Week 13 - Georeferencing, Editing, & ArcScene

Alright, the last lab before finals. No lecture this time, just straight to business. First up, georeferencing two rasters to a vector dataset. Often you will receive an unreferenced raster file or aerial photo. To help figure out where that raster fits into geographic space, we can use a referenced control layer, for example a shapefile of buildings, to look for common points between the two and then rectify one to the other using control points. In this case, I had two rasters of UWF campus to register to a vector file of building and road features on campus. Using Root Square Mean errors and visual appearance as a guide to my accuracy for added control points, I was able to match the two layers up fairly well. There are different transformation options to assist in getting the registration as close to accurate as possible, and part of georeferencing is experimenting with how many control points are needed and which transformation work best.

After adding reference information to the raster, I used editing tools to add a vector feature building and road to the map, as well as adding provided information about height or name to the attribute table. Since we've been using CorelDraw in Cartography class, using the editing tools was a breeze.

Next was creating a multiple buffer around an bald eagle's nest site on the eastern edge of UWF campus. The buffer represents two areas of protection, 330 ft and 660 ft in which development and human activity are limited or excluded per a FWC bald eagle management plan. Easy to make, and a useful tool.

Map of UWF campus with raster data georeferenced to vector and inset of multiple buffer eagle protection zone.

Lastly, I added the raster and vector layers of the campus to a map in ArcScene, overlaid them on a DEM, adjusted the base height and extrusion level, and created a 3D map of campus. Not a bad last week of learning before taking on the final.

Map of 3D model of UWF campus buildings and roads, made in ArcScene and imported into ArcMap.