Hydrofracturing Research at the AAG in Chicago!

Hydraulic Fracturing - Is the Short Term Gain Worth the Long Term Risks?

During the spring semester of 2015 I had the opportunity to participate as a Geographer at the Association of American Geographers convention organized in the city of Chicago, to present research work for Hydrofracturing.  The poster presented the positive gains and negative loss of unconventional drilling for oil and gas with a focus on the environmental impacts.  

The final poster size presented and displayed at the convention poster session was approximately 8 foot in length, so the image is broken below into two halves for this blog post.

Opioid Epidemic

During the Summer of 2014 there was an alarming increase in Opioid abuse and drug related crimes for the State of Massachusetts. Particularly in the City of Worcester, with drub abuse responsible for drug related deaths at higher than normal counts. Using the City of Worcester and data collected from Crime Reports website, an analysis was done during the months of July through October 2014. The study examined drug related crime and the proximity to clinical care, and how these drug related incidents have a strong correlation within Environmental Justice groups. The research for this study examined the City of Worcester, however it is indicative of a rise in drug abuse, addiction and 
even deaths in many large cities throughout the Commonwealth, and in other states

Does Where You Live Dictate your Quality of Life?

This project was completed during the Fall 2014 semester Cartography class.  Our team analyzed quality of life factors, to  determine if quality of life is improved or compromised depending on where you  live. We used health factors from County Health Rankings and Roadmaps, as well as data from The United Nations, The U.S. Census Bureau and MassGIS to create maps that displayed how global, national, and state to county in Massachusetts ranked in health behaviors, health care, social & economic and environmental factors when applied spatially by location.  

Network Analysis/Service Coverage Area

Emergency Response

The national standard for emergency response dictates that emergency vehicles need to respond to an emergency within 6 minutes - 90% of the time, as victims in a health emergency can suffer severe oxygen deprivation after 6 minutes.

This project used Network Analysis to determine response times and coverage areas for the Town of Sandwich, Massachusetts and their Fire Department.  The first map on the left illustrates the response time and coverage area for all three existing fire stations.   The map on the right illustrates how that coverage is impacted if one of the fire stations had to close in the event of town budget constraints.  Since the Town of Sandwich is only meeting 34% and 22% coverage areas within 5 minutes, and 68% and 57% within 10 minutes,  it is essential that this town keep all three fire stations running.  Help from neighboring communities can help meet that critical impact time; however a fourth fire station would help achieve the necessary response times that this community needs for meeting emergency response in their coverage area.

GPS!

Trips to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and The Metropolitan Museum in New York City provided an opportunity for mapping my trip using GPS!  An iPhone application called MyTrax dropped points along the course of the route between the two museums on two different days.  The .gpx file was then captured and saved, then uploaded to ArcGIS online using ESRI software. See the mapped Museum trips below:
To visit the ArcGIS online web application go here:

View Larger Map

Network Analysis

ArcGIS Network Analysis tools can find shortest routes, produce the most efficient routes for a deliveries, locate closest facilities, etc.  The map below demonstrates the process for Network Analysis, that allows a user to define service areas around any location on a network, in the map below the service areas surrounding Massachusetts Community Colleges with a 20 mile radius.  Both the Network Analysts tools for ArcGIS using the ArcGIS online Generate Services Areas tool and the ArcGIS desktop Euclidian Distance tool was used as a comparison of each tool to create maps of Massachusetts Community Colleges and their service coverage areas.

Massachusetts Community Colleges

Address data was collected, then using GIS ArcMap software and a geo-coding process, this map was created to show the location of Massachusetts Community Colleges.  It also displays the Community Health Center locations and their proximity to the schools.  The map is symbolized by town population to show areas of dense urban population, where the location of a Community College is important for commuting students. The map also displays a table with the distance in miles for the nearest Health Center for each Community College.