ArcCollector 2

Introduction

This project was looking at what kind of vehicles people drove on Hudson Street between 1st and 3rd Ave. in Eau Claire, WI.  It was also comparing the different types of vehicles to figure out which state, Minnesota or Wisconsin, has the more environmentally friendly vehicles parked on the road.  Proper design is very important when trying to answer questions using ArcCollector. If the design is not set up correctly, going into the field will become very difficult and the whole process will roll to a halt.

Study Area:

• November 29th 2016 41 Degrees and Overcast  
• Hudson Street in the City of Eau Claire from the 1st block to the last.  This area has many different types of people making the variation of cars higher.  There will be permanent families, renters, college students, friends or family, and any maintenance workers as well.

Methods

Creation of the Geodatabase

The first step to using ArcCollector is to come up with a question that has the ability to be answered by creating data points out in the field.  The next step before going out into the field is to set up a geodatabase, which houses and stores the data. Within the geodatabase a feature class needs to be created which will outline the mapping area.  That is strictly for appearance and makes it easier while being in the field.  Next, is to make a feature class that is for collecting the data.  This feature class needs to be a point feature class along with having a projected coordinate system of  WGS 84 Web Mercator, which is necessary to work with ArcGIS online.


Now setting up the point feature class there needs to be attributes to help solve the problem.  For this project the attributes used were Lisence Plates State, Car Type, Car Size, Wheel Size, which side of the street the car was parked on, and the quality of the car and this can be seen in Figure 1.  Then, in Figure 2, There are the domains that need to be set up.  Domains are used to limit the attributes to certain restrictions.  For example, The Car Type was set up to show a list of different car manufactures  within the domain to make it easy, and to stop mistakes from happening.

Figure 1: This figure is showing the different feature classes used to help solve the problem at hand.  

Figure 2: This figure shows the domains that were used for the attributes.  These are important because they reduce errors within  the field.  

Now, once everything is set up the main thing to do is to publish this as a service to be used on ArcGIS online. To do this Sign into ArcMap using an enterprise account or any other method.  Then, go File -> share -> publish as a service -> and basically follow the steps to publishing the material needed.  Once it is online the feature classes can be found on the website.  Once on the website it can be saved and shared to everyone, anyone with an enterprise account, or just the original publisher.  

The next step is to download ArcCollect for IOS or Android.  This is a very cool app because it allows the user to use the smartphone for the GPS and data collection rather than other equipment. Although, it really should only be used for data that does not need to be 100% accurate spatial wise due to smartphones not having the best GPS in them.  It gets the job done, but it should not be used when accuracy needs to be a priority.   On ArcCollector is is just adding data points when need be and entering the correct data.  If the domains were used properly this should be very easy on the smartphone.  

Next is uploading the data points into ArcGIS Online which can then be downloaded and manipulated to create maps in ArcMap.

Results

The results for this questions were actually quite indifferent.  It seemed to be that there was an almost even amount of more environmentally friendly on both sides.  This is a good result though because it shows that people are trying to take care of the environment. Figure 3 is showing the different brands of cars that were found.  This map is not the most beneficial to the question but it is interesting to see that there is not really any pattern or higher number of one brand of vehicles. Figure 4 is showing the quality of vehicles within the area.  This is important to see because it shows whether people are keeping their cars longer or getting newer ones.  in this map it is showing that more car owners have older cars based on the amount of rust/damage to the vehicle. In figure 5 it shows which side of the road the cars were on.  This attribute field was done to show how accurate the GPS is on the Iphone 6 used.  The map clearly shows many of the dots on the wrong side of the road of what they are supposed to be. If it was important to have very precise accuracy this type of GPS would not work. Figure 6 is just showing the size of the vehicle.  This includes the size of the car which is economic to sedan or small SUV to full size SUV for example. In Figure 7 the map is showing what kind of vehicle was found.  This was an important indication because a car would generally be more friendly toward the environment than a truck, but in this mapping area there were no trucks to be found.  Only SUVs, vans, and car were found.   Therefore, this is an environmentally friendly area.

Figure 3: This is a map showing the different brands of vehicles found within the area.  

Figure 4: This is a map showing the quality of cars.  This included New, Almost new, Some Rust, and Junker.

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Figure 5: This is a map which shows which side of the road the cars were parked on. 

Figure 6: This is a map showing what size of vehicle is found. 

Figure 7:  This is a map showing the type of vehicle found.  

Conclusion

ArcCollector is a great tool to use when collecting data due to is versatility in the field.  As long as it is set up correcting it can a great asset to data collection. Since both of the states had realitly the same amount  If this project was to be done differently it would be an asset to get the entire student housing area to see what the entire area is driving.  It would also be nice to set up a color option as well.  This could also be expanded into a different questions which could be trying to find out how environmentally friendly the student housing area is with their vehicles.