Geospatial Analysis

From paper to vector: converting maps into GIS shapefiles

April 11, 2023
Madeleine Parker
by Madeleine Parker. GIS is incredibly powerful: you can transform, overlay, and analyze data with a few clicks. But sometimes the challenge is getting your data into a form to be able to use with GIS. Have you ever found a PDF or even paper map of what you needed? Or googled your topic with “shapefile” after it to no avail? The process of transforming a PDF, paper, or even hand-drawn map with boundaries into a shapefile for analysis is straightforward but involves a few steps. I walk through the stages of digitization, georeferencing, and drawing, from an image to a vector shapefile ready to be used for visualization and spatial analysis.

Mapping Time-Series Satellite Images with Google Earth Engine API

July 17, 2023
Meiqing Li
by Meiqing Li. Remote sensing imagery has the potential to reveal land use patterns and human activities at a planetary scale. For example, nighttime light intensity extracted from can shed light on spatial patterns of human activities and settlements, especially in places where traditional data are scarce. This blog post introduces Google Earth Engine (GEE) as a general purpose tool to extract time-series remote sensing data from GEE data catalog. I walk through using GEE to obtain data, filter by time and geographic region, and visualize it on static and interactive maps.

The Geography of Cannabis: Does California’s dual licensing program (de)criminalize cannabis and drive unnecessary anthropogenic activity in remote rural environments?

August 29, 2023
Chevon Holmes
by Chevon Holmes. When California voters (de)criminalized cannabis production, the state’s dual licensure requirement forced local jurisdictions to create permitting programs or uphold prohibition. Many Counties developed ersatz zoning ordinances to regulate cannabis activities and hired staff to administer local permits. As an inspector, administrator, and project planner for Mendocino County from 2017-2021, I visited hundreds of cultivation sites and production facilities where I learned first-hand how two legal pathways impacted the ways in which operators could transition their businesses. This post details a dataset created to track, aggregate, and analyze the relationship between cannabis infrastructure and licensing.

Louisiana Slave Conspiracies

Michael Pearce, MA

Instructor
D-Lab

Michael is passionate about cities, technology, and real estate. He has worked in commercial real estate for 10+ years, has a Masters in City Planning, and stared and ran a mapping startup.

Ella Belfer

Consultant
Energy and Resources Group

Ella is a PhD student in the Energy and Resources Group. Her research examines water governance in a changing climate, drawing on geo-spatial techniques. Her past work includes applications of topic modelling in climate change adaptation research, and inductive coding of semi-structured interviews.

Irene Farah

Instructor
City and Regional Planning

Irene is a PhD student in City and Regional Planning. Her research interests lie at the intersection of urban geography, political science, and public health. In particular, she studies street vendors in Mexico City and how the spatiality and politics of their working conditions impact their access to healthy food. She strongly believes in connecting with other social scientists to share perspectives on how to use technology to acquire greater knowledge of social phenomena.

Working with spatial networks

April 25, 2022
Yiyi He

When working with spatial networks, both ArcGIS and Python packages such as NetworkX and iGraph are very useful tools. In the past, I have used both tools to help me better understand spatial network topology and network flow. In this blog post, I hope to share with you some cool features that these tools have...

Digital Refuge