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.