Chris Stephenson UWF GIS Blog

 This week's lab was about identifying different types of land use. Identifying features in different areas allows you to determine what the land is used for. We utilized a small section of Pascagoula, Mississippi to start identifying the different land use codes. This area was mostly residential, but there were pockets of business, services, industry, as well as transportation. I have vast experience in identifying these features from my prior experiences as a GEOINT analyst in the Air Force. I was a Collateral Damage Estimation Subject Matter Expert. In the CDE process, our main goal was to identify all structures around a target location to minimize risk to the civilian population. I became pretty good at identifying locations based on shape, size, and attributes on and around the structures.

      Module one was a simple introduction to GIS tradecraft, identifying features, as well as annotating features. I thought this was a simple and well developed introduction. I have a lot of experience when it comes to imagery analysis. I have 12 years of experience as a Geospatial Intelligence Analysis in the Air Force, so this was pretty simple. However, it was a flashback on some of my favorite things to do while I was serving. I especially liked learning how to do this in ArcGIS Pro for the first time.     The image above annotates Pensacola Beach in 1970. I identified the hotel and the beach recreation and park area. The hotel can be identified with the pool in between the symmetrical buildings with parking areas just outside the those buildings. There is also an admin building in the drive. The beach recreation area, most likely filled with a couple restaurants, possible go-cart track (covered in sand) as well as a mini golf course(also covered in sand)....

 Link to StoryMap: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/8b0a9515344d47a1a4433178988ca529  This week was the final project for GIS5050. To be honest, I flopped with this project. I waited until the last minute and provided a sloppy product. If I could redo the project, I would not create map layouts within ArcGIS Pro, but I would have created a web map to flow with the storyboard. As for the class, I believe the class is well-organized and has a great balance. The skills we derived in each module were directly applicable to the final project and will help us retain those skills for further coursework. I have had the opportunity to practice this tradecraft for almost 13 years now, and this is the best intro course I have taken. Like I said before, I managed my time poorly and could have improved upon my skills, which doesn't give credit to this course. 

This week's lab dealt with georeferencing imagery to align with objects on a coordinate plane. I had fun with this lab, it brought me back to my early days in the USAF when I learned how to do this in SoCET GXP. Let me say, it is much easier in ArcPro. This process was done with the Georeferencing tool (go figure!) and starts with fitting the unreferenced image into the frame where we are trying to align it. You then select reference point and align it with unreferenced point and the tool helps start the alignment. After selecting multiple points in different areas of the image, the tool starts to align the referenced and unreferenced areas.