Posts

Expanding Geospatial Minds

WELCOME TO GIS WORLD Hello everyone, Its been a while since I posted something here. Today, I want us to look at how one can become a GIS professional from scratch. This actually was triggered by  receiving so many Questions from social media about what Geo-spatial and Remote Sensing as a course is. Well, many of them were freshers who have been placed to various universities to study the course while others just curious about the course and wanted to know if it can be a lifetime profession to consider.  For my case, I never had a glue of what GIS & RS was back in 2014 when i joined the University. Since there were little knowledge about it in Kenya by then unlike now, I never got anyone to guide me if the course was good or not. Then I just applied and boom, I was LUCKY! to get an opportunity to study this newest cours

NETWORK BUILDING IN ARCMAP

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The first build process on a new network dataset creates network elements, establishes connectivity, and assigns values to the network attributes based on the properties you defined in the New Network Dataset wizard. Also, a point feature class containing all the system junctions is created in the workspace that contains the network dataset. Geodatabase network datasets can be built inside or outside of an edit session; however, shapefile network datasets must be built outside of an edit session. The following steps expains the procedures you follow in ARCMAP to build a network dataset: Start ArcMap. Click the Catalog window button on the Standard toolbar. The dockable Catalog window opens. Using the Catalog window, navigate to the location of the network dataset and drag it into the map display or the table of contents. If a connection to the folder that contains the network dataset doesn't already exist, you can create one by clicking the Connect To Folder but

Converting ARCMAP .shp to Adobe Illustrator .AI file

Hello dear Geo-geeks, Its been a while long time since I post geo stuff here, today I would like to take you through on how An ARCGIS .shp file can be converted to .AI file for further Graphic designs. Exporting From ArcGIS to Illustrator Adobe Illustrator is a vector drawing program that accepts files of type .AI. This software can be very useful if you wish to use geometry from GIS as the basis for diagrams that you would create in illustrator, or if you want to use illustrator to fix some of the awkward legends or labels that ArcMap makes for you. TRICKY features of Adobe Illustrator includes; None of your layers can use transparency  If you are using special fonts or spot symbols, they must be converted to polygons in illustrator. There is a limit to the number of vertices that can be exported to illustrator.   Those are the important rules to remember in arcmap document. Setting up your ArcMap Document You may have designed a map in ArcMap with a nice grap

A PROTOCOL EVERY WEB MAPPER MUST KNOW- HTTPs

HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol . It's a stateless, application ­layer protocol for communicating between distributed systems, and is the foundation of the modern web.  As a web developer/Mapper, we all must have a strong understanding of this protocol. HTTP allows for communication between a variety of hosts and clients and also supports a mixture of network configurations through the internet. it does not keep state between different message exchanges hence making itself a stateless protocol. The communication usually takes place over TCP/IP , but any reliable transport can be used. The default port for TCP/IP is 80, but other ports can also be used. The client sends a request to the server (host) and receives response just on his/her browser. The current version of the protocol is HTTP/1.1, which adds a few extra features to the previous 1.0 version. The most important of these, in my opinion, includes persistent connections, chunked transfer­-coding and fine­-g

Building a GIS Application

WELCOME TO GIS WORLD BUILDING A GIS Application a)Waterfall method  1. Gathering requirements and specifications 2. Designing 3. Implementation 4. Testing 5. Adaptation Requirement analysis and specifications involve interaction among sponsors, users and developers of the software product. The purpose of requirement analysis is to produce a requirement document clearly specifying the agreed upon goals and the functionality of the proposed product as well as the constraint under which it will be operating. Design involves the generation of a design document to serve as a blue print for the proposed system. Developers and adaptors are usually involved in this process. Adaptors are involved in order to help assure that the design is consistent with a graceful evolution of the system. The design document often includes graphical depictions of system struc

GIS DATA FORMATS, DATA SOURCES AND COST

GIS datasets formats Typical formats of data sets, which allow you to conveniently work with multiple information or map layers, include spatial and attribute data. Spatial data comes in the forms of raster and vector and is generally organized into so-called layers or thematic maps.   Raster data is digital image composed by rectangular grids or cells that contain numeric information from a defined range to characterize geographic features. Digital Elevation Model (DEM) is a form of raster data important in depicting a terrain. It provides crucial information on the topologies of a geographic span.      Vector or shapefile data is constructed as points, lines, and polygons to represent geographical features.   Attribute data is information used to describe characteristics of a locale . The data is organized in a table containing information linked to a spatial feature by a common identifier. This gives you details or certain types of information associated with each specific fe

GIS PROGRAMMING

WHAT A GIS PROFESSIONAL SHOULD KNOW   Having some competence in programming has become a critical requirement for many geospatial positions. The majority of GIS analyst level positions require some expertise in programming and application development.  So which languages should you learn for GIS programming?  Python is a popular scripting language in the GIS arena, especially for those wanting to work with ESRI desktop products. Learning Python is the way to go for scripting and creating tools inside of the ArcGIS framework.   C# is another recommended programming language that is relatively easy and intuitive to learn.  Learning .NET will also allow you to customize ArcGIS.  Using VBA is on the decline and  beyond ArcGIS 10 For web-based applications development,learn HTML, javascript, and CSS as a baseline.  Java, PHP, and ASP.NET are additional programming languages for more advance web development. Where to get started?  Learning the basic concepts of programm