Tuesday, October 16, 2012

geo7-assignment3


在较大的地图中查看Around the World in Eighty Days
[Please check it in larger format so that you can get a better view of it. This is a map that shows the route of Phileas Fogg's travel in Around the World in Eighty Days, the fiction novel of Jules Verne. He travelled from London and around the world in 80 days. The map shows the way he travelled and time he spent on each trip. The map also shows how the places he visited looked like in 1870s.

A video was attached to the spot of London. Please check it in larger format.]

Neogeography topic:




Neogeography uses many technologies that make maps visually attractive and make searching process fun, thus it enables a wider audience to use maps easily. And it also encourages people to set up their own maps so that it captures people’s spatial senses and geographic imagination.

It’s fully possible in the future when maps can be something like Wikipedia that lets ordinary people to edit the most-viewed information online, and tons of contents like videos, pictures, URLs can be added to the maps so that people can get a better understanding of the places they’re interested in.

However, nowadays more and more information available is created by ordinary people rather than professionals, and databases are built from so-called “folksonomy” rather than scientific “taxonomy”; these phenomena may lead to misleading and confusions to users who are not wary to choose maps. It’s hard for ordinary people to take some key geographic concepts like coordination and projection into consideration when making maps and that may result in inaccuracy of the data and questionable interpretations.

So like many other technologies, Neogeography can be both good and bad, that depends on how people use it.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

assignment for lab2


1. Beverly Hills quadrangle

2. Canoga Park, Van Nuys, Burbank, Topanga, Hollywood, Venice, Inglewood.

3. The year of 1995.

4. National geodetic vertical datum of 1929; NAD27; NAD83;

5. fractional scale: 1:24000; bar scale:






6. a) 1200 meters.

b) 1.89 miles.

c) 2.64 inches.

d) 12.5 centimeters.

7. 20 feet.

8. a) -118026’15’’W, 34004’30’’ N     -118.43750W, 34.0750N

b) -118033’00’’ W, 34000’27’’ N      -118.550W, 34.00750N

c) -118024’03’’W, 34007’06’’N       -118.4008330W, 34.1183330N


9. a) 560 feet     170.688 meters.

b) 140 feet     42.67 meters.

c) It covers an area from 620feet to 860feet. (from 188.976meters to 262.128 meters)

10. Zone 11.

11. 372000mE, 3763000mN (UTM easting 372000, UTM northing 3763000)


12. 1000,000 square meters.

13. 












14. 14 degrees.

15. from North to South, and from East to West.

16. 



Tuesday, October 2, 2012

assignment for Lab 1

a) Source: Beijing Subway official website, http://www.bjsubway.com/

b) This is a Road Map of Beijing Subway Lines in 2009. There were 9 lines at the time and they connected major spots in Beijing.

c) I find this map interesting because I think this subway map is a good reflection of basic formation of Beijing city and clearly shows the square formation of the city. Modern Beijing city started to develop around Forbidden City, a square royal city at the heart of Beijing. And all the major roads in Beijing were built in this square format, which leads to the final Square-like city. Because Beijing has limited resources for subway-building, all the places on the subway lines are very important spots that can be considered as representatives of Beijing, so subway map of Beijing is a good reflection of Beijing city formation.


a) Source: http://projects.latimes.com/homicide/map/, Los Angeles Times, 2007

b) This is a map view visualizing crime incidents in Los Angeles County.

c) I find this map interesting because this map has several layers and contains lots of information, yet all the information is well organized thus enables us to analyze the traits and causes of homicide crimes in Los Angeles. We can see from the crime map that the "cause" layer clearly shows that deaths caused by gunshot occupy a large proportion of all the homicide crimes, and the "race" layer shows Hispanic and Black people are major victims for homicide crimes. And there's also information not showed by these layers, for example, we can judge from the density of the "cause" layer marks that the crime rate varies tremendously in different areas. I think this "crime map" can be used in real life to help analyze and prevent crimes.


a) Source: Item 1250826 on AllPoster.com.au. Link: http://www.allposters.com.au/-sp/Ancient-Civilizations-Map-Timeline-posters_i1250826_.htm

b) This is a map of Ancient Civilizations and Timeline.

c) I find this map interesting because it turns out that one single map can be used to visualize changes in a long period of time. We usually think that in order to show a series of variations on a timeline we need to use a series of pictures, but actually we can do it smartly in just one map using different colors and legends which illustrate the meanings of colors. So maps can be very powerful to show and analyze changes taking place in a long period of time.