GIS on the Chester

Crime Analysis and Mapping - Pivot Irrigation Systems

2012-03-10T09:26:00.000-08:00

Recently the Crime Mapping and Analysis Program (CMAP) at Washington College completed an analysis of farm irrigation systems in Maryland. The analysis was performed at the request of the Maryland State Police. You may be wondering what is so valuable on an irrigation system, the answer is metal. Most people have heard in the news of vandals going into abandoned houses and stealing metal pipes, wires and downspouts to sell as scrap metal. Irrigation systems like homes are made of metal and use wire to power their movement around the field. Repairing an irrigation system after a theft can cost as much as $10,000 depending on the size of the system.

The goal of the project was to not only help the Maryland State Police, but all law enforcement in Maryland. The majority of irrigation systems are located on the Eastern Shore of Maryland where the land is flat and agriculture is a large industry. With the help of the State Police, CMAP was able to obtain the approximate location of every irrigation system that operated last summer. CMAP then produced a map tailored to each county in the State to help law enforcement understand where at risk systems were in their own jurisdiction. The map was then added to a bulletin that was disseminated to law enforcement.

In addition to the completed analysis, Washington College students are being engaged to enhance the accuracy of the irrigation data. While the location of irrigation systems that operated last summer was extremely valuable it does not include all systems, and the size of the system and the spatial location is often off by as much as a 1/2mile. Students are using high resolution ortho-imagery to add any irrigation system that were missed and attribute all irrigation systems with information about their size. Once this process in complete other students will be able to use actual data on where irrigation thefts have occurred to analyze and determine if there are any factors that may make an irrigation system more prone to theft.

Hunter H. Harris appointed as new Research Associate at Washington College GIS Program

2012-02-28T08:53:00.006-08:00

I am very excited to announce that Hunter Harris, President of Aloft Aerial Photography, has joined our GIS team at Washington College as a research associate to educate our students on how to work with aerial photography and aerial video. I encourage you to check out his website at http://www.flyaloft.com. Hunter is truly an amazing guy with decades of experience flying airplanes, seaplanes, gliders, jets, helicopters, and blimps. He flew the Pink Floyd Blimp “Division Belle” promoting their 1994 world tour, for example. He is also an excellent photographer and his skills will be a valuable asset to our program while his knowledge and experience will greatly help our students broaden their experiences while at the college.

Hunter has long standing ties to the college. His grandfather and father were both Washington College graduates and his family are 6th generation residents of Kent County, Maryland - newcomers, so to speak, for long term Eastern Shore residents. We have been involved with Hunter for years now and strongly support his concerns over the environmental degradation of the Chesapeake Bay. His exhibit “The Bay From Above” was recently featured at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum showing early aerial images and present day aerial images of various locations around the Chesapeake Bay.

In his new role as a research associate, he will act as a mentor to several students including Michael Baker, Gavin Townsend, and Caitlyn Riehl in the GIS lab. In exchange, our students will help his company enter a new age of digital products, social media, and web marketing. Stay tuned because there is going to be some really revolutionary products coming out of our association with Hunter and the dedicated hard work of our students.

Find out more about Hunter's work in this video:

Open Educational Resources Movement and Geospatial Technology

2012-02-21T11:47:00.000-08:00

I recently read an article by David DiBiase in the Fall 2009 online digital copy of Cartographic Perspectives: Journal of the North American Cartographic Information Society, called “Freeing CP: GIS&T and NACIS in the Open Educational Resources Movement.” Check out this website and scroll down the page to read the article yourself: http://www.nacis.org/index.cfm?x=5.

This really got me wondering what we are doing with our online geospatial curriculum on our http://geoworkshops.org site. For many years now I have offered this curriculum free to any K-12 school that wants it since we developed these materials with local, state, and federal grant money - but I want to take it a little bit further now.

As we update our materials to ArcGIS 10, I have started posting my new lectures to YouTube under our GIS3wcGetIt account and will also be posting them to Teacher Tube and Itunes University as some schools block access to YouTube. You can view our growing YouTube collection for our GT-101 course by going to this LINK. We will allow immediate guest access to our older six courses on ArcGIS 9.3 and as we update and improve our materials for ArcGIS 10, we will also permit guest access to these courses as well. All of our materials are posted using the Creative Commons Attribution license and use is restricted to non-commercial use.

Over the next few months we will be creating a share site where you will be able to download all of the materials we used to make these courses. We encourage people to use these, and if you think you can improve our materials, we welcome the help and hope you send the improvements back to us. We will put credits on the materials whenever someone helps us in this way. By giving the original source materials out this will be easy to do.

