Andrea Reid

As an ecologist with experience working across many different environments on three different continents, I have always been fascinated by the geography around me.

I have worked 'on the ground' in Canada, Ecuador, Switzerland, and Spain, collecting the data necessary for understanding patterns and processes in the natural world. I have also worked in the lab, designing and implementing methods to help answer ecological questions using molecular tools.

Now, equipped with a new skillset acquired from the GIS Applications Specialist program at Fleming College, I am excited to be able to use state of the art GIS technology to explore the world from above!

Creating dashboards in ArcGIS Online is both easy and fun. The app provides multiple options for describing your data and excellent cartographic suggestions for an effective display. For the creation of this dashboard, COVID-19 case count was geocoded using neighbourhood data from the City of Toronto. Linear referencing was then used to assess COVID-19 case loads along Toronto TTC routes using ArcGIS Desktop 10.7.1.

The ArcGIS API for Javascript is a super flexible tool for creating custom web maps. In the example below (created for our Web GIS Development course), I followed a tutorial for querying a feature layer from the ArcGIS Developers site, modifying the code to fit my data and 'wrapping' the application in HTML and CSS. And voila, an educational web tool for learning about Canada's provinces and territories! Esri's Developer's site is full of useful tutorials for using their APIs to customize web map creations.

A major part of the Fleming program is the Collaborative GIS Project which has students partner up with an external Client to work on a 'real-world' GIS problem. We worked on a web application for the City of Peterborough that shows the solar potential of buildings in the city. Visit our project website to learn about the scope of the project, including a link to the web application itself.

With the increased accessibility of satellite imagery, aerial photographs, and lidar datasets, remote sensing tools are reshaping industries across all sectors. We spent quite a lot of time working with pixel imagery in PCI Geomatica and running object level analyses in Trimble eCognition. Below are just a couple examples of what we covered.

Image Below: An orthorectified 1997 Colour Infrared (CIR) scanned aerial photograph (CIR-1997-0035-5282_R.pix) of the Milton area in Ontario (Standard False Colour Composite) centered on top of a 1999 Landsat TM image (True Colour Composite) and overlaid with Ontario Road Network (yellow line features). Orthorectification was done with PCI Geomatica's Orthoengine tool using a 2002 orthorectified image from the same area (Bands 1,2,3; leaf-off; 75cm resolution) as the reference image and underpinned with a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of the Milton area. Published camera specs were used to calibrate the camera parameters (e.g., focal length) and compute the Interior Orientation (IO). Image calibration was done using image fiducial points.

Using the USGS EarthExplorer database, we downloaded Landsat 8 imagery and a SRTM Global DEM to perform image enhancements. Specifically, we used PCI Geomatica tools (e.g., PANSHARP) to combine the 15m resolution panchromatic band with 30m resolution multi-spectral bands and underlaid this with the DEM. The resulting multi-spectral image is much sharper and richer than the original.

This is probably the absolute core functionality of GIS and the reason why most GIS software exists. The number of ways we can look at spatial data to understand patterns and processes are endless and start with solid data prep and QA/QC. In these examples, producing accurate input surfaces was key to analyzing the data. This included (1) the production of multiple cost surfaces to model a least cost path wolf corridor through Yellowstone National Park, and (2) rating and weighting criteria surfaces to be used an a GIS-MCDA approach to risk assessment. All analyses and cartographic outputs were done in ArcGIS Pro 2.7.

For our final project in Spatial Analysis II, we combined Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis with GIS tools to evaluate our chosen topics. I chose to look at Flood Risk areas along the Saint John River valley in New Brunswick to see if I could identify flood prone areas that are especially at risk due to high population and/or presence of buildings. Check out the poster below for more details on the analysis and results.

Environmental modeling is another core application of GIS and Esri is at the forefront in offering powerful algorithms and workflows that help accomplish fundamental modeling processes, such as hydrological modeling (e.g. using ArcHydro) and spatial interpolation. The DEM featured in the poster below was extracted from 20m interval contour lines using spatial interpolation methods in ArcGIS Pro 2.7.1. and visualized in 3D using ArcScene 10.7.1. This was a really fun exercise to be able to work in 3D across mountainous terrain. No vertical exaggeration necessary!

This poster is the culminating project for our introductory Geovisualization course and incorporates cartographic principles, such as colour theory and visual hierarchy. Using census data from Statistics Canada and peer reviewed provincial health statistics, the bivariate choropleth map depicted here is an effective method for visualizing trends between two variables. The map itself was created in ArcGIS Pro 2.7.1. and the poster was put together using Adobe Illustrator and MAPublisher.

This story map is an ongoing work in progress. I intend to document my progress through the GIS Applications Specialist program as a way to highlight what I've learned and demonstrate the many technical skills that this program helps foster. It is also a great way to become accustomed to StoryMaps, one of ESRI's many user-friendly and highly professional GIS web applications.

Stay tuned for more!