Land Use Analysis

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Land Use Analysis
An important aspect of any GIS is the use of
analysis. Analysis helps us to say something
meaningful about the work that we have done, and
it makes the work uniquely ours. Paper maps have
been made for years, but its your work that
creates a unique GIS. In this section, we are
going to work through some analysis of your
school and the way that the land is used on your
campus. For this, we will need both GeoMedia and
Excel.
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Land Use on Campus
Your final task is to create a pie chart to show
the relative amount of land on campus dedicated
to various functions.
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2. Create a table in Excel resembling the one
above. Now open your GeoWorkspace.
1. For this exercise you will need to open
Microsofts Excel spreadsheet application in
addition to your workspace in GeoMedia.
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3. Next, youre going to tell GeoMedia to create
a new attribute showing the area of each feature.
Click on the Analysis menu, and then
Functional Attributes.
4. Start by selecting building under School
Features as the feature class to which you will
add a functional attribute.
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5. Click the New button to add a functional
attribute.
6. Type in the name Area for this particular
functional attribute.
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7. To begin defining your function, click on
Geometry under Categories. Then, under
Functions, double-click on AREA to add it to
your expression. Finally, under Attributes,
double-click on Input.Geometry to tell GeoMedia
to calculate area on your building geometries.
8. Type a comma on the keyboard, so that it
appears after Input.Geometry. Now go back to
the Categories column and click on Constants.
Scroll down in the middle column and double click
on ProjectedMeas, and then type another comma.
In the same middle column, scroll down just a
little further and double-click on Acre. Your
completed expression should read AREA(Input.Geome
try,ProjectedMeas,Acre) If you need to, you can
type directly in the Expressions window. Youll
know if its correct if the word Double appears
in the Output Type field. Click the Add button,
then the Close button.
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9. Functional attributes produce queries. Lets
call this one building with Area. Make sure you
uncheck the box for Display functional
attributes in map window, and that you check the
box to Display functional attributes in data
window. Click the OK button when youre done.
10. You will now see the attributes, including
calculated area, for each building youve mapped.
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11. Click on the gray title bar that says
function to select the entire column of the
Data Window (the bar becomes black). Next, click
the Sort Ascending button to group your data by
building type.
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12. Add up all of the areas (acres) for each
category. The example above shows the Academic
category (yes, I rounded off the numbers!)
13. Enter the sums of each category into your
Excel spreadsheet.
14. Youll need to repeat steps 3-13 for
Athletic Fields, Bleachers, and Parking Lots.
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16. Click on the Chart Wizard button.
15. Highlight all of the cells of your table.
18. Click Next.
17. Select Pie for your Chart type. Click
Next.
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20. Try some of the various options for the
labels pick what looks best on the finished
graph.
19. You can type in a new title here if you
like. After changing your title, click on the
Data Labels tab.
21. You may select either to have the chart in a
new worksheet, or in the same sheet as your
table. Click Finish.
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22. Your pie chart will appear in your
worksheet. Save your work and name it
land_use.xls
Our final step is getting our work into
presentation form. The next section will help
you with creating an interesting map.