Technology these days allows us to find information quickly through the internet. This process is especially accessible since the boom in smart phones where the information is a few taps away. Not only can you find information quickly, some apps are now allowing you to collect data with GPS using a portable smart device. For this activity, ArcCollector was used to collect data around the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire campus. I chose to collect data about cars in a popular parking lot on campus, possibly to analyze if the spaces are meeting the needs of professors, staff, students, and guests at UW-Eau Claire.
Study Area
- Date: 23 November 2015, 3-4pm
- Location: The Davies Student Center and Phillips Science Hall parking lot located on the south side of the UW-Eau Claire's campus. Phillips Science Hall is an academic building that shares a parking lot with the Davies Student Center. This area has many professors, staff, students, and guests coming in all day.
- Conditions: Cloudy and windy, 41°F (according to the Accuweather.com App)
Creating the Geodatabase for Data Collection
In order to use ArcCollector out in the field, first it was necessary to set up a geodatabase to hold and organize the data.
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| Figure 1. Database properties an example showing how to enter domains |
When creating a geodatabase to analyze bird sightings and tree types, the tree type domain would appear as a field in the bird sightings and trees feature class.
In the next section, domain properties, the domain and field type, maximum and minimum values for the field can be applied. For field types short integer, long integer, float, double, text, and date can be selected. Depending on what the data in that domain field will be (i.e. a color, number, decimal, etc.) determines the field type. Float is used if decimal values are being entered.
Domain type is either range or coded values. Range is simple, for that field you would enter a maximum and a minimum value the data could be. The program will only allow you to enter values within the range, eliminating error. As for coded values you would enter a code and then describe it. For example, you could enter maple, birch, ash, pine as coded values for tree type with a description such as any type of maple and so on. Again it is important to specifically describe the coded values in case multiple people will be working on the project.
Feature Class in the Geodatabase
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| Figure 2. Feature class properties an example showing how to create fields |
In the Create New Feature Class menu, field type and data type are displayed. Enter field name without any spaces and select the data type (long integer, short integer, text, date, float, and double). All of the entries under field name will display in the feature class' attribute table. So, field name will be what is entered under domain name. Also, the data type in the feature class properties has to match the domain type from the domains from the geodatabase properties.
For example, tree type was selected for a domain and as a feature class field name would be treetype and in both situations would be a text data type.
Within the field properties section of the feature class window you can choose to allow null values, select the domain, and length of the field. When selecting the domain this must match your field type, as stated above. Take bird species as an example, if you created a field for the attribute table called "birdtype" the domain would be set as bird type from when you entered the domains for the geodatabase.
After completing all of the fields and information necessary for the attribute table your feature class is ready to be added to the map.
Practice Creating Geodatabase and Feature Classes for data collection
For this assignment we explored creating a geodatabase and feature classes for data collection as a class. We focused on trees and bird sightings on the UW-Eau Claire Campus. The domains included tree type, DBH (diameter at breast height), height, date, temperature, bird species, gender, and identifiable characteristics.
We created two feature classes to demonstrate that a domain can be displayed in more than one feature class. The trees feature class field names included treetype, DBH, height, date, and temperature and the birds feature class field names included birdspecies, gender, characteristics, date, and temperature. We selected these criteria to make our domains because we wanted to included different domain types within our feature classes.
Collecting UW-Eau Claire Campus Car Data
The next part of the assignment was to create our own geodatabase with the intent of collecting some sort of data on the UW-Eau Claire Campus. I choose to focus on cars in the Davies parking lot. As for domains I included car type, parking location, parking status, plate classification, date, time, and temperature.
Definitions of domain types
Car type: very basic description of the cars make (any type of Toyota, Mazda, ford, BMW, etc.)
Parking location: what parking classification was the stall in which the car was parked (S=student stall, F=faculty, G, visitor, or other)
Parking status: was the car parked correctly, it was not aligned in stall or in backwards
Plate Classification: MN, WI, MI, IA, IL or other
Next, in ArcMap I added a basemap and the cars feature class to the map. Following the directions from ESRI ( http://doc.arcgis.com/en/collector/) the cars map I created was published as a service and used ArcGIS Online to create a map to collect data. This site walks through each step from creating the geodatadase to collecting the data with ArcCollector.
Finally, I downloaded the ArcCollector App on my smartphone and loaded my cars map. In the field I stood in front of the car on the drivers side to be consistent with each entry. Forty-three points were gathered. ArcCollector prompted the whole data collection process. When adding a new point ArcCollector would automatically provide you with the options predetermined the domains of the geodatabase.
Metadata
Who: Morgan Freeburg
What: Collecting Data using ArcCollector
Where: UW-Eau Claire Davies Parking Lot
When: 23 November 2015
Why: To practice collecting data with a smart device and demonstrate ease of access to ArcCollectorDiscussion
First I choose the Davies Student Center Parking Lot because it is accessed by different commuters all day whether it's students, professors, other staff, and even guests. The Davies parking lot has many different sections of parking as well, student parking, faculty parking, etc. This is why I selected this area to see if the parking lot is meeting the needs of all commuters and what can be improved.
There are many aspects of this lab I would retry if given the chance starting with creating the geodatabase. I would have liked to included more of a variety of domain types in order to vary my data a bit. Text domains were the dominant type within this geodatabase. Additionally, I did not realize you could not delete a domain field, so I had two temperature fields in my attribute table.
As for type of car it was difficult to say with confidence that a certain car was a certain make (because I am not familiar with many). By default a lot of the data points fell under "any other type of car". The time field only allowed the date to be entered, and I already had a date field set up, so it was useless. Something more simple such as car color would have led to less confusion and more varied data.
Viewing the data points on the maps shows there are cars parked in the Phillips Hall yard. This obviously was not where they were located and a different base map should have been selected.
Collecting the data itself was simple and efficient, however, I was dissapointed in the absence a notes field while collecting data. When creating the geodatabase a notes domain was made for this reason. People were watching me go from car to car stopping at each one. One individual asked me if I was going to give her a ticket. It made me more cautious that people were skeptical, so I tried to work quickly. More points from different locations in the parking lot would have been more helpful than just a certain section of the parking lot.
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| Figure 3. Map from ArcGIS Online, data collected using ArcCollector of the cars of the Davies parking lot of the UW-Eau Claire Campus |
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| Figure 4. A sample from the table displayed on ArcGIS Online, used in the field to collect data with ArcCollector |
Conclusion
The use of ArcCollector is incredibly useful in being able to access a dataset instantly, however, it was impossible to change the attribute table in the field. This could possibly give rise to frustration without anticipating certain fields essential for the study subject. If done correctly ArcCollector can streamline the process of collecting data and make it more efficient.
