Week 10 - Deliverable 4

It's a shame the 3d image makes it looks like you couldn't draw a line from the edge of the stadium! When you see the movies, the agents just turn up and go in different directions and seem to know what they're doing - with this software ability, I can see that their work is already done for them!

Week 10 - Deliverable 3

My best work since...... yesterday. I didn't like the way the graph gave figures but didn't say what the units were so I stated them in the footer note. It's so hard for me to spell out meters as I'm so used to metre in England.

Week 10 - Deliverable 2

Couldn't think of any way to really jazz this map up but I did find a law enforcement badge in the ESRI Homeland Security symbol selector to use for the checkpoints. Makes all the difference.........

Week 10 - Deliverable 1

I realised that the 3 mile buffer related to the stadium but the stadium was one dot among many and in need of its own symbol, so I simply selected and exported the stadium and symbolized it. Labeling the hospitals broke the monotony of nothing but dots and circles too!

Week 9 - Deliverable 2

I chose to make a map for the 'exported image' required on this. Here, one layer of points of interest is enough to clutter the map significantly. I could have altered the size of each symbol to fit better but that would take a while and possibly affect future maps so I enlarged the area to fit the frame as much as possible and made do!

Week 9 - Deliverable 1

This basemap simply shows the extent of the BAUA area, the merged places polygon and the counties the BAUA affects. The only label necessary was the county name as the others are described in the legend. I made the sea area blue by coloring the background of the data frame but this also affects the land colors too. How do you make the map extent lay on top of the background color?

Week 8 - Deliverable 4

Times of crimes graph: I love the rainbow colors and the gradient shading of this graph but I did have annoying little problems with it. The hours in the legend are close to the numbers - does anyone know if there is a way to customize the legend beyond the wizard?
One problem I did solve however that may help YOU was this: the x-axis would have missing hour numbers - they appeared after I went back into properties and reselected Ascending and Apply a few times. Very strange.

Week 8 - Deliverable 3

Density Map: I really like this map because it is very simple to interpret and compare 3 different maps. By using the same scale for each data frame and the same symbology, only one legend and scale bar is necessary.

Week 8 - Deliverable 2

Police substations: I decided to include the buffers because I think it is relevant to the substation decision. I also included the graph but it clutters the map just a little. The Police Station crimes graph is color coded (with tongue in cheek!)to represent large numbers of crime (in red) to stations dealing with low numbers (in green). This is fine of course for quantitative data like this but doesn't represent the population of the surrounding area nor other factors for higher crime figures.

As the 3 highest stations were in a row in the south of the city, surely a fourth could be built nearby to share the load?

However, these 3 stations may have more personnel than the others to deal with them so the figures may mislead. Is this map lying?

Week 8 - Deliverable 1

Basemap: For the roads, I only included the top 2 major roads types. I couldn't quite see the point in including the census blocks. As for the graph, I don't know of any way to manipulate the graph to design the text and legend better other than the basic options in the wizard. If anyone knows, please share!

Week 6 - Deliverable 3

I changed the legend slightly to ensure that the highest 5 ranks had the same color symbol so that they could be compared, because I zoomed in a little making 2 colors redundant. I couldn't quite word the pros and cons the way I was thinking it but ultimately, if the clients respecify the criteria as in this case, then that dictates the result, doesn't it?

Week 6 - Deliverable 2

I decided to present the maps as seamless as possible, that is, appear to have the four maps integrate as one by not having a title in each frame and referencing each map with contrasting legend colors for easy identification and have one central legend.

Tip: Use only one scale bar for all four maps by setting the scale of each data frame to the same value then create a scale bar from any frame you like.

Week 5 - Deliverable 4

To create this map I did the following:

(1) Exported the image from the sxd to the Visual.mxd as a Jpeg.

(2) Created the legend as normal after changing the layers' symbology on the mxd to be the same as the ones from the sxd.

(3) Inserted the north arrow then rotated using Data Frame Tools toolbar to about 53 degrees.

I don't believe you can assign a scale to the map except possibly state a distance between the limits of the map feature.

Week 5 - Deliverable 2

Week 4 - Alternate Deliverable 2

I decided not to include the 1993 flood layer; only that part of the parcels affected by the flood. This does skew the stats a little given that the most expensive parcel is way more than the rest but is affected by only a very small area of its parcel.

Here's a Legendary tip: Stop wasting time fumbling around the legend properties - just whizz through the wizard and when done, right click the legend and "Convert to graphics". Use Group and Ungroup to enable each individual element of the legend to be messed with. Play with it for half an hour and you'll soon be an expert. I do all my legends this way! E-mail me for more details.

Week 4 - Alternate Deliverable 1

Move along, nothing to see here. Map is exactly as the exercise leads us except that I moved the scale bar into the box and shifted the north arrow a tad.

Week 3 - Deliverable 4

I liked this map because it is simple looking but demonstrates in appropriate detail the affected roads and hospitals. The health facilities seemed to be on the edge of the flooded areas and safe (but possibly stranded) except one in Jackson county. The highways and interstates were clearly affected.My major pain is never being able to label the major roads appropriately, however, since the highways and interstates are clearly and separately shown in the legend, I thought the message of the map was delivered, although actual road numbers are not shown.I used the Hospital symbol from the menu and chose a 3-d image from Buildings for the church but the effect doesn't really impress on this map because of the limitations on the size of the church symbol.

Week 3 - Deliverables 2 & 3

I didn't have any problems creating this map, again from precise instructions except that I couldn't work out how to manipulate the graph where the text was in the same font and size. The text labeling on the x-axis displays only 2 values - strange. It shouldn't matter though because the legend to the graph clarifies the colors.
I did not use symbols other than plain colors that contrasted each other as this time there was no conflict with underlying layers.
TIP: Island names obscuring the island detail? Easy fix:- Go to Layer Properties - Labels - Symbol - Properties - Y Offset and set to -13 then OK,OK,OK.

Week 3 - Deliverable 1

My first map was simple enough to create having followed the precise instructions, however, the challenge for me on this map was the colors and symbology. The intense blue gave the illusion of water but was not strictly true as it included low land. Symbolizing polygon layers would conflict with the elevation color - transparency would change the color too so I selected the marsh symbol that covers the blue; you can assume a low elevation (blue) for this anyway, right?
Also, it makes sense to color the rivers blue but this also conflicts - too bad! You can make out the different shade of blue for the rivers and for me no other color came close to showing the dramatic network of rivers - purple just didn't cut it.
Tip: use as much predefined symbology from the menus for features as possible - ESRI has a ton of them if you have the time to look them up!