Introduction
This field activity expanded from Field Activity #7 in where ArcCollector, the app, was used via mobile device to collect data with. The objective of this field activity was to create your own spatial question to answer gathering data points with the ArcCollector app in the field. The author of this blog's question was "Where and what correlations do historic houses have in the Third Ward of Eau Claire, WI?" The author of this blog lives in the Third Ward of Eau Claire and came upon this question based on walking past and living in a historic house with a plaque of the house history. The author of the blog decided to create a map showing the houses and numerous attributes of them provided by the plaques outside historic houses to find correlation with them within Eau Claire's city history. Figure 1. shows the area of study, an outline of the Third Ward in Eau Claire, WI.
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| Figure 1. Vague Outline of Third Ward in Eau Claire |
Methods
In order to begin answering the spatial question a survey had to be set up for the ArcCollector App to have a basemap to collect data points on. To do this an ESRI tutorial was followed (http://doc.arcgis.com/en/collector/). The first step was creating a geodatabase for the data and setting the domains to match up with the fields of the feature class. Figure 2. shows the domains that were created within the file geodatabase. The Condition domain was a coded domain along with the Exterior Material domain. Storey and Year were range domains. Next the feature class was created and the fields were edited to comply with the geodatabase domains and survey inquires. For this specific survey our professor provided us a criteria of including fields with a floating or integer field, notes or field notes, and category option ex. Material-BRK. Figure 3. Shows the fields in the feature class.
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| Figure 2. Gdb domains |
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| Figure 3. Feature class fields |
Also, attachments were enabled in ArcCatalog by going clicking on the feature class and choosing Manage --> Create Attachments. Enabling this feature will allow for pictures to be attached in ArcCollector when out in the field. Once the feature class fields were set it was brought into Arcmap. Then an attribute that was created in fields was symbolized to create a data point that would be viable during the actual process of collecting points while out in the field. For this the Exterior House Material was chosen and symbolized as shown in Figure 4.
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| Figure 4. Symbology of feature class for importation |
From here the Layer had to be shared via ArcGIS online in order to bring in the compatibility with ArcCollector. Signing into your account on ArcMap with Esri allows one to share their feature class as a layer online. The layers was shared by going to under File--> Share as Service--> Publish a service--> the author of this blog selected My Hosted Services as their disclosed group and then set the parameters, capabilities, feature access, item description, and sharing settings. The author of this blog create a separate private folder within their account with ArcGIS online to import their layer to for easy access. Once uploaded within the UWEC group and private individual folder of the author of this blog the data was opened in Web Map. It was then saved within the same folder and the settings were changed to allow appropriate adjusting of the data by the author. Here the mobile device was used with the ArcCollector app to open up and edit/create data points pertaining to the data. Figure 5. and Figure 6. shows screenshots of the ArcCollector Mobile App when collecting data. All of the data was collected on Sunday 11/12/2017 from 10:00am-1:00pm.
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| Figure 5. Map on ArcCollector App |
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| Figure 6. Attributes for data points collected |
In order to grasp an idea of where all the historic houses were in Eau Claire's Third Ward, rather than walk around endlessly looking for them, they were mapped out first via google maps. The historic society of Eau Claire has a website with all of the historic houses in Eau Claire. From this website (http://www.ci.eau-claire.wi.us/home/showdocument?id=17572) addresses were obtained for the Third Ward and inputted into the author of this blog's google maps account. From there the map was printed off and a viable path was created from where the author of this blog resides as the starting point. Some of the historic houses locations did not show up in google maps at the scale it was printed at so the author of this blog manually wrote them in. Figure 7. Shows the field map used to locate the houses.
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| Figure 7. Make shift map of the area (N arrow indicated sun's location) |
While using this maps points circled indicated that there were no plaques outside the homes of these addresses that could be seen; however they still came up on the website as being historical houses. For this project they were not mapped. Points crossed out meant that a data point was collected there
along with a picture. Figure 8. Is an example of the one of the plaques.
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| Figure 8 . Example of plaque |
Once the data was all gathered via mobile phones, the WebMap was opened on a desktop. The data was then exported as a FGDB (Feature Geodatabase) this allowed for attachments to be exported with the file. It was then opened in ArcMap to be editable.
Results/Discussion
In total 23 data points were collected in the Third Ward. Out of those 23, 22 were houses and 1 was a building (Free Masonry). Figure 9. Shows the attribute data of all the fields created and gathered.
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| Figure 8. Attribute Table of Data |
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| Figure 9. Historic House's Title and Homeowner affiliation w/Companies |
Figure 9. Is a map that shows the Title of the house and the original homeowner's occupation if it had any affiliation with a Company. The Title of each house was based on the original homeowner of the house. The owner of the blog decided to have Company as an attribute to see if there were a lot of people affiliated with them in the Third Ward. For the most part there were quite a few and it was interesting seeing what types of companies there were in the area. It would be interesting to juxtapose this historical data with current to see the occupation of current historical landowners.
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| Figure 10. Historic House's Year, Style, and Storeys |
Figure 10. Depicts a map of the Year, Style and Storeys of Historical Houses. In this map the houses of smaller sizes are 1 storey, medium houses are 2 storeys, and large houses are 3 storeys. In a lot of cases the houses that were 3 or even 2 had the upper floor added. This could be seen by the change in exterior material of the house. For the purpose of deciding what counted has a storey neither the basement nor attic was counted. The houses styles/architecture were mapped to see if they had any correlation of the year they were built and the impact of global travel and commerce. For the most part many of the Queen Anne style houses were built in the 1880's when their was a revival of the architecture. In many cases the style of houses came up with having architectural features that barrow from other styles. Regardless seeing even areas of Eau Claire take on architectural styles like Queen Anne and Georgian Revival. It was surprising to find quite a few houses built in the 1800's and that bears the question of whether the house has been updated to health code with lead paint and radon. Especially since a lot of Historical Houses are college rented.
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| Figure 11. Historic House's Exterior Material and Condition |
Figure 11. Shows the Historic House's Exterior Material as in Brick, Cement, Stone ect. and the condition the house looked like it was in. For the most part all houses had stone foundation and then some wood paneling for upper attic level. The majority of houses contained brick as their outside material. From all the data gathered the exterior material showed the greatest spatial relationship of areas with the same material. There wasn't any correlation with any exterior material having a greater durability for the condition of the outside house compared to others and since their are a range of years that the houses were built it's hard to say the deterioration of each individual one.
Provided is a link to the WebMap on ArcGIS that is interactive. All the attributes and images attached to each data point can be seen as well as analysis run on the data.
http://uwec.maps.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=7f62e89100ff41fdbfdcded56de47808
Conclusion
In response to the author of this blog's spatial question, "Where and what correlations do historic houses have in the Third Ward of Eau Claire, WI?" There were two that were evident amoung houses, they were the same exterior material being congregated in the same area of the Third Ward and Queen Anne Style Architectures being located in the middle of the Third Ward. In reflection of this field activity the use of ArcCollector in any field of study is invaluable. That being said there comes some heavy responsibility with it like any process of gathering data out in the field of individual privacy. For this specific field activity all of the data gathered is public knowledge except the Notes attributes, that's the author of the blog's personal opinion on the Historical House. Overall, This app is very handy and well accessible to anyone wanting to collect data and not knowing a whole lot about GIS or creating maps.
Reference
http://doc.arcgis.com/en/collector/
http://www.ci.eau-claire.wi.us/home/showdocument?id=17572
http://uwec.maps.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=7f62e89100ff41fdbfdcded56de47808
