GIS at the BETT 2007 in London

Getting started with GIS

The Spatially Speaking Project

What is GIS?

Why use GIS?

3 techniques for GIS

Get maps

Make maps

Enquiry using a GIS

www.geography.org.uk/projects/spatiallyspeaking

The Spatially Speaking Project

What is GIS?

Why use GIS?

Get maps

Make maps

Enquiry using a GIS

Why use GIS?

Maps of the locations of earthquake shaking hazards are essential to creating and updating building codes used in the United States. Online, interactive earthquake maps, as well as seismicity and fault data, are available at earthquake.usgs.gov .

This map shows the number of children under 18 per clinically active pediatrician for a particular study area. It was created by the Center for the Evaluative Clinical Sciences at Dartmouth Medical School as part of an effort to develop a national U.S. database of primary care resources and health services.

3 techniques for GIS 1. Get maps

http://local.live.com

www.worldmapper.org

Population 65+ Population density Annual precipitation relief

3 techniques for GIS 2. Make sketch maps & virtual field trips

Back to map

http://www.swisseduc.ch/glaciers/morteratsch/virtual/index-en.html

3 techniques for GIS 3. Enquiry using a GIS

http://mapzone.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/giszone/ GIS zone

Using the Surrey CC interactive GIS

Pupil Task: Use GI to investigate the pressures upon an AONB. Produce annotated images using your own maps

Surrey CC GIS

Exemplar pupils work:

The Surrey Hills AONB may be under threat, and there may be landuse conflict in the Godalming & Guildford area, where the AONB appears to be ‘squeezed’ by urban development Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty

key This area shows high population density, adjacent to the AONB

Zooming in to this area, it is clear that there is a sprawling residential area here, the road pattern looks recent, and there is probably pressure to develop more housing in the area. These roads may be very busy, being close to a high population density, threatening the air, noise, visual pollution and safety for locals This area may be at greatest risk of development, as it is not designated AONB, but perhaps being a floodplain prevents development?

Weekday average 678 vehicles I have added the traffic survey layer and investigated the information at two points. This shows that this road is quite busy for a minor road, averaging a vehicle every two minutes, but point B shows that the main road is much more significant, averaging 8 cars a minute. Weekday average 11,135 vehicles A B

Getting rid of the layers (except the aerial photo) I can see that the AONB has mixed landuse with plenty of deciduous woodland, hedgerows, and small fields with a mix of crops, suggesting it is well managed for ecological diversity The contrast with the suburban area’s ecology is clear I have marked on the AONB boundary myself in blue

Going to the OS 1:25,000 map (by removing the aerial layer) helps to clarify landuse This is an administrative boundary line

Plan a ‘Farnham 10K’ fun run using GI for accurate distance and to manage for safety and attraction to runners & spectators Annotate to show your thinking

6.5 km steep hill climb 9km final 1 km loop, exciting for spectators Path goes under dual carriageway, safe for runners Scenic route through forest start Finish; town centre traffic closed

Route is a mix of urban and rural

Using England & Wales census data http://www.statistics.gov.uk/census2001/censusmaps/index_new.html

Pupil task: Is quality of life higher in urban or rural areas?

Use GI to investigate the relationships between urbanisation and development choose five measures of development

Present your findings through annotated maps

Pupils work:

Health appears to be generally worse in urban areas, with some exceptions, such as the extreme SW & NW…the core periphery effect

A similar pattern appears for car ownership…

And unemployment

But there are longer hours worked in some rural areas…farmers?

But urban areas are culturally richer, more diverse.

But is the pattern changing? Movement out of the urban areas is blurring the boundaries of rural and urban. Once rural areas are increasingly, sub-urbanised.

However, the distinction between rural and urban is getting blurred, some regions are becoming ‘suburbanised’

Some possible objectives/ activities with simple GIS

Explore a place

Plan and measure a route

Understand the idea of layers in a GIS a map key

Learn locations

Investigate a transect

decision making exercise or an enquiry

Understand weather patterns

Make choropleth maps to solve problems

Input your own data from field work

Make a virtual field trip

Use proportional area maps

Beware , some of these viewers, require a simple piece of viewing software to be downloaded (usually taking about 20 seconds) and once loaded will stay on your computer/ computer network. But schools IT often block you from doing this…speak to your IT technician and get them to check the viewers work or make them work. There is no good reason why they cannot do this for you.

Beware , all pupils using the same web site at once…it may make it go too slowly. If this is the case speak to your IT technician, there are ways of ‘caching’ internet data so it works quickly across a network, or start off using a whole class activity through the one computer and your IWB.