80 Percent Renewable by 2050

Electricity demand is increasing. By 2050, it could more than double what it is now. In order to keep global temperatures from increasing by too many degrees (Fahrenheit  or Celsius), nations need to adapt by receiving at least 80% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2050. Here's a graphic that displays current information for five major regions as well as a graph that visually depicts the desired scenario:

CalGIS Webinar Session

On 11/15/13, I helped give a webinar with CalGIS's Jeff Orton and GENI's Peter Meisen. The webinar presents work done at GENI's World Resources SimCenter, where I am currently an intern, and discusses the benefits of ESRI's ArcGIS Online tool. You can watch the video here on Youtube.

Also, learn about the upcoming CalGIS Conference in Monterey.

China Wind Potential Map

Another renewable energy potential map. This time, I focused on wind energy potential for China. One change here is that I included a lot of surrounding area data, because I did not want the data to stop at the borders of China.

China Wind Potential

National Renewable Energy Lab

I have used a lot of NREL's GIS data to make my renewable energy potential maps. I wanted to share their map products too:

NREL Dynamic Maps.

These are really cool. They have a "Geothermal Prospector (beta)" map which contains many layers. Here is my display of their geothermal potential layer, made out of 6 classes that they have determined on their website:

ArcGIS Online - Make a Web Application

This is an update on my past ArcGIS Online maps. Thanks to ESRI, I have found out how to make a web application out of an ArcGIS Online map. I realize now that ArcGIS Online is a great tool for a GIS user like me to create a map. It is not very intuitive for a public, non-GIS user as is. But one can customize his/her map by clicking share, and then "Make a Web Application." One can preview what the product will look like, and then publish the product. There are many templates to choose from. I have found that the published web application product is much more intuitive for a public viewer.  Here's an example:

US Renewable Energy Potential Interactive Map

Newly Founded Renewable Energy Club

June 2013: Ten nations and the Director-General of IRENA (International Renewable Energy Agency) founded the Renewable Energy Club.

On Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Map:

Brazil receives 81% of its electricity from renewables (CIA World Factbook 2010 estimate). Why would Brazil choose not to join?

San Diego Mass Transit

Here is a map of mass transit options in San Diego with a background of projected urban expansion.

San Diego Mass Transit Map

Presentation Attempt (ArcGIS Explorer Online)

Wind Energy: New Turbine Designs

I knew about this classic design: 

But recently, I have learned that there are more efficient, more powerful wind turbine designs out there that could boost wind energy production worldwide. Here are three images and three links that explain new wind turbine designs that I found fascinating, and I want to help other people learn about them.

 The "jet engine" design.

 The Wind Lens design. (They're big in Japan!)

 The vertical wind turbine.

That's pretty cool.

India Solar Potential Map

Another solar potential map, inspired by the new 4,000 megawatt plant in the works for Rajasthan.
It is supposed to lower the price of solar powered electricity and compete with coal powered plants.

India Solar Potential Map

Remember to click on icons/polygons to discover what information they contain. Also remember you can turn layers on and off, zoom in to a specific area of interest, change the basemap, and add your own layers from ESRI's ArcGIS Online data.

Thanks ESRI!

(Update 10/28/13: Here is a wind potential map: India Wind Potential. I'm sure others have noticed, but the transmission network already connects to the northern area where there is high wind energy potential. This is because hydro-electric plants exist up there. Seems to me to be a fine place for a relatively large scale wind power facility.)

Removing Duplicate Values from a Field in the Attribute Table

Let's say that you somehow have a layer that has multiple features for a certain field value. And you only want one geographic feature for each value in this field. Maybe from multiple Merges. Anyway, now you want to get rid of the duplicate features. If the dataset is large, you don't want to manually select duplicates. That involves too much work and possibility for human error. After doing some Googling, I found this handy ESRI HowTo page:

HowTo: Identify Duplicate field values

This supplies python code for the field calculator and instructions. After creating a new field, the code outputs a 1 for duplicates and a 0 for the other records. Now you can "select by attributes" to select duplicates, switch selection, and export data that will now have no duplicates. Very handy when dealing with layers that have thousands of features. Thanks ESRI!