Now you may wonder how we will sustain this or make any money if we give all of our materials away. Well we do have existing training contracts to supply training to a number of groups at costs that are way below market value for professional development GIS courses. These students will be able to upload assignments for comment and helpful suggestions from our qualified staff who use GIS every day in their work. Our paying students will also be able to consult us for help with the lessons and any other GIS question they have via email, phone, and interactive web meetings using software such as Adobe Connect. And when they finish the course, they will receive formal documentation of their accomplishments that they can use to further their careers and for certification purposes where continuing education must be documented. I think we will make out just fine and feel good about it too.

If you agree, liking us on our Facebook account would be helpful.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Washington-Colleges-GIS-Program/294580066224

Written by Stewart Bruce, GIS Program Coordinator at Washington College

Mapping the Past: The Surveys of George Washington - A Lecture Presented by Washington College

2012-02-14T06:43:00.001-08:00

On February 22^nd, 2012 Washington College will be playing host to an exciting event for the celebration of its namesake’s birthday. At 5:00 PM in the Gibson Center for the Arts’ Decker Theatre, Mr. Edward Redmond, Senior Reference Specialist and Curator in the Library of Congress, Geography and Maps Division, will be giving his lecture on the maps of George Washington. Mr. Redmond is not only an internationally recognized authority on George Washington’s maps but prior to his work with the Library of Congress he taught Early American History at West Chester University and is now working on an atlas of George Washington’s maps. With such a noteworthy authority, this lecture is sure to be nothing but eye opening and informative. Mapping the Past: The Surveys of George Washington is hosted by the Center of Environment and Society of Washington College, the Geographic Information Systems Laboratory, and the GRW Program. A number of paintings of George Washington as a surveyor can be found here.

In conjunction with Mr. Redmond’s lecture, an exhibit of approximately ten of George Washington’s maps will be on display in the William Frank Visual Arts Hallway of the Gibson Center for the Arts. This exhibit will available for viewing from February 18^th- 26^th, 2012. The maps that will be displayed range in years from 1748 to 1793 and are all maps that Washington himself drew, from one of his first maps, or Lawrence Washington’s turnip garden at Mount Vernon, to land surveys and a few maps depicting his estate at Mount Vernon. Accompanying each of the maps will be a short description of the map as well as a locator map to give the viewer a better understanding of the location of the area.

Can’t make the lecture? Don’t fret! In making the effort to make this wonderful lecture available to a broad audience, the entire lecture will be streamed live online through a webcast at http://live.washcoll.edu, which is provided by the Office of Information Technologies at Washington College. The program will begin at approximately 4:50 PM on February 22^nd, 2012. By making this lecture available to the public and online, we hope that Mr. Redmond’s lecture will be an enjoyable experience for all.

Click to Enlarge:

The Washington College GIS Program Provides Mapping and Data Services to Maryland Health Resource Centers

2012-02-06T07:15:00.001-08:00

In partnership with the Maryland Community Health Resources Commission, the GIS program has been working for the past year and a half to provide in-depth mapping services and data analysis to federally qualified health centers and other health care providers in the state of Maryland. Many of these health care providers focus on low-income, uninsured, and other high-risk populations. By combining demographic analysis, patient data, and spatial analysis, GIS can help community health resources target the people most in need of their services more effectively.

The maps are custom-produced to best fit the needs of each respective organization. Some products are used for reference purposes and are as simple as a map of the current and proposed health center locations. Others are much more complex; for instance, overlaying regional poverty and infant mortality data to pinpoint areas of highest concern. With organizations that have signed an a formal agreement with us, we also perform detailed patient distribution mapping which helps health centers determine exactly where their patients are coming from and what health indicators they exhibit. However, in this situation, we must take data security very seriously because of HIPAA requirements; thus, maps utilizing patient data are not available for public view.

Most recently, the GIS lab is working with the Community Health Resources Commission (CHRC) on a major overhaul of their website. In addition to updating the layout that will enable the CHRC to coordinate with other Maryland government sites, the latest site will also boast new content and features. Visitors will be able to pull up information on the CHRC’s special projects and targeted goals, browse an interactive map of the 78 health grantees, and search for nearby health centers by address using a custom Microsoft Silverlight application. This project is nearing completion, so look for the new and improved site to debut soon!

Click Image to Enlarge:

Washington College GIS Program Bringing the Pluckemin Artillery Cantonment to Life

2011-12-14T14:34:00.001-08:00

By providing a visual history and developing accurate renderings of historic sites, GIS plays a major role in bringing history to life in truly innovative ways. I was given the unique opportunity of bringing the Pluckemin Artillery Cantonment, an 18^th-century military training academy that predates West Point, to life – 230 years after our nation’s army last used it.

This was no small task since it involved designing and building a realistic looking colonial structure from scratch without the aid of photographs or paintings. The only image that I had to work with was the so-called “Lille” drawing that was made in the winter of 1779 by a soldier turned artist. From this lone black-and-white image, and the scant archeological evidence that accompanied it, I designed a conjectural representation of what the Academy building and the long room that connected onto it would have looked like when the Continental Army stayed there over the winter of 1778-9.

