Week 4: Tornadoes Tuscaloosa Tornado
There are several things to think about when working with a GIS.
What geographic area are you studying? In this case we are studying the tornado that hit Tuscaloosa Alabama.
What decision do you need to make? There are so many to ask. Where are the Shelters in Place, what is the size and magnitude of the tornado? Has there been loss of life, where are the hospitals and the emergency support groups like the police, firemen, and EMTs.
What information would help you make the decision? In a sense, everyone is a key stakeholder. In this case, the emergencyworkers were the most critical. Are there maps of the areas, pre and post tornado. Are there other weather coming to the area such as rain, and lightning? In the Joplin Tornado, a policeman died after being hit by lightning while assisting people in recovery.
Part I: Geodatabases
Summary Notes:
- Once I added the basic layers I swithched views from data to map
- Experimented with map scales and orientation until the area within the neat line came close to showing all the imagery, and the tornado path
- Decide to stay with standard (vs. landscape)
- Tinkered with colors… Acid green for the tornado path as an impact color
- Tornado Icon. Chose a large green dot for the tornadoes since the tornado Icon was too hard to see in this scene.
- Chose Red School (for the little red school house)
- Could easily see schools within the path: #34 Jamison Elementary, 44 Alberta Elementary, 55 University Place Elementary, 58Holy Cross Lutheran Child Development
- Made the map with and without converting to Geodatabase. For these few layers it was much easier at the start to complete it with creating the Geodatabase.
- Convert labels to annotations graphics to enable individual editing.
- Added inset for spatial context.
- Spent much time working on the map composition so it would tell the story I intended
- Changed the Road setting several times. Will improve it again for the next map
- Sort legend in terms of importance on the map
- Labeled Interstates and major roads.
- Added all essential map elements (north arrow, legend, map scale, etc)
- Exported map. Deliverable 1 done (at least for now) Most likely tweak it later as I think of ways to improve it.
Summary Notes:
- Throughout process I am highlighting and adding digital notes the TornadoesLab.pdf file to ensure which steps have been completed
- Created first map saved as deliverable 2a
- Added Buffer then saved as Deliverable 2b archived 2a
- Visual count as a sanity check for estimates later on
- Ran the MultiBuffer tool
- Once Multibuffer was complete, I measured the distances to ensure they were in fact, .5 miles and 1.0 miles of buffer
- Played with the layer organization, colors and transparencies until I got this right.
Deliverable 2: A map of the buffered areas around the tornado path. The map should include:
- Schools within the tornado path, 0.5 miles and 1.0 miles from the path.
- A population label on each census tract
- Roads impacted by the tornado path
Part III: Animation
Deliverable 3: Post the video as a web link to your blog including a brief description along with your summary. http://students.uwf.edu/avm6/Tornado3.avi
This took three tries. In the end I deleted everything and on the third try it worked like a charm
Part IV: Create a KMZ to view Tornadoes in Google Earth
Notes: This was interesting and has the potential to be VERY powerful as a community GIS. Anyone with a computer can logon and use this tool. They can add and/or use existing map products. It was fun to take a shape file, convert it to a .kmz and drop it into Google Earth and then put it into my class blog.
Deliverable 4: Post the kmz file as a web link to your blog including a brief description along with your summary.
Google Earth Tornado Path
Download Google Earth for PC, Mac, or Linux to use the GE Tornado Path link. If you are not so inclined then click this link for a Screen Grab of Tornado Path in Google Earth
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