Shipping Lanes Across the Globe

This interactive map shows how our "stuff" gets moved around the world by shipping containers. It may take a few seconds longer to load on a mobile device due to the complexity of the map. Be sure to check out the build up of ships at the Panama Canal, Suez Canal, Gibraltar, Singapore, and Malaysia. These trade routes are critical to global commerce and makes you think about what would happen if one was threatened or closed off. I blogged about a situation like this last year with the build up of ice on the Great Lakes of the United States. US and Canadian vessels had to clear lanes so that container ships could continue on with their goods.

Source: Kiln and the UCL Energy Institute (UCL EI)
Link: Ship Map

Building a Routing or Road Network from a Road Layer

Do you know where this is?

I route school buses using GIS for a school district in Utah. Over the last year I have been using public road data as a source for our routing network. The process of converting the road layer to a routing network took a couple weeks but has saved us from buying the data privately. Public data isn't perfect and I have had to fix numerous errors but I have sent those fixes to the source (AGRC) which will build a more accurate dataset for everyone. I wrote step by step instructions on how to create a routing or road network from AGRC road centerline data and it was recently published on a blog post on their website. If you have any questions please let me know!



Source: AGRC
Links: AGRC Blog Post, Instructions (PDF)

Lidar Massachusetts

I have created several more Lidar maps but this time they are all based in Massachusetts. The Lidar data itself was not as high resolution as the Utah data since they are a few years older but they are fun to look at. What a difference a few years make as newer sensors and methods are used. My favorites are probably the Boston Harbor Islands and Provincetown maps. Enjoy!

If you would like to know more about LiDAR, click here

Sources: Mass GIS; NOAA

Lidar Utah

                                      

Salt Lake County Parcels

Salt Lake County, Utah
Parcels are symbolizing according to building age

Another quick project I did for fun. This shows younger buildings in dark and older buildings in light. Interesting to see how most of the county expanded from a central point, which is now downtown. Also you can see pockets of older communities that have expanded as well. Lots to learn from spatial relationships. 

Draping an image over a DEM or contours in ArcGIS ArcScene

If you have a DEM (Digital Elevation Model) or elevation contours for a region you can create a 3D image if you have also have some aerial imagery for that same area. If you are creating any models within the state of Utah they have an excellent data portal with loads of data for free (http://gis.utah.gov/).
You must have some sort of GIS in order to be able to process it. I will explain how to do it in ArcScene since that one is probably the most popular, though it is possible with some other 3D open source software as well.

Contours
First you need to take your contour shapefile and convert that into a TIN.
ArcToolbox > 3D Analyst Tools > TIN Management Toolset > Create TIN Tool

 A TIN is a Triangulated Irregular Network you can read more about those HERE-, it is basically a simplified way to represent a surface in a GIS. Make sure that the area you are converting is relatively small, probably less than a few square miles. The TIN will take a lot of processing to create and to move around, so you will want to clip your area into small bite size pieces depending on your computer's processing power.
After you have your TIN and some imagery you can put the imagery to the same height as the TIN. To do that go to the imagery Properties > Base Heights > Now select 'Obtain Base Heights for layer from surface' and choose your TIN in the drop down.

DEM
using a DEM is much more simple, you can skip the TIN step since the DEM is already a surface model.
Go to your imagery Properties > Base Heights > Now select 'Obtain Base Heights for layer from surface' and choose your DEM in the drop down.

It will lower the resolution of your imagery, but your end result will be a 3D model with imagery 'draped' over it, not unlike what you see nowadays in most major cities in Google Maps.