Starting last June, Stewart Bruce, GIS Program Coordinator for Washington College’s GIS Lab, approached me as a possible worker on this project. On Wednesday, August 10, 2011, fellow Intern Katherine Wares ’14 and I trekked up to Trenton, New Jersey, along with Stewart and Dr. John Seidel, the Director for the Washington College Center for Environment & Study. There we met with Dr. Ian Burrow at Hunter Research to discuss the specifics of the Pluckemin archeological site. With the new and useful information acquired at this meeting, we were able to set about our project to successfully render a digital 3-dimensional image of the Pluckemin Artillery Cantonment, as it looked at the dawn of our country’s existence.

Here are some of the renderings that I developed for the project:

Finally, if you are interested in learning more about the Pluckemin Artillery Encampment check out this narrated history of the site and the teaser video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz8mVXufSBc&feature=youtu.be

http://youtu.be/NzLYeZIVBRE

The full animated video will be released at a later date with more information about how this first phase was developed and our ambitious plans for phase two.

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Written by Jimmy Bigwood, GIS Intern - Washington College Class of 2012.

Washington College GIS Program Takes an Exclusive Tour of the U.S. Library of Congress

2011-12-08T11:44:00.001-08:00

Several GIS interns, along with Professor Stewart Bruce’s GRW class, recently took a trip to the Library of Congress to receive an exclusive tour of their map rooms. Upon arrival, we were greeted by Mr. Michael Buscher, Collections Management Team Leader of the Geography and Map Division at the Library of Congress. Mr. Buscher escorted the group through many rooms filled with thousands of maps containing information about seemingly every place and time in history. We saw many incredible maps and atlases including an original map hand drawn by George Washington of the Potomac River and Mt. Vernon. We were also shown the first map of the new United States made after the American Revolution (as pictured below) that was recently sold at auction for 2 million dollars and then donated to the Library of Congress. The tour continued with a map that was originally annotated by Lewis and Clark, along with Stonewall Jackson’s cartographer’s original map book and a map drawn by him. This is especially relevant to our program because during the Civil War General Stonewall Jackson used GEOINT to get an advantage over the Union forces. The General told Capt. Jedediah Hotchkiss, "I want you to make me a map of the Valley, from Harpers Ferry to Lexington, showing all the points of offense and defense." Considering Hotchkiss's mapmaking skills, this would give Jackson a significant advantage the Union army in the campaign to come.

The staff informed us how these maps come into the possession of the Library of Congress, including through private donors interested in protecting an artifact or via government agencies that no longer require them. The Library of Congress also contains a large and growing collection of Sanborn maps that they are making digital. The Library of Congress is working together with the GIS lab for our Easton project by digitizing their Sanborn maps of Easton, Maryland.

After seeing a vast array of maps, atlases, and globes, both new and old, we were shown the room where maps are scanned and digitized using an extremely large state-of-the-art scanning machine (pictured below). However, the trip did not end there. We also visited the Library of Congress Jefferson building and were able to see Thomas Jefferson’s library, as well as a copy of the 2 million dollar map we had previously seen in person. To cap the day off our group toured the U.S. Botanical Garden.

With George Washington’s upcoming birthday early next year, Ed Redmond, Senior Reference Specialist and Curator, Vault Collections of the Geography and Map Division at the Library of Congress, will be giving a talk on George Washington's maps here at Washington College for the occasion. Coupled with this talk, the GIS Program is planning an exhibit of Washington's maps and surveys to coincide with the celebration of George Washington's birthday.

The Washington College GIS Program Designs Online Training for Teachers and Students through the U.S. Department of Education’s Race to the Top Grant

2011-11-22T11:14:00.000-08:00

As our nation tries to remain competitive when it comes to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), it is vital that we embrace new methods for helping our nation’s educators inspire the next generation of scientists, engineers and technologists who will ultimately drive innovation for the U.S.

The GIS program has entered into a venture with the Education Department at Washington College to create an online training course for its teachers. This course will give teachers the resources they need to incorporate STEM into their classrooms. This project is funded by a U.S. Department of Education’s Race to the Top Grant. Over the course of four years the GIS curriculum will be turned into a resource for teachers and their students to learn key concepts of STEM and GIS.

Another part of this project is making STEM entertaining for students’ and incorporating it into everyday learning practices. To kick this off we have recently introduced a STEM Club at the local elementary school in Chestertown, MD where students will be learning Google Sketch Up and about basic machines and technologies. Twice a week, 5-12 students will learn the tools and skills associated with Google SketchUp. The student’s will be given a design task that will require them to create a model with specific measurements in 3D. The model will have to look presentable and functional. The students will not only learn about STEM concepts, but will learn to work together and collaborate on ideas.

