April 18, 2019 Middlesex County, NJ won first place for ‘Best Cartographic Design’ at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Agency.  Erica Del Plato and Julia Gerdes worked hard to pull together a poster that represents the county initiative of re-branding and recreating all the county park and county open space trail user maps.

In January 2018, Middlesex County launched the Marketing and Re-branding Initiative, led by the County’s Office of Marketing. As part of this Initiative, the Office of Marketing created the Middlesex County Getaway Guide to attract people to the County, which would include maps of County Parks, Open Space, and County Golf Courses. In conjunction with the new re-branding guidelines, the Office of Marketing requested that County Parks, Open Space and Golf Courses be redesigned by the Division of GIS to fit the new re-branding strategy to be incorporated into the seasonal Getaway Guide.

To achieve this, the Division of GIS utilized the current data available, as well as newly acquired data that was not included in the first county parks map series. This also gave our Division the opportunity to update existing data that would be used for these maps. This is currently an ongoing project, with 10 maps completed and approximately 30 more maps to be redesigned. The timeline to complete this project is August 2019 so that the maps can be showcased at the Middlesex County Fair with the new re-branding initiative.

The first process was to analyze current and available data to determine what would be utilized in the creation of a new county park map series. It was necessary to know what maps and data would require updating, as well as fill in missing data gaps of our currently existing parks data. Road Centerlines, Park Boundaries, Water Bodies, Streams, and County Park Land boundaries were some of the currently existing data that was already existing and was utilized within these maps. Park Picnic Groves, Trails, Walking Paths, Park Fields, and Park Amenities were data points that also already existed but needed to be updated before including them in these maps. This opportunity allowed the GIS team to review currently existing data and fill in the missing data gaps.

Planimetrics is a newly acquired dataset with robust data that was also utilized in this map series. This data came from a digitizing campaign to map structural features in Level 1 LiDAR and 3-inch aerial imagery.  Such features include building footprints, sidewalks, stormwater facilities and more.  Also included in this map series dataset is the NJ State data that was needed to complete the maps; such as Land Use/Land Cover data to add Forest, Agriculture, and Wetlands to the maps. To create a textured relief, Hillshade derived from the Level 1 LiDAR, was also added to all the maps. After all the data was up to date, redesign of the maps could begin. All maps had to be consistent in color, texture, scale, symbology, branding and format. Once the redesign phase was complete, the Division of GIS collectively reviewed the map to discuss any changes and/or comments before the map was finalized.

Ultimately, all this diligent hard work resulted in a first-place achievement award granted by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection for ‘Best Cartographic Design’.  Acknowledgement from the NJDEP for the hard work of the Middlesex County GIS teams is validating and inspirational for the team to keep producing good GIS work.

Winning Poster for Best Cartographic Design at the NJDEP Mapping Contest 2019

https://philadelphiasafeschoolwalkingroutes.wordpress.com/2018/08/04/building-safe-school-walking-routes-with-network-analyst/

Have you ever wanted to create a 3D map, well WRLD has a free solution for you to use.  WRLD is a geospatial company that provides users the ability to create 3D maps through the use of their free API.  WRLD uses reputable sources for their geospatial data including OpenStreetMap, USGS, NASA and more. The first step towards creating 3D maps is to create a WRLD 3D account at https://www.wrld3d.com.  Once your account has been created and verified, you will then need to create an API key which is located under your account information.  Each user will have an unique API key that will be used by WRLD to track the amount of usage. The API key is free as long as you have less than 60,000 users / web views per month.  

In this example I used the Brackets text editor which is available for free to download at http://brackets.io.  Brackets is cross-platform and interactive with Leaflet which is an open source map based on Javascript, HTML and CSS.  Additional coding tips are available on the Leaflet tutorial site at https://leafletjs.com which includes tutorials and code snippets.  To begin, open up Brackets and copy the following code into brackets–see the # sign for a description of the line of code and line comments for a description of a block of code:

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
 <head>

<!–Copy and paste to reference WRLD’s 3D mapping–>
   https://cdn-webgl.wrld3d.com/wrldjs/dist/latest/wrld.js
   <link href=”https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/leaflet/1.0.1/leaflet.css” rel=”stylesheet” />
 </head>
 <body>     

<!–  Change height to match parameters of your website/screen    –>
//Insert your API Key below
     var map = L.Wrld.map(“map”, “Insert API Key Here”, {
       //The center point of the map
       center: [39.981358, -75.152776],
       zoom: 17//zoom level of map–set below 18 to see 3D detail
     });
// Name to be displayed when marker is clicked
var school = “Gladfelter Hall”;
//Location of marker. Latitude/Longitude can be found from Google Maps by right clicking and selecting what’s here?
var marker = L.marker([39.981358, -75.152776]).addTo(map).bindPopup(school);
 </div>
 </body>
</html>

    Make sure to save the file with the extension with .html within Brackets in order for it to work using your localhost.  Once connected to the live preview (volt button on top right), the maps will be seen below.  Also, you will be able to zoom in and out by “pinching.”  3D coverage is available throughout the world in major metropolitan areas and additional areas can be built for a fee from the WRLD company.

