Tips and Tricks

[Greg Matthews]

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[Ashley Danowski]

I was asked to write a brief message about how I collected some of my data while looking for my assigned stuctures in my quads.  I had correctional facilities and city/towns halls.  The method I used to collect the location of city/town halls was:  locating towns and city that were large and well known, such Westminster, Arvada etc.  from there I used the Denver Reference map on the edit page to look for other towns that may have been named on that reference map but were much smaller and not as well known (i.e. Mountain View).  Once I confirmed and located all of the towns listed on the Denver Reference map in my quads, I went back and double checked locations and made sure that I didn't miss any towns by using a USGS topo map of my quads.  If I found a town that appeared as though I missed it, I would visit that town's police department website (if it had one), or look for the official town website online. I found that when I did this, many of my "supposed" missed towns were actually small communities that were located within a larger district that utilized an already located city hall. 

 

As for locating the correctional facilities in my quads:  I went to the following websites - Colorado Department of Corrections, Federal Bureau of Corrections and local police stations.  Both the state and federal corrections websites will either list, or allow you to search for correctional facilties.  This was extremely helpful since there is not a significant amount of correctional facilties to begin with.  Also, playing with word/sentance combinations in Google helps as well.  While I was looking for juvenile correctional facilties I found that CO had an offical website just for youth offenders.  However, many of the facilties listed turned out to be at-risk youth centers, not correctional facilties.  While I was playing with sentance combinations in Google, I stumbled upon a .pdf file from the CO state website that listed all juvenile detention facilities in CO.  I was able to use this .pdf to cross check my current juvenile correctional facilities; thats where I found out that there are more at-risk youth centers that are listed on the CO juvenile offenders website than there are correctional facilties.  As for the police websites, sometimes the websites will list where a detention faciltiy is, it's not often, but I did find one or two that had a corrections link on there website that took me to the detention/correctional facilty in the area.

 

These were the methods that I used to find the locations of my assigned structures in my quads.

 

[USGS Structures]

Tips and Tricks

• I found Discussion group and Potlatch2 worked faster using Mozilla
Firefox rather than Internet Explorer.
• I personally went through the entire map and edited all the existing
data points and kept a cheat sheet I used (excel) of which locations I
had edited then went through Authoritative website or list found. Then
added any new pointed. Depending on what the authoritative information
came rom and what format the information is in list map, city,
addresses or a combination the locations are depends on the format of
helpful information.

• I really found it helpful to work on the editing in large time
spans. I realize this is not always possible but as with most GIS
projects it is more efficient to sit down once for a couple hours than
3-4 times. Logging in, loading, and opening windows takes a few
minutes but adds up if down multiple times. Also with GIS don’t wait
until the last minute in case you run into a problem.
• SAVE after every point change. I lost my place a few times zooming
in and out or changing the background. Also if you add what changes in
the “Comment” section it can be viewed under the history tab and
clicking on the lat long (blue font) allows you to zoom in and out to
location in either the view or edit windows.
• The first problem I discovered was working with a touchpad mouse.
Working on my laptop, I kept getting a pointer with a dashed red line.
If you receive this simple press the Esc key. If you create any lines
and save (upload the dataset) the lines you created will be saved as
well (see the blue vectors in the right image).
• Of course I always look at the aerial imagery ref map and look for
something easy to identify a unique building major road, highways,
airports, parks, or something that stands out to compare the areas
• When I started on my assignment, I used Denver ref map large scale
then when I found a point/location I would change to aerial or small
scale view.
• Google maps, Google earth and Bing maps were very helpful. Of course
you can’t use as an authoritative website for attribute data but for
building footprints, signs, or addresses (aerial image and birds eye
views work well).


• As a visual person, I found it extremely helpful to have paper maps
of my reference area.
• Several options for paper reference maps are available. I used the
USGS’s National Map (GeoPDF Version) through the USGS map store.

o The downloadable maps are found at
http://store.usgs.gov/b2c_usgs/usgs/maplocator/(ctype=areaDetails&xcm=r3standardpitrex_prd&carea=%24ROOT&layout=6_1_61_48&uiarea=2)/.do

o Follow the directions on the right for this project the quad
names are Arvada, Fort Logan, Englewood, and Commerce City (the
black letters with yellow highlight). Either type the quad name or
navigate to area then Left click on the area then left click (single)
on the red point and download the 2009, 2010 or 2011 edition. The US
Topo not the beta version.




• An online map viewer is also available at http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/

The map viewer allows browsing and panning on the area. Keep in mind
the points on these maps are the points you are editing. Do NOT use
these as a definite location as in this context is NOT an
authoritative source.