GIS 4930 - Providence Food Deserts

After completing an analysis of Providence food deserts, I have produced a web map as well as a presentation document to communicate my results.

GIS 4930 - Further Adventures in Web Mapping

After completing the practice work with maps for Pensacola, this module moves on to doing similar work for my own particular study area - Providence, Rhode Island.

After creating an analysis of food deserts within the municipal boundaries of Providence, I created web tiles that showed the census tracts for Providence that I had determined were food deserts as well as another tileset for grocery stores in the area. I used the site mapbox.com to store tiles I created using Tilemill. This proved to be especially challenging as mapbox has undergone some updates recently and the instructions I had were out of date. However, I perservered and was able to get my data up and available. I did have to find a new set of code examples for my map page, though, before I could serve my data online. I'm quite excited at what these tools offer, although it would be good if APIs were less subject to radical change.

The image below is a simple screenshot showing my tiles appearing in a web browser.

Screenshot of Providence food deserts

GIS 4930 - Open Source Web Mapping

This week was involved in creating a web map using open source resources. Leaflet, a java mapping API, was used to create a live webmap stored on my UWF web drive. As this was practice to learn a bit about how to use leaflet with mapping tiles stored on mapbox, we were provided with extant tilesets and simply had to create an html file that would be able to load them properly as well as some bits of map functionality through plugin calls.

The map created shows Pensacola, FL and includes indicators for food deserts as well as for fictional (I believe) frisbee golf courses.

GIS 4930 - Open Source GIS - Food Desert Analysis

This module invovled using QGIS to create a map displaying food deserts in Pensacola, Florida as a preparation for creating a similar analysis for another region in the coming weeks. We were given the data that was used to process the map below, which displays food deserts and food oases in Pensacola, FL based on distance from grocery stores. Using US census tracts, a tract was determined to be 'desertified' if it's centroid was over a mile away from a grocery store.

Food Deserts in Pensacola, FL