Our first lab exercise consisted of the online disaster simulation game "Stop Disasters", created by the UN/ISDR. The main objective of this game was to plan and construct a safer environment for the population. The screenshot above shows a part of the game in which I built a Hotel Apartment up on the piece of land above the water. My plan was to allow tourists to view the beautiful ocean, but in a safer/higher elevation area. I also built concrete houses up on the land in hopes to decrease the damage done, since concrete houses are much more sturdy.
Tuesday, September 18, 2012 - lab exercise 2
In this lab, we looked at hazards data and through the use of ArcGIS software, we were able to see where they hazards were occurring based on location.
Wednesday, October 3, 2012 - lab exercise 3
In this lab exercise, we dug deeper into hazards data and used ArcGIS software to answer hazards related questions, specifically ones revolving around earthquakes. In the lab, we saw that the strongest earthquakes tend to occur along plate boundaries. From that, we also found that earthquakes can lead to other hazards, including tsunamis. Using various tools within ArcGIS, we were able to see which earthquakes were of magnitude 6 or higher, which cities were closest to these selected earthquakes, and which countries had contained tsunamis.
Monday, October 22, 2012 - lab exercise 4
The map above was created using ArcGIS and data archives from ArcGIS desktop. As we can see from this image,. the south-central portion of the United States is undergoing the most severe drought. This area undergoing drought is unfortunately, the agricultural heartland of America. As a more developed country, the United States are more advanced technologies and resources from other countries; this gives us leeway from experiencing famine. Other implications that drought has on us are higher food prices, scarcity of certain foods, and a poor growing season.
In this part of the lab, we added 'current crop yield' data from ArcGIS online. Here, we were able to see which soils correspond to high crop yields. Soils such as inceptisols, ultisols, alfisols, aridisols, and entisols correspond to high crop yields. This data makes sense because areas experiencing extreme dryness or drought would also be faced with low crop yields.
Monday, November 12, 2012 - lab exercise 6
This is a digital elevation model (DEM) image of Mount Rainier.
This is a triangular irregular network (TIN) model of Mount Rainier. As you can see, the tin image gives us a better idea of the topography of Mount Rainier.
This is the same TIN model of Mount Rainier, but I added a lahar layer to see what it would look like.
This is a map I created that represents Mount St. Helens before and after the eruption. Seeing the elevation makes it easier for us to interpret exactly which areas were affected. We can tell from the after image that a very large part of Mount St. Helens was blown and demolished during the eruption. Before the eruption, the volcano had a definitive peak; in the after image, there is now a very visible crater, aside from the are that was blown up.
The top 5 countries that have had the most volcanic eruptions are Indonesia, Japan, the United States, and Italy. This relates to plate boundaries because 4 out of 6 of the top countries are located relatively close to the Ring of Fire (rim of the Pacific basin).
Tuesday, November 27, 2012 - lab exercise 7
This is a map of landslide incidence and susceptibility in the conterminous United States. As you can see, there is much more landslide incidence and susceptibility in regions such as the Appalachian Mountains, some areas in the Rocky Mountains, and areas along the west coast. This is explained through the geology and/or geography of these areas. As we all know, mountainous areas have high relief. Higher relief allows gravity to work at its best and we can see that displayed on the map. Areas along the west coast, although may not have the highest of relief, can be susceptible to landfall because of their geology.
Monday, December 3, 2012 - lab exercise 8
This is a map of a 100-year flood. There are quite a few buildings that would be impacted by the 100 year flood. It appears that both Putnam and Katherine Thomas Hall would be affected, along with the nursing building, the back end of McIntyre Library, the old Davies building (from the looks of it, the new one would also be affected), and Phillips. HAAS and the Human Sciences building across the footbridge would also be entirely surrounded by water. After turning on the zoning areas layer, we notice that there will be over 9 different zoning areas affected by a 100 year flood, especially residential districts north of the Chippewa River, because this area is located on a floodplain, which is a flat or relatively flat land adjacent to a stream or river (Chippewa River).
This is also a 100-year flood map, but instead of the water depth being at 760 ft. as it was above, we added 20 ft., making it 780 ft. As you can see, more areas will be affected by the flood.
This is also a 100-year flood map, but demonstrates the flood with the water depth at 800 ft. As you can see, the entire lower campus of UWEC is under water, along with most of the student housing/ghetto area north of the Chippewa river.
During this part of the exercise, we played around with ArcScene. We first set the base height of our DEM image to the same so it is in 3D. we then set the buildingarea layer to the baseheight of the DEM. After extruding the buildingarea layer and setting the layer offset to 5 (lifting the buildings 5 ft. off the ground, we were able to see which buildings would get flooded first. Buildings on lower campus would get flooded first, for example the Human Sciences building on the other side of the footbridge, Schofield, the old Davies, and the residence halls (Katharine Thomas & Putnam). We can also see from the image that all of upper campus are located outside of the flood zone. The buildings outside of the floodzone are elevated on upper campus, perhaps a river terrace created a long time ago.
Thursday, December 6, 2012 - lab exercise 9
These are maps I compiled that show the facilities that would be at risk for coastal flooding. The main image is in the middle and the two images on the outsides are for zooming purposes. There will be a total of 52 facilities at risk, including 3 medical facilities and 42 schools.
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