Fun with Cholera!
This post looks at how data can be symbolised in different ways to make for more effective communication using data from John Snow’s mapping of the cholera outbreak in Soho. Well there’s nothing fun about cholera, really. But there are some important lessons we’ve learned about spatial thinking from cholera, particularly with an outbreak in […]
Cholera, Spatial Thinking and John Snow: Soho 1854
A particularly bad outbreak of cholera in Soho in 1854 led one man to identify contaminated water as the mode of transmission and apply one of the most famous instances of spatial thinking. At a time when the fledgling Canterbury colony was getting itself sorted out, the London of 1854 was a stinking, festering hell-hole. Growing from the tiny […]
Getting Consistent Symbology with Layer Files
This post covers how you can get consistent symbology across several layers using layer files. So the good people in ERST310/607 have been doing some fun analysis lately (though they may disagree), getting some high-resolution elevation models from LiDAR data (more to follow on that topic). Using three separate datasets, they’re creating DEMs for three […]
Opening Up Open Street Map
This post gives some background on Open Street Map, an open source, crowd sourced alternative to Google Maps. We also cover how data can be downloaded and used for analysis. A key aspect of our postgrad GIS courses is an independent project, where students formulate their own projects to ensure they develop some analysis skills in […]
GIS in Action – Crowd Sourced Mapping of Earthquake Impacts in Nepal
This post looks at how GIS is being used in a crowd sourcing way to respond to humanitarian needs around the world. Recent event in Nepal have been eerily familiar – many of will know what it’s like living in the shadow of aftershocks and the long road ahead. There are lots of ways we […]
Home on the Range
In this post we’ll cover the ins and outs of creating home ranges for animals based on point locations. This was mainly written as a tutorial for Ecology students but by all means, feel free to have a go. In animal ecology there’s an important concept around home ranges for animals, which could be thought […]
Spatial Aspects of Gallipoli – the Landings at Anzac Cove
This is the second of two posts on Gallipoli. The first set the scene for the landings at Anzac Cove on 25 April 1915. In this post, the spatial aspects of the landing are covered in more detail. Warning: the account here may differ from a traditional telling of the event. In part 1 of […]
Spatial Aspects of Gallipoli – The Big Picture
This is the first of two posts related to the Gallipoli Campaign. In this one we’ll talk about the importance of Gallipoli in World War One while the second will look at the ANZAC beach landing. I’m no war buff – far from it. But there are a few military events that have really captured […]
3D Symbols in your 3D Visualisations
This post covers how to insert 3D symbols into an ArcGlobe scene. So you’re doing some analysis of the best place to put a windfarm and would like to really wow your client (or lecturer…) with some 3D visulisations. We’ve probably all seen the kinds of point symbols that we might put on a 2D […]
Sticking to the (Python) Script
In this post, we’ll go over how you can use a Python script to get ArcGIS to do something it doesn’t currently do. This post comes courtesy of the suffering of a postgrad (like most things in the academic world.) As part of a class project, the postgrad in question, Daniel, wanted to do […]
