GIS4035 Module 10: Supervised Classification

ERDAS Imagine was used to develop two different land use maps during this module, with the method of supervised classification being the focus of the exercises. In areas of interest (AOIs), polygons were drawn around representative pixels of different land uses or land covers, or a polygon was "grown" from a seed pixel to encompass a sample of a land use or land cover area. These samples ("signatures") were then used to classify the remainder of the area covered by the image. The classes were critiqued using histograms and Mean (statistically speaking) Plots, and additional signatures were gathered as needed. (That was the intent anyway. Initially I thought the classification was looking fairly decent after some adjustments, but then I noticed something fishy about the roads, including the acreage attributed to roads. Obviously there is some other feature lumped in with roads which needs to be evaluated further.) After the additional signatures were incorporated, the histograms and Mean Plots were used to critique the classification again. Bands 3, 4, and 5 had the least amount of overlap, and so various combinations of them were used to edit the signature colors before finally settling on R3, G4, B5 for the Germantown map shown below. The image was classified with this band combination, and a distance file was created. The purpose of the distance file was to highlight specific areas which might have been misclassified. Similar classes were merged by the process of recoding, and areas were calculated.

Supervised Land Use Classification
Germantown, Maryland

GIS 4102 Module 10 - Creating Custom Tools

Learning about script tools this module was quite awesome. The use of parameters instead of hard-coded information as is used in stand-alone scripts provides so much flexibility and transferability of the script. Another advantage of script tools over stand-alone scripts is that message statements which are written to a progress dialog box and the Results window can be in a script tool. This allows the retrieval of results messages at a later time. Stand-alone script messages are printed to the interactive window and cannot be retrieved later. While the use of stand-alone scripts requires some knowledge of Python, the use of script tools does not require knowledge of Python. The script tool's dialog box is a convenient way for users to enter parameters with validation and error-checking included. The script tool window for this assignment is shown here:

Script Tool Window Showing Parameters Ready for Input

Even the creation of a script tool is relatively easy. After verifying that the stand-alone script forming the basis of the script tool works properly, a new script tool is added to a toolbox in ArcMap's Catalog. The new script tool is given a name, label, description, script file, and so on before parameters are added. After properties for each parameter are set, the original stand-alone script is edited to replace hard-coded filepaths or file names with the applicable parameters from the script tool. Print messages in the stand-alone script are replaced with message statements. This image shows the messages after running the tool for this assignment:

Resulting Messages from a Script Tool Which Clips
Several Layers to a Single Feature

Once the performance of the script tool has been confirmed, the script and toolbox containing the script tool can be zipped together into a folder. Voilà! It's ready to share with anyone else. Just for fun, I emailed the zipped file to myself and used it with some other data. Here's an image of Orange County, Florida, with roads and some other features clipped to the county line...another demonstration of the incredible functionality and adaptability of Python scripting:

Orange County, Florida, with Features Clipped Using Script Tool

GIS3015 Module 10 Lab: Flow Line Mapping

Mapping with flow lines provides a very simple graphic illustration of geographical movement of some phenomena. In this module a flow map was created to show the origins of and number of persons coming from other regions and obtaining legal permanent United States resident status. A choropleth map of the United States was created to show the percentage of immigrants to each of the fifty states. The graphic representations were based on fiscal year 2007 statistics obtained from the US Department of Homeland Security. Flow lines on flow maps must be hand drawn due to their individual and unique nature. Because of this, Adobe Illustrator was used exclusively to create the flow map.

preliminary sketch - horizontal

Far more than any other map created to date, this flow map took the most preparation to determine the best layout before even starting Adobe Illustrator. First in the process was sketching out two possibilities ~ a horizontal format and a vertical format, each one showing the location of the continents with flow line placement, location of the choropleth map and the legend. For each map a list of pros and cons was also created. The horizontal format allowed plenty of room to place the US in the center with the regions placed around the US with large flow lines directed to it. The horizontal layout seemed less busy, was very clear, and required shorter flow lines. The cons of the horizontal layout were that the regions were not viewed in their normal relationships to each other, and the map was very US-centric giving the impression that the US is of greater importance than the rest of the world. Although the purpose and focus of the map is to show immigration to the US from all other regions, the US-centric format was rejected eventually. On the other hand, the vertical format kept the US and the other regions of the world in their proper relationships, and the US was kept at the same scale as the other countries. 

preliminary sketch - vertical

Negative aspects of this format were that the flow line showing immigration from other parts of North America to the US was split and had to be joined near the arrowhead, and either the South American flow line had to cross the flow line coming from the region of Mexico/Central America or it would have to be placed in the already congested area of the east coast. That would be dealt with later, as this still seemed like the better layout choice.

The next step in the flow map-making process was to print out a preliminary layout for a working sketch. This involved placing the world map and choropleth map in an AI document and printing it out.

working sketch

Questions, notes, ideas, RGB colors for matching purposes, additions/deletions, and information that came up in discussion board postings as well as the flow lines were marked on this map or the initial hand-drawn sketch. This provided a way to keep all the necessary information and lab requirements organized and to minimize the possibility of leaving information out unintentionally. It was also a way to think out different ways of presenting the information prior to committing to making changes in Illustrator. With flow lines sized proportionally and matching the regions by color, the resultant map provides an easy to interpret comparison of immigration from different regions of the world. For specific immigration numbers, viewers can consult the chart included in the map. Ideally this chart would have included the color and size of flow line attributed to each region, but time constraints and other obligations precluded that this time.

Persons Obtaining Legal Permanent
U.S. Resident Status (By Region of Birth, FY 2007)

Choropleth colors were chosen to match the color of North America in the flow map. Normally the bar scale for a map would be placed lower than the legend of the map, but in this particular case it was placed closer to the map for ease of use. The orange color scheme of the choropleth map and the legend along with the size of the rectangles in the legend attract one’s attention directly to the legend from the choropleth map, so it still appears to rank higher visually if not physically.

While some aspects of using AI are becoming familiar, there is so much more to learn. Creating the flow lines was extremely difficult with each one requiring several attempts. Applying some of the special effects to the flow lines changed either the color, length or position of the flow lines with the longer lines impacted more severely than shorter lines. Because of this, only drop shadow was applied to the lines, and that had to be adjusted where the lines come together at the east coast of the US. Some workarounds for the other issues may be discovered with more practice. Throughout this map-making exercise, numerous copies of the map were saved at different stages to provide backup in case a special effect could not be undone for some reason. This exercise exemplified the extensive capabilities of Adobe Illustrator for creating or enhancing maps.