Changing the Perspective

People are used to 2D, flat maps. So am I. So when I was told that a potential transmission line connection between China and the USA could be straight and almost exclusively cover land instead of ocean, I was skeptical. Silly me. I forgot that the real world is 3D, not a flat map! What am I, a 15th century European? (Actually people weren't necessarily so... in the dark) Anyways, check this out:

Thanks Google Earth!

Lesson learned: consider all the perspectives you can. In maps... and in life.

World Energy Information

Here is an interactive map filled with information from the CIA World FactBook that displays different information about world energy usage:

World Energy Info Interactive Map

Here is an ArcMap version showing the percentage of electricity each country receives from renewable energy sources:

Solar Energy Map - China

This is another ArcGIS Online example. Click the following link for a map of China's solar power and solar potential.

Solar Energy Map - China

Same Map - ArcGIS Explorer Online Version

Joining data by location (spatially)

ArcMap supplies us with the Spatial Join tool, but there is another way to join data by location.  This is very helpful when one wants to have one layer display spatial information from a second layer. For example, you have a California "Counties" layer. You also have a polygon layer for populated areas of California. But you want to change the "Counties" layer's symbology to show relative area or number of national forests inside each county. So you need the "Counties" layer's attribute table to include a field that has the sum of the area of populated place polygons and a sum of the total number of populated place polygons in each county. Still following?

Right click on a feature in the table of contents, click "Join...," and then change the first option to "join data from another layer based on spatial location." Then you can choose to calculate the sum, average, etc. of one layer's field (populated place's population field, shape area field) that spatially is contained in the second layer (counties, in this example). Now the Counties layer contains a field that displays the sum of a field from the Populated Places layer. Pretty sweet.

Tip: if you simply want a count of how many features of one layer are contained in the feature of another layer, just add a short integer field to the first layer in which each feature has a value of one. Then when you calculate the sum, the new field in the second layer will show how many features from the first layer are contained with the fields of the second layer.

Here is a link to ESRI's ArcGIS Help 10.2 page (Joining data by location (spatially) is in the middle of the page):

ArcGIS Help 10.2: About joining and relating tables

The following map supplies an example (Archaeological sites contained in USGS grid quadrangles):

I also wanted to display the relation of site density to supervisor district, so I clipped the USGS Grid layer based on the Supervisor Districts. Then I had to merge the 5 USGS Grid layers back together because I wanted the "Graduated Colors" "Quantities" Symbology to cover the entire county, and didn't want the Natural Breaks skewed from district to district.

ArcGIS Online (not Explorer Online!)

ArcGIS Online might be my answer.  Although there are still data import limitations, performance is faster. The interactivity for the public user is excellent.  I am still working on this map of energy resources in East Asia, but here is the link and a sneak peek:

East Asia Energy Map

ArcGIS Explorer Online: Limitations

Recently, I have become invested in figuring out the best ways to share GIS maps with the public, those who don't have GIS software.  I want the public user to be able to interact with the map (zoom in and out, scroll, click features and read attributes, etc.).

Options:
ArcGIS Online
ArcGIS Explorer Online
Google Earth (Pro)
OpenStreetMap.org
PDF with layers that can be turned on and off (Was recently told this was an option...)
SVG file that allows for great rescalability (able to be re-scaled)

So here is one experimentation with ArcGIS Explorer Online:

http://www.arcgis.com/explorer/?open=d5035208817c40c8ad25b4411afe7744&extent=12544238.9378438,3284098.12651266,14032081.3668867,3988498.52651266

My shapefile for province boundaries was barely accepted (too large!), so I just imported provinces with the highest population density. However, these shapefiles were still very large and now the map on ArcGIS Explorer Online is unbearably slow. I wonder if it is just my shapefiles... I'll try different ones and update the map.

2011 Project - New Park Along the Los Angeles River

Click the following link to explore a 2011 project which found and described five potential plots for a new public park in Los Angeles along the Los Angeles River.

 Los Angeles River Park Suitability Presentation

An Examination of Cartographic Color Schemes

(Update 10/1/13: The qualitative color scheme is useful for displaying nominal data. It is, of course, not meant for displaying an increase or decrease in numerical data over geographic regions.