Post on 05-Jul-2015
in the trenches
front line GIS consulting
will.cadell@timberline.ca http://ca.linkedin.com/in/willcadell
the what
things you won’t learn at school
geo-survival techniques
musings on the geo industry
the how
words
pictures
video
the who
Engineering – software engineering
Academia – remote sensing
Municipal government – address data cleansing
Natural resource consulting – GIS analysis & dev
(not actually “the who” unfortunately)
journey
lessons in production GIS
1. GIS is data
making data
asking questions about data
helping others understand data
that’s good though, there is a lot of data!
2. data is never “good”
even if you think it is, its not
Dude, that’s not on the
map!
geo-survival technique:
learn data quality diagnosis heuristics
common data problems (technical)
spatial reference system (lost)
attributes (missing)
geometry (broken)
computing (knowledge)
what’s up this, GIS wizard?
zoom to all…
are there any records?
ok, zoom to roads…
clues, if you need them…
typical data quality workflow
are there any records? - zoom to all, zoom to layer, open attribute table
where (on earth) are they? - look at coordinates, remove coordinate system from data frame
is it GPS data? - (x,y) vs. (lat, long)
is it a shape file?- do you have all the pieces, has the dbf been edited
geo-survival technique:
remember the reality check
Oh, that’s just Alberta. They think they are
above the rest of us.
3. be organised
…not just organised, but…
ORGANISE
D!
we make data, lots and lots of data
data management
keep your project data separated from your “good stuff”
keep your project data safe
keep your good stuff safer
geo-survival technique:
learn to keep things organised and clean
4. tell a story
cartography is biased
data is flawed
analysis is subjective
understand first, the story you want to tell
geo-survival technique:
ask lots of questions
hot or not?
hot or not?
hot or not?
hot or not?
hot or not?
hot or not?
hot or not?
hot or not?