the grocery stores present.  These food deserts were then color coded by population distribution highlighting those most impacted.  The interactive web map supplements this information by allowing you to a better visual sense of the neighborhood distribution for the area in relation to the census tracts.

Overall, I've really enjoyed this course throughout the past semester.  I have learned a lot during the UWF GIS Certificate Program and I hope to use all of my newly found knowledge for whatever is yet to come.  I'm looking forward to becoming a Crime Analyst for a local police department at some point, and I'm excited about taking more classes to help me reach that goal.     

GIS 4930: Special Topics; Project 4: Open Source Analyze 2

This is a continuation of the analysis started last week, which focuses on open source GIS. This week's objectives are to tile shapefiles for internet usage, create a custom basemap with the use of Mapbox, and to utilize web mapping to communicate a subject. 

Last week you saw some analysis with pre-made subject matter for the Pensacola area of Escambia County, Florida.  Those datasets were already present and being manipulated to discover how to determine areas that are or are not food deserts.  These week is about taking my own acquired and generated datasets and feeding them through the processes of making an open source web map. The mediums for this are QGIS, Tilemill, and Mapbox.  Mapbox is the new addition to the processing and analysis portions of this week. Specifically tiled layers generated in Tilemill were uploaded to a base map in mapbox. 

You can click here to view the Web Map I created for this assignment. 

I decided to create a food desert map of my hometown of Rockledge, FL, which is located in Brevard County.  To start off, I created a KMZ file with all of the local grocery stores near me, which was created in Google Earth, which was later converted into a shapefile.  I took advantage of the Florida Counties shapefile that was provided for us during Prepare Week.  Utilizing ArcMap, I was able to clip Brevard County from the Florida County Boundaries shapefile, which provided me with my area of interest.  From there, I attempted to create a census layer within QGIS to display the variety of tracts throughout Brevard County.  After attempting this task numerous times, I was unable to get the attributes needed to complete the assignment.  I ended up downloading the 2010 census tracts from the Florida Geographic Data Library (FGDL).  With the newly downloaded census tracts, I was able to add the layer to my map in QGIS and clip it to my county.  I also created a Near.csv utilizing the Near tool in ArcMap.

There are not any trends that I can identify at this point.  I’ve lived in Brevard County for all 25 years of my life, and I did not know some of the areas displayed are food deserts. Of course, my focus was mainly on Rockledge, which resulted in me only creating a shapefile for grocery stores near, or within Rockledge, FL.  Even though that may contribute to the results shown in my webmap, I still think it’s a fairly accurate representation.  I think the main thing that surprises me about the data is how many people live in Brevard County.  I had no idea this was such a popular place to live.

GIS Internship: Portfolio Final

For our final assignment in the certificate program, we were tasked with creating either an online portfolio or a paper/PDF portfolio to present during an interview.  The portfolio would tell a little about us, containing our GIS specific resume, and provide some examples of our student or professional GIS work over the last year. 

I chose to create an online portfolio since I love everything related to GIS and Graphic Design. The online portfolio is an additional resource, along with my blog and Instagram account that people or organizations could review. I used Wix.com, a free website service that offers a variety of templates, to create my portfolio. The website was very easy to use and fairly intuitive for basic design. I was able to pull my map images from my blog and upload them into Wix. I also provided the appropriate links for each map that lead to the correct blog pages. These links are useful for anyone who may be viewing my portfolio so they can see a more detailed process that went into the creation of the maps provided. To view my final GIS portfolio, please click on the link below. 

Final GIS Portfolio