Cal Poly Basemap Project 2020
Introduction
The Cal Poly Basemap 2020 Team wanted to create more visual appealing map for Cal Poly. Our goal was to use ESRI's Community Maps Editor App to add more details to Cal Poly Basemap to highlight changes and uniqueness on campus.
What is the ESRI Topographic Basemap?
It is an alternative to Google Maps.
The Esri Topographic Basemap is composed of commercial sources and community contributions. It is often used as a reference map for visual representation.
Area of Interest(AOI) Assigned to Each Team Member
ESRI Community Maps Editor
The Community Map Editor allows public user to to add rich, detailed features to the map to highlight what makes that place special or important to the community. We used this application to enrich the Cal Poly campus basemap. Two workflows were applied: digitizing features by hand using satellite imagery as reference and submitting data files from other Arc services or CAD files directly through Contributor App .
STEP 1: Editing Hardscape
The first phase of the project was to update the existing hardscape in each team member's specific area. Sidewalks and walkways are considered hardscape features.
These buildings have been digitized so that walkways and lawn features can snap to their edges. This is also a view of what the Community Editor App interface looks like.
Here is an example of some walkways that were digitized using Community Editor
In this photo you can see that some of the walkways are overlapping the sections of lawn. This is because the lawn was a preexisting feature in the old base map. When new features are added to the map they do not recognize the borders of preexisting features, so it is necessary to also digitize elements that were already in the map.
Here are the same buildings, but with new features snapped to their edges.
Once the preexisting features were digitized, new features can be snapped directly to their edges to create a much cleaner look.
STEP 2: Editing Landscape
STEP 3: Converting Computer Aided Design (CAD) Files
Cal Poly Basemap 2020 Demo
Conclusions
How Important is Digitizing?
Learning how to digitize is one of the first skills you learn in GIS. Digitizing is simply the process of tracing, in a way that accurately represents the physical world, information from images and maps. We were able to use these simple digitizing skills on a web based platform where anyone can add and create their own features all around the world, which is an amazing experience in itself. In relevance to our project, it was a very important skill for it let us revamp the Cal Poly Basemap.
Whats next?
- Continue enriching features in the new dorm area
- Add bike racks feature: since there isn't an option for digitizing bike racks in the Community Editor App, this feature would have to be brought in as separate operational layers.
- Important Cal Poly Features: Arch Graveyard buildings and paths.
- Campus is constantly changing so keeping up with the new buildings, lawns and crosswalks is important.
"This project gives students a completely different experience from class assignments" -- Russ White
Cal Poly Basemap 2020 Team (From left to Right): Russ White, Everett Spackman, Camille Sanseverino, Olivia Hansel, Cici Xiao, Justin Tidd
We each gained a multitude of different skill sets from this experience, from community building, communication, trouble shooting, documentation of important steps, to digitizing, usage and integration of CAD layers, how to build a StoryMap, and getting comfortable with the ArcGIS Online and Community Editor App interfaces