Over the summer there will be a week long teacher training on the STEM material. This training will provide a chance for the teachers to dive in to the material while having the support of the people who created the material. This will also give the GIS lab a chance to receive some feedback on the lessons from the teachers so that we can make improvements to the material in the second year of the grant. This STEM curriculum touches on Google Earth, Google Sketch Up, Google Earth Tours, GPS, the use of GIS in Ecology, as well as the fundamentals of STEM. With the creation of this course we are hoping to encourage more teachers to incorporate STEM into their classrooms and show them how GIS is the perfect vehicle for doing that.

Easton, Maryland Historic District Brought to Life with 3D Imagery by Washington College GIS Program

2011-11-17T11:00:00.000-08:00

GIS plays a critical role in regional town planning issues especially when it comes to historic districts. While traditional GIS mapping of these areas have been vital to new development in these areas, the rise of 3D provides even greater visual awareness for decision-making. This is why we are excited about our efforts to help the Town of Easton bring its historic district to life in 3D.
Funded by the Maryland Historical Trust through a grant to Easton, our team of students and staff are busy creating 3D streetscapes in Easton, Maryland using Google Sketch-up and other software programs such as Geoweb3D (http://www.geoweb3d.com/). They are also building a relational database and a historic GIS map of the town dating back to the 1800’s.

To comprehensively map the Easton Historic District, students are taking pictures of every building in the historic district to be entered into an Access database, which will be used to generate data entry forms for field surveys. A base GIS map will be created and will be linkable to the database. A variety of data sources will be used for this project, including color Sanborn maps from the Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division (http://www.loc.gov/rr/geogmap/), which will be georeferenced for the Town of Easton.

Students are also creating 3D buildings, with a focus on complete streetscapes, using Google Sketch-up for 120 buildings in the Historic District that will be viewable in Google Earth. An essential part of this phase of the project is aerial imagery provided by Aloft Aerial Photography so the students can have a complete image of each building (www.flyaloft.com). The Town of Easton is thinking proactively about using these 3D streetscapes to aid in town planning issues, especially those relating to new development in the Historic District. Once the 3D streetscapes are completed, a video animation of the Historic District in 3D will be created and shared on the web. This animation work is made possible through the donation of a Quadro 6000 video card from NVIDIA which is perhaps the best video card for producing graphics intensive videos such as we are using (http://www.nvidia.com/object/product-quadro-6000-us.html).

Written by staff member Erica Rhoades.

Washington College GIS Taps Into The 'Best and Brightest' for Its Intern Program

2011-11-10T15:54:00.000-08:00

Intern Spotlight: Class of 2012

Current interns are participating in hands-on training in ArcGIS, Google Earth, Google SketchUp, Powerpoint, Articulate, AutoDesk 3DS Max, video editing, Geotime, and more - all using real data. Thanks to the efforts of our students, we are able to take on the wide variety of projects showcased in this blog.
________________________________________

Jimmy Bigwood '12
GIS Intern
jbigwood2@washcoll.edu

Jimmy is currently a senior at WC hoping to double major in history and physics. He hails from Towson, Maryland and is a member of the WC Musician's Union and enjoys playing music and spending time outdoors. This past summer he worked on Washington College's ongoing Poplar Grove Project at the Maryland State Archives.
________________________________________

Jessica Brennan '12
GIS Intern
jbrennan2@washcoll.edu
Jessica Brennan is a senior double majoring in anthropology and English. She is from Morrisville, PA, and she transferred to WAC from Bucks County Community College her sophomore year. Jessica performs on campus with the Early Music Consort and Girls on the Chester, an a cappella group. She is new to the GIS lab this semester and is working on the Easton 3D project.
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Chris Brown '12
GIS Intern
cbrown5@washcoll.edu
Chris is a senior at Washington College and will be majoring in history. He is from Waynesboro, PA. He is interested in how GIS can relate to history. He enjoys playing intramural sports. This year he is once again the cryer for townball, an eighteenth century predecessor to baseball, played on the Campus Green Fridays in the fall and spring.
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Smaa Koraym '12
GIS Intern
skoraym2@washcoll.edu
Smaa is majoring in biology with a chemistry minor and conducting the pre-med program. Her ultimate goal is to build a hospital in Egypt that would provide medical care to individuals who otherwise would not have access. She enjoys reading about international issues.
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Lydia Powell '12
GIS Intern
lpowell2@washcoll.edu
Lydia is a senior at Washington College, majoring in biochemistry premed. She is from Moorestown, NJ, and she is the captain of the women's rugby club. Lydia is currently working on a project with Dr. Ryan on Lyme Disease.

