Arc Collector 2: Creating your own database, features, and domains for deployment and use in ArcCollector

Introduction

This lab was designed to test the ArcCollector skills learned in the previous lab and provide experience in creating a database with features and domains. The project chosen to be completed was regarding the bike racks located on the lower campus of the University of Wisconsin- Eau Claire (Figure 1). The project should provide the university with information on whether or not there is enough bike space for the students and faculty alike. Whether for environmental, monetary, or health reasons, there has been a large amount of bikers communicating too and from the university. The university needs to be able to accommodate for the large amount of bikes needed to be stored throughout the day. During the week, except for Fridays, the bike racks located between Davies Center and Phillips Hall, the Old Library, and between Schneider Hall and Centennial Hall are very full leaving little, if any, space for more. The project took place on a Thursday to provide the best overall outlook with the time provided for the project. 

Figure 1: Map of the study area

Methods

Prior to heading out into the field, the geodatabase had to be set up. To begin, a file geodatabase was created in a folder dedicated to this lab within a personal folder. The geodatabase was named "bike_racks" following the naming rules learned from GIS I. Next, ArcMap was opened and domains for the geodatabase had to be set (Figure 2). 3 domains were created within the geodatabase. The first domain, Capacity, refers to the amount of bikes each rack can hold. This domain was a short integer type with a range from 0-100. Next, a domain, NumberBikes, was made for the input of number of bikes on the rack at the time of data collection.  The range was also 0-100 because the number most likely could not exceed the capacity. The third domain was Racksize. This domain was made to determine the size of the bike rack based on the full capacity. The domain was set as a text field with a code of small, medium, or large. These categories all had their own criteria. Small was 5-10, medium was 11-20, and large was anything over 20. 

Figure 2: The domains set for the geodatabase. The highlighted domain, rack size,
           shows the various categories and the ranges set in place for each one. 

The next step was to create a feature class create and define a feature class. The feature class created was named "bike_rack". The Projected coordinate system applied was the WGS 1984 Web Mercator (auxiliary sphere). this coordinate system was chosen because it is universal and therefore the data could be opened and used world wide. Next, four fields were created. The first three were named something similar to the domains listed above, capacity, number of bikes, and size. The final field was notes which was set as a text field to allow for any additional notes to be taken. Finally, the feature class was allowed to have picture attachments. Another feature class was created fro the study area.This feature class was a polygon type and was created by "freemouse"(aka freehand but on the computer) (refer back to figure 1).

Results

The results of the lab are shown in Figures 3-5. 

Figure 3: Map showing the locations of the bike racks

Figure 4: Map sshowing the sizes of bike racks

Figure 5: map showing the number of bikes present at the time of data collection

Discussion/Conclusion

Based on the results, the conclusion would be that the university does not need to add more bike racks but they should relocate several of them to areas of more foot traffic, such as near davies. In particular, the bike racks located behind Hibbard Hall are hard to access and have not had much use. However, the davies bike racks were almost at capacity and quite frankly it is doubtful that any more could have fit with how the bikes had been placed. This area should get more. 

There were several issues run into during the lab. The capacity domain that was set was too small and a couple of bike racks were unable to have accurate data inputs. Another issue was whether or not to count every individual rack or just one point for a set of racks in one area. The final issue was that the rack size ranges were very underestimated and most of the racks, though having a big capacity range, were labeled as large.