Gladfelter Hall in 3D

Temple University in 3D

Confession: I am terrible at keeping my own files. Really bad. Like a digital version of those houses you see on ‘Hoarders’. Yes, at work I can handle our naming systems and organizational structures, but navigating my personal computer is like navigating a maze. Its exhausting. As a result of this digital mess, I got into an unsustainable pattern of re-downloading files from the original internet source instead of finding the version I had already saved. You don’t want to know how many “2010_Census_Tracts_Phila.shp” are probably weighing my computer down right now. With that being said, here is how my poor computer is able to preserve its remaining disk space: Server connections and API links. Two terrible sounding phrases, no? No. They are not nearly as complicated as I once thought and I will prove it.
I was thrown into the world of GIS Servers as part of a project at work only a few months ago. Now I feel confident working with GIS Servers and have even started to prefer pulling API data rather than using old static shapefiles. Here is how to quickly bring in data stored on a GIS Server to enhance your project and ensure the most up-to-date accuracy:

1. In ArcCatalog go over to GIS Servers and click the first option Add ArcGIS Server. 
2. Then open the wizard and click Use GIS services.     
3. Ok, now here is the real deal: Server URL. If you are connecting to a school, work or personal server you most likely already have the URL. So that’s not really what I’m talking about. This is the step where you have to do some sleuthing. The situation this is the most useful in is when there is clearly GIS data behind a web map, but the file is not easily available to you to save and use as the end user. For example, I wanted to find some tax parcel data for a county in PA and was only able to access the web map by choosing a specific parcel and seeing it on the public facing side of the map:                                      
4. Open up Developer Tools in your browser and find the link to the server. Look through the Elements of the code until you see the src string. You will most likely have to click through several layers of elements. Typically it should have “…arcgis/rest/service” at the end of the address. As an example I have highlighted this below:   
5. Copy the beginning of the link: “http://websitename.gov/ArcGIS/rest/services” and paste into your browser.
6. Once you are into the ArcGIS REST Services Directory, you should click through to get to the Feature Server or Map Server you are trying to access. The services should be clearly labeled. If you plan on modifying the layer I recommend using the Feature Server instead of the Map Server. However, the Map Server maintains symbology when brought into Arc, so if you are not planning on editing it (just overlaying or using it as a base map) you can choose Map Server. I have highlighted both for the data I am interested in:     
7. Choose the layer by clicking through and then copy the URL in the browser. It should be the same as before, but with the added ending of “…/LayerName/FeatureServer”. For example: http://w04.co.delaware.pa.us/arcgis/rest/services/Parcels_Jan2018/FeatureServer
8. With the link to the feature you can now return to ArcMap and continue with the GIS Server wizard. When prompted by the wizard, input the full link address (including http or https) and connect. Once connected you should see the shapefiles and/or feature layers in the Catalog in GIS Servers under the server link you connected to. In the picture below you can see how I have connected to other public and private ArcGIS Servers before (but I have highlighted the one for this example):                                                           

And now you have basically any and all of the GIS data on the Internet!

Ok, obviously not all of the GIS data on the Internet, but now you have the tools to access a lot of data that might have seemed inaccessible to you before. If anything, I hope these instructions help any other digital hoarders whose computers have suffered long enough.

There may be times where you have a set of points (say from a GPS receiver) and need to create a path that connects them.  There is a useful tool in the processing toolbox in QGIS that enables the connection of those points, allowing you to determine the drawing order points and the resulting path or polygon.

This discussion starts with the assumption of some kind of geospatial point data in a CSV file.  At the very least, the points should have an X and Y value that QGIS can interpret, and it is a good idea to have a field in the data that specifies the drawing order, since the resulting paths can vary widely for the same set of coordinates, although any numerical field can be used to set the order.  Once your data is set up and imported into QGIS as a delimited text layer, pull up the “points to path” tool in the processing toolbox.  The input layer and drawing order field need to be set, but there is also a field that allows for the grouping of features, which outputs individual line features per group as well as a field to enter a storage location for the resulting vector file.

The examples below shows the output of this tool.  This is a set of five airports (Atlanta Hartfield-Jackson, Chicago O’Hare, Washington Dulles, Dallas-Fort Worth and Los Angeles International, in that order), connected by the resulting path based on a “drawing order” field in the data.  By editing that field, I can get a different path result from the same data points, as shown in the second example.  I chose this data in order to present this tool in a broad context, although it seems to be useful at much larger scales.

It is worth noting that these paths are treated the same as any other vector paths in QGIS, that is, they can be styled and edited just like any other, including adding nodes and changing start and end points.  They are not connected to the layer from which they were created, but are completely independent.  They do not follow any network other than the drawing order, so there is limited use for this technique for determining distances over a large area, but it could be useful when looking at points arrayed in a small region.  Another useful application of this tool might be in collecting handheld GPS data (from a simple device such as a phone) of corners of a piece of property and converting them into a polygon (with the aptly named “lines to polygons” tool, also in the processing toolbox).

Points connected to each other by path, based on the drawing order in the data table for the point layer.

Same set of points as before, but this time with a new drawing order in the data table. Any numerical field can be used to determine the order of connections.