FIRST-HAND PERSPECTIVE OF WASHINGTON COLLEGE GIS PROGRAM’S WORK WITH THE NATIONAL GEOSPATIAL-INTELLIGENCE AGENCY (NGA)

2011-11-04T13:44:00.000-07:00

I am currently a member of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s (NGA) Pilot Internship program. Along with the other members of the internship program, I am working with open source data to collect current and future information about Peru, specifically the country’s energy usage. This means that I am collecting information through avenues that everyone can now access due to search engines such as Google which has streamlined the search for information on the internet. Google has also enabled users to remove language barriers by converting webpages in different languages via Google Translator. The search doesn’t stop there though - we are utilizing print sources, social media and satellite imagery to complete our reports.

The objective of the internship is to provide the NGA with sufficient anticipatory data on a fringe country such as Peru. As a result of less civil strife or damage from extreme weather than other countries might experience, Peru is currently not a big player in the news; thus, the NGA has not prioritized Peru. With the whole world to cover, the NGA focuses on countries in war time and those that have been devastated by extreme weather conditions. By providing anticipatory data on Peru we are hopefully giving a substantial foundation of knowledge to NGA about the country, which will help the agency should Peru suddenly become a priority.

The objective of the internship is broad so the program is broken up into three groups all covering different topics: 1) demographics, 2) water usage and, 3) energy usage, with my specific topic being the energy usage. To provide a good basis for the NGA we are exploring many aspects of energy. These subjects range from the analysis of macro level questioning regarding Peru’s overall energy usage, energy import and export, usage of alternative energies and fossil fuels to a more micro level of analysis seeing if different regions contribute dissimilar levels of pollution, and how many citizens drive cars contributing to gas emissions. To aid in the presentation of this information I am utilizing ArcGIS 10 software to create maps of Peru’s energy grid. This map will include the electrical grid and power stations that contribute to Peru’s total amount of available energy.

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Written by Cara Murray.

Cara is a sophomore from Frederick, MD majoring in Environmental Studies. She enjoys participating in every aspect of WC Theater, volunteering with the Service Council and going to shore clean-ups with SEA. This is her second year working for GIS.

Meet more of our Interns: http://gis.washcoll.edu/interns.php

Chestertown Comes to Life in 3D

2011-10-31T13:09:00.004-07:00

With the help of students and staff, the Chestertown 3D project incorporated data from multiple locations to create a full 3D visualization of the Chestertown, Maryland Historic District (Chestertown). This was accomplished by using many software programs, including Google Sketchup, Google Earth, Geoweb 3D, ArcMap 10, Global Mapper 11, Jing and Camtasia Studio. By using data from these programs, the team was able to bring full 3D images of buildings with georeferenced light poles, building polygons and trees to build a rich full 3D environment.

The focus of this project was to accurately represent Chestertown in 3D. This was done by compiling data on each historic building and taking detailed photographs of the accompanying buildings’ architecture. Using these images, each building was built from the ground up in a program called Google Sketchup. After the building was accurately modeled, it was placed on the matching property in Google Earth and exported, then brought into a program called Geoweb 3D. Using Geoweb 3D, the tree, light and polygon data, along with the 3D buildings, were incorporated into the program to create a living scene that modeled the Chestertown Historic District. Students and staff gathered real tree and light data, and then placed the corresponding points on the exact spots in which they were located. These were bundled together in files in ArcMap, where they could then be used in Geoweb 3D to place 3D trees and lights.

Through the combined efforts of multiple students and staff members, this project brought together layers of data and files in order to create a rich full 3D environment that shows an exact replica of the Chestertown Historic District. The Chestertown 3D project has provided future opportunities for the lab to conduct similar projects in other towns, with Easton, Maryland already under way.

Fly over Chestertown, MD: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpelgUUjTUU

More information regarding the Chestertown 3D Project: http://gis.washcoll.edu/chestertown_3d.php

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We would like to thank NVIDIA who donated a Quadro 5700 video card that was needed to complete this project: http://www.nvidia.com/page/home.html

Written by Tyler Brice, Washington College class of 2013.

Tyler Brice '13
GIS Intern
tbrice2@washcoll.edu

Tyler is a junior from Chestertown, MD and plans to major in biology and hopes to pursue the pre-medical studies program. He is currently an EMT-B and runs calls with the local EMS station. Meet more of our Interns: http://gis.washcoll.edu/interns.php

Washington GIS Moves to New State-of-the-Art Facility to Meet Enhanced Growth of the Program

2011-10-26T13:11:00.000-07:00

Moving vans arrived late in the summer in front of Goldstein Hall to move the GIS Laboratory to their new home in the Chestertown Business Park. Since 2004, the GIS Laboratory has been located in Goldstein 206, and in 2008 they expanded to also include Goldstein 200. However, with a growing need for space and increased physical and network security, it became evident that a move was needed. Due to space limitations on campus, any move would have to be to an office away from the main Washington College Campus. A potential space was quickly identified and secured at 151 Dixon Drive Suite 3 in Chestertown, a ten-minute walk from campus. The new office space is three times the space the GIS Laboratory occupied in Goldstein Hall.

