Part 3: HadleyVille Cemetery

Introduction

The problem at hand currently is that the Hadleyville Cemetery lost most of its data and is unable to quickly look at a map and be able to tell what is going on in the area.  To read more about the problem and methods used please visit my last blog at link. 

Figure 1: Image from Google Maps Showing the Hadleyville Cemetery located just outside of Eau Claire, WI going south on Highway 93 and turning Right on HH following this until there will be a cemetery on the left.

Methods

There were a few different tools used to conduct the survey.  The class used an UAS to take a high resolution picture with 95% coverage of the mapping area.  Also used was a survey grade GPS which turned out to not be needing since the mapping area was in such high-res that the grave sites were easiy enough to digitize ourselves in Arcmap.  The class also used cameras for taking pictures of the graves along with taking handwritten notes by assigning different rows to groups.  Since we were able to get a high-resolution photo we did not have to spend the large amount of time on going to each 150+ grave sites to take a data point.  This overall saved about a whole class time (2.5 hrs).

The data was recorded by having to write down all the crucial information that we came up with as a class down at the one day that we had at the site. This data included names, date of birth, date of death, quality of stone, type of stone, and if it was readable.  A pure digital approach is not always best because something could get lost or go missing easily, therefore it is always handing to keep something as a hard copy.  The media types that are being used for data collection are: hand written, High-res aerial photos and photographs.  The format was taking a row at a time and collect the information going from the road to the back of the cemetery. 

The hard data was transferred into a Google Sheets page, which was the most difficult part to create due to having many different styles of taking notes.  This was where the problems started to pop up for the class.  Having to normalize the data was a feat all in itself.  The Google Sheets page was one of the better ideas used rather than creating an Excel file to send around waiting for everyone to fill it in. The class saved a lot of time because everyone that needed to fill in data could do it at the same time while having normalized headings and row numbers.  Once this was completed and agreed apon there was an image created to help determine the rows and numbers of the grave sites to create an easy to digitize from image.  This made the digitizing faster although there were a few errors that needed to be dealt with, but otherwise it was an overall great idea. 

Figure 2 These are the rows created to normalize the digitizing process created by Marcus Sessler. 

The map of the cemetery was finally digitized and created.  It included a feature class called ‘grave_sites,’ which were the location of all the graves.  This feature class contained an attribute that went along with the map.  It would look something like this: Point ID A1, A2, etc.  Having this normalized with the Google Sheets page which was downloaded as an .csv the ability to join the table to the digitized points became very easy and turned out to look very well.  Also being able to digitize just from the image made the process a lot quicker because the pixels were able to give great detail. 

Results

Attribute table:

Figure 3:  This shows an attribute table of the data collected when joined into my point data on ArcMap.

 How the interaction works:

Figure 4: This image is showing how the map is interactive and that each grave stone is connected to a picture along with all of its data. 

Map:

Figure 5: This is the finished map created. It has the ability to click on each grave site to give a picture and information about that grave. 

There was a lot more time spent on data collection rather than on the actual GIS itself.  This was from all of the different forms of data collection methods. Having to normalize this was the most difficult because of taking the time to decide what was going to be the correct way to show the information.  Although, having spent this much time on data collection, it made the GIS part a breeze and was actually the least time consuming part of the entire project. To remedy this situation, the class came together to create a normalization of the spreadsheet. The survey GPS was not used in this project due to how long it would have taken to complete each of the points.  Some sources of error might include placement of digitizing graves, spelling in the spreadsheet, human errors in the notes, and wrong picture attached to each grave. 

To save more time and create a better way to collect data the class could have divided up the cemetery before going to the location which would have saved some time of standing around figuring out what to do.  Another way would have been to have just one group using the GPS the entire time to actually get a GPS point for each location of the grave stones.  Another would have been to have just one person to take pictures in the order that was previously decided on before the class went out into the field.  Another way would have been to already have chosen to have been using Google Sheets so the class could have entered all of the information before the next class period.  Although, having all of this already decided upon would mean having more detailed information on the cemetery. 

Conclusion

The methods transferred well to solve the goal of the project.  After everything was agreed upon the whole process was very smooth. Having all of the graves written down and taken pictures made the project overall a simple project with just a table join.  The mixed formats of data collection may have lowered the accuracy, but once it was normalized the ability to see if there were any problems became easy with around 20 people looking at the data.  The potential sources of error are negligible because the final product overall looks great and shows an accurate interactive map of the cemetery.  The overall success of the survey is very high because it ended up looking very well and gives all the data needed for the cemetery to use.  It shows exactly where all of the plots are along with all of the data with each plot.  This GIS will be used to enter new plots created at the cemetery along with being able to show people looking for plots the locations that are open to be purchased.  It could also be used to find family lineages and the location of deceased family members.