Lab-9–What’s It About

It may not have been clear what were the connections between the various parts of the Air Quality and GIS lab.  What we were attempting to do is to show how we can use ozone measurements taken at discrete sites to evaluate its level at various times and locations.

Tabs #1, 2

In the first two tabs of the lab you’re given a set of ozone measurements taken at a single point at various times.  The questions ask you to determine a variety of measures of the ozone concentrations using that data.

Tab #3 – ArcGIS work

Here we’re given (the data in the table, which Dr. Pradhan transferred to an ArcGIS file that you actually used) the ozone concentrations at a single time at twenty different locations in the Delaware Valley.  None of those locations are at Drexel, but we’d like to know what was the ozone concentration here at that time.

To estimate that concentration we use a small portion of the capabilities of ArcGIS, a professional-level program, one it might be useful to have on your resume.  The capability we used (one of many) takes a set of data that has geographic location and then creates a contour map of the ozone concentration levels for the entire area bounding the set of data points.  What you’re doing when you query for the “cell” data is asking ArcGIS to tell you the value of the ozone concentration (in this case) at a particular geographic location (the cell).

 

Taken together these tools allow you to understand how ozone (and similarly many other characteristics that vary by geographic location) varies by both time and location.  That’s fundamental to further understanding of the hazards (for ozone) for particular populations.