After the space was leased the real work began, with a mere three weeks before the start of the academic year to move desks, computer equipment, install and configure network equipment and move a server. Thanks to a professional moving company, John Massey, Dave de’Marsi and Sarah Smith from the Office of Information Technology at Washington College, the GIS Laboratory was up and running when students returned for the start of the school year.

The GIS Laboratory now features private offices for full time staff, a conference room, a larger student work area and increased physical security measures, including a centrally monitored alarm system, electronic access control and video surveillance. The GIS Laboratory has expanded from nine student workstations to sixteen. Additionally, the GIS Laboratory hours have been extended until 6:30pm during the week and from 9am to 2pm on Saturdays to allow student interns more flexibility.

The new address of the GIS Laboratory is 151 Dixon Drive Suite 3 Chestertown, MD 21620. Along with the new office came new telephone numbers. Please be sure to update your contact directory with the numbers below:

Carol Wagner: 443-282-0010
Andrew Wright: 443-282-0011
Stew Bruce: 443-282-0012
Emily Aiken: 443-282-0014
Erica Rhoades: 443-282-0015
Samantha Bulkilvish: 443-282-0016

Washington College GIS Program Helps The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Predict Future Problems in Peru

2011-10-17T10:59:00.000-07:00

Being able to anticipate and mitigate future problems in developing countries is a core tenet of the U.S. Intelligence Community. For the first time ever, the premier intelligence agency for imagery and mapping, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), is tapping into the world of academia to help anticipate future problems in the developing nation of Peru.

Being led by Professors Stewart Bruce (GIS), Aaron Lampman (Anthropology) and Andrew Oros (Political Science and International Studies), this unprecedented program will involve using open source software to obtain information regarding demographics, water resources, health-related issues, energy and food resources so that future problems can be anticipated in both scope and location in Peru.

Three student teams are compiling this information and will be resending it to the NGA as a final report later this year. With so many hot spots throughout the world, intelligence agencies have had to focus the majority of their attention away from calmer areas, like Peru, that may experience difficulties in the future. Each team hopes to identify areas that deserve the NGA’s attention so potential issues can be avoided. This is especially important because of the possibility of security problems arising from the possible scarcity of necessary resources.

This project gives interdisciplinary Washington College students the ability to become more familiar with GIS projects as well as highlight their skills and gain knowledge in the intricacies of the work of the nation’s intelligence agencies.

What we’ve been doing:

We’re currently in the process of figuring out how to gain and, with more difficulty, process geotagged information on crime in Lima. Specifically, we are trying to figure out how to filter information through social media into a central database because most social media now comes with a latitude/longitude location when it is shared through a cellphone. This has been done before for crises in Iran, Syria and Egypt. Hopefully, by creating the necessary framework before a problem appears the NGA can be better prepared to sift through the millions of pieces of information they will receive. Open source geospatial programs exist for uploading information to a central database; we’re also trying to figure out how to incorporate those.

Crime! Works So Well it’s Practically Criminal

2011-04-25T13:51:00.001-07:00

Through funding from the Governor’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention, the GIS lab has developed MOMS, (Maryland Off ender Management System), an innovative web-based application that centralizes justice information and shares it with designated law enforcement and criminal justice agencies. New funding will provide a number of technical enhancements to MOMS, improving the ability of the application to handle additional datasets, and improve the security and reliability of the system. James Costigan, Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Baltimore Field Office said that MOMS will help “protect the citizens of Maryland and Delaware through the integration of law enforcement data.

Devin Hayward ‘14
Devin Hayward is a freshman at Washington College and is majoring in Psychology with a concentration in clinical counseling. Devin became interested in GIS when she learned about what the lab does with crime mapping and analysis. She hopes that working in the GIS “crime lab” will provide her with skills and knowledge that will help her later on in her career goals. Devin is currently working on crime mapping and data analysis, most of which is specifically focused to improving MOMS.

Sam Margolis ‘14
Sam decided to work for GIS because he has always been interested in Criminology and after taking the classes on GIS and seeing its potential he became more interested in the topic. Currently he is working in the crime department of the GIS Lab. His current project is making a map showing all of the burglaries that have taken place in and around Hyattsville, Maryland. By using GIS he hopes to help law enforcement agencies do their job more efficiently by using the maps to determine any crime patterns in the area.

Jeff Sullivan ‘14
Jeff is a freshman here at Washington College, and plans on majoring in Environmental Studies. Jeff became interested in GIS after taking the introductory course and seeing its potential relevance with wildlife management. He hopes that working as a GIS intern will expand his abilities and knowledge of GIS software. Currently Jeff is working on research about previous off ender mapping systems, and will soon begin working with the MOMS system.

