MA Community College Proximity

For class this week, we were asked to use two different tools to find out what towns are within 20 miles of the 15 community colleges in Massachusetts. The two tools were the Euclidean Distance tool and the Network Analyst tool. The Euclidean Distance tool measures straight-line distances, so from one town to the college "as the crow flies." The Network Analyst tool measures distances by road networks. Each tool has its advantages/disadvantages. Perhaps you don't need to know the distance on the roads or you are looking at what colleges would be closest to your house where you would need to know the distance by road networks. It's all about what you need to know from the map.

As you can see below, there is a noticeable difference between the two tools.

Enjoy and stay posted for more soon!

Mt. Tom Wind Turbine Project

This week for class, we were asked to show what areas in Easthampton, Southampton, and Holyoke would be able to see a 400ft wind turbine placed on the highest peak of Mt. Tom. We were also asked to calculate the degrees of visibility - which areas would see 100% of the turbine, 75%, 50%, or 25%. On top of that, we also had to see which areas may be somewhat protected by the screening effect of trees - what areas were forested. Below is the poster that I created for this project.

I also created an ArcGIS Online web application to show this:


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And to top it all off, below is a Google Earth map to visualize the viewshed.

You can also click here to see the flowchart/report that I created for this project.

Straight-Line Distances

Good Wednesday evening, everyone! I seem to be a bit behind on posting recent class assignments but on Monday, the class was asked to calculate the straight-line distances from one point to several other points. This was accomplished using ArcGIS Desktop 10.1 and the Point Distance Tool. Simple enough, right? Using this tool, I was able to calculate the straight line distance from my house to several horse farms in Western Massachusetts.

Below is the map that I've created for this assignment.

I also created the same map with a grey background to better see the location of the points in Western Ma. You can choose which you find more appealing.

An important thing to keep in mind when looking at this map is that these are straight-line distances...that is, it is the distance "as the crow flies" as the saying goes. This is not the same as driving distance, which in reality is longer than a straight line distance. Nonetheless, I hope you enjoy it!!