GIS Close To Home

2011-04-02T13:50:00.000-07:00

By: Otto Borden ‘13

Ever tour Europe without leaving the comfort of your couch? Or explore the history of Islamic travelers through Google Tours? The students in Professor Sorrentino’s class had the chance to do just that. The GIS lab was able to teach the students how to use Google tours and how to create their own tours. This meant including images, blurbs, and hyperlinks to the sources of their information to give the best Google tour for their assignment. Also, GIS had the privilege of running the lab’s online learning program for Professor Sorrentino. While the learning process is taking place close to home, the subjects and environments are across land, sea, and history!

Mapping Beyond the Lab

2011-03-20T13:49:00.000-07:00

By: Matt Stiles 11’

Over the summer I started working in the GIS lab, working on crime mapping projects along with a few other projects. I also worked with the summer camp where I got to spend a few days driving a boat up and down the Chester River, mapping docks and collecting water samples. As an Environmental Studies major, during the beginning of my senior year I needed to start developing a plan for my senior capstone project. After some preliminary research I decided to do my project as a comparison between ethanol and biodiesel. I am able to utilize many of my skills that I obtained working in the GIS lab to help with my Capstone Project. I have been collecting national data about crops and ethanol producing plants to show where ethanol can be produced. This is very important because ethanol, unlike biodiesel, has many challenges when it comes to transportation because it absorbs water rapidly and can go bad. These maps can show where ethanol can be easily produced and marketed, and they are important because the only way that ethanol could be feasible is if it can reach the consumers.

Project STEM: Improving Education

2011-03-07T13:48:00.000-08:00

By: Devin Hayward ‘14

Nationwide, the falling standards in education in American schools has become a source of public outcry. Here, on the Eastern Shore, Washington College has partnered with Kent and Queen Anne’s County public schools to improve teaching and development in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). By applying for an Education Grant WC’s Departments of Education, Biology, Chemistry, and GIS (Geographic Information Systems) Lab will be working together with the local schools to help improve these standards. The primary objectives are to “provide professional development” to raise the skill level of teachers and to “develop elementary STEM certification for the whole state,” says Michelle Johnson, a WC professor of education. To manage a STEM influenced classroom, pre-service teachers will participate in a STEM field experience. Also, to earn CEU credit, in-service teachers will complete an Intro to STEM course. Faculty from the Departments of Chemistry and Biology, along with staff from GIS, will assist with two summer professional development experiences that will last for three days. Twenty teachers will be able to participate. For the first two days they will be in training, and on the third day they will be in the classroom to implement what they have learned. Not only does this benefit teachers and students of Kent and Queen Anne’s county, but students of WC as well. Classroom teachers who participate in the summer experience will host a WC field student. The field student, who will be there to help implement the STEM classroom, will gain one credit for their participation.

Pot Luck Projects

2011-03-02T13:56:00.000-08:00

Currently, the GIS team is enjoying the pleasure of working with the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene on a project that will help the government visualize the relationship between patients and travel distance to Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) locations. The project consists of gathering information that will allow the lab to create visual maps of this relationship. Such maps greatly help the individual FQHC’s evaluate which areas are medically underrepresented and which region would be ideal to place a new FQHC.

GIS, Public Health, and Ultimate Goals

By: Smaa Koraym ‘12

This project has expanded the horizon of the WAC GIS team. Having the opportunity to work on such a project is particularly important to me because it touches on my career path, public health. Furthermore, I will have the chance to understand the governmental aspect of how to run an organized health care system. My interest in such knowledge and skill is rooted from my goal to implement a clean, organized health care system in many underdeveloped countries, especially in my home country of Egypt.

Where is GIS Taking You?

2011-03-02T13:54:00.000-08:00

By: Nicholas Tremper

I'm currently studying in London participating in the Hansard Program. Luckily, I've been able to get assignments from the GIS lab expanding on what I do when I'm on campus. Since all of our educational materials are online I'm able to work on the lectures from abroad. This is great because it allows me to keep on top of what's happening in the lab as well as getting to be a part of the ever evolving GIS curriculum. We're able to reach students throughout the country as work is being done throughout the world.

Current Projects: Walking Maps

2011-03-02T13:42:00.000-08:00

By: Heather Black

It probably doesn’t come as a shock that everything in and around Chestertown is within 3 miles of the college, taking about 15 minutes to walk. A little further away is the country club, taking around 30 minutes to walk to, where you can hit some golf balls around. Or, if golf is not your style, you can stay right on campus and still walk just over a mile. Plus staying on campus provides you with all the added benefits of the Casey Swim Center and the Lifetime Fitness Center. Why not enjoy the beauty of Chestertown and exercise at the same time?

The GIS Lab has partnered with the Director of Human Resources, Alan Chesney, and Recreation Director, Jonathan Jenkins, to establish walking maps that show faculty, staff , and students different routes. These routes can be taken at your leisure to take advantage of the chance to exercise and be outdoors. Since the weather will be getting better soon, we are hoping that more and more members of the community will decide to spend time outdoors. This will be a better opportunity than being confined to the indoors of the academic buildings or the dorms. By showing the Washington College community the different walking routes that they could take, we are hoping to encourage the community to exercise. We are doing so by showing that one does not need to go to the gym and lift weights or run on a treadmill to lose weight. You can instead simply step outside and take a walk. You can access these walking maps from the following link.
http://gis.washcoll.edu/walkingmaps/

Alumni in the Spotlight

2011-02-12T13:55:00.000-08:00

By: Kathy Gerhart ‘10

After graduating from WC with a BA in Environmental Studies, I was hired by Alpha Environmental Management Corporation in mid-June. It is a consulting company that focuses on the fields of environment, energy, and safety. My position is Environmental Analyst. My main duty is to perform storm water inspections at residential construction sites. These inspections are required as part of the NPDES permit which was put into place as part of the Clean Water Act. On site I check erosion and sediment controls to make sure that the site is not polluting local water ways.

Crime! Works So Well it’s Practically Criminal

2010-12-03T12:45:00.001-08:00

Maryland Crime Mapping and Analysis Program

With the renewed Governor’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention (GOCCP) grant, the GIS lab continues its work to provide crime mapping in the state of Maryland. The Washington College GIS Lab also conducts an outreach program, which invites law enforcement agencies to sign up for crime mapping training. Caryn Thomas ’05 M’09 and Andrew Wright guide student interns in the lab. Here are some recent projects that the WC crime fighting students are working on.

Stephanie Olsen ‘11

Stephanie is currently working on the violence prevention initiative, researching and locating violent criminals and sex offenders for the Maryland Off ender Management System. She provides corrections to Division of Parole and Probation agents to improve the mapability of violent criminals. This map, along with the data, is then used by the police agents and parole officers to keep track of offenders that have been released into the community in order to keep the people around them safe.

Matt Stiles ‘11

Matt has been working in the GIS lab all summer and is back to work during his senior year at Washington College. He works on crime mapping creating maps and tables for different law enforcement agencies. Most of the maps Matt makes are “Welcome Wagon” maps. These maps show all of the people released from jail in a given area for a given period of time. After Matt makes the map he makes a table listing all the people on the map and what they did to be put in jail. Matt can make many different types of maps and tables, and they can all be customized to what any of the number of law enforcement agencies would like to have.

Kim Zepeda ‘12

Kim, like Stephanie, is also on working on improving the mapping rate of the most violent criminals currently on Maryland’s Parole and Probation. With the help and research of student interns the GIS program has assisted in increasing the mapping percentage of the violence prevention initiative offenders from 87% in August 2009 to 96.4% in August 2010 and the mapping percentage of sex offenders from 86.6% in March 2010 to 94% in August 2010.

Digital Education

2010-11-14T12:42:00.001-08:00

By: Nick Tremper ‘13

On top of doing its own projects, the Washington College GIS program has continued its commitment to educate others on how to use GIS software to make today’s students more competitive in the geospatial workforce of tomorrow by using the Geospatial Education Technology Initiative (GetIT). Moodle, a virtual learning environment, is used by the GIS lab to teach the material (www.wcgetit.org ). Our Moodle program debuted last February and has been extremely successful. Students at Washington College, various K-12 schools, and even individuals at home, are able to log onto the website to listen to lectures, perform lab exercises, and interact with other students. This medium allows students to always have access to their coursework, as well as easy access to their instructors. Last January Washington College GIS received a renewal of its BRAC grant which is funded through the Maryland Higher Education Commission. This grant allowed GIS education to be even more accessible to adults throughout Maryland. As part of that grant, Washington College GIS promised to enroll and educate 300 people on GIS and GIS software and is currently on target to reach that number by December 31, 2010. GIS has recently applied for a renewal of the BRAC grant, which will be used to update the curriculum to the new version of GIS software – ArcView 10.

GIS Close to Home

2010-11-10T12:57:00.000-08:00

By: Brittany Skinner ‘13

Last spring I had the pleasure of teaching children from the Alley Teen Center how to operate Google SketchUp, a tool used by the GIS Lab to create 3D buildings. Since a good portion of them had done work with SketchUp before it was easy for them to get back into the swing of things. After a test trial to see what everyone’s skills were, we gave each of them a simple two story house to build and offered prizes to the person with the best house. Hopefully this semester we can pick up right where we left off!

Pot Luck Projects

2010-10-24T13:01:00.000-07:00

By: Anna Burress ‘13

The GIS lab will be going global this semester! GIS intern Anna Burress will be attending the International Political Science Association’s annual convention in 2012, and as part of her research, she is collecting and interpreting GIS data on the Middle East. She is researching the failure to institute democracy in Pakistan, and in preparation, she is utilizing the capabilities of the GIS to aid in studying current and historical democracy data of the country. Anna is finding that GIS and international studies go hand in hand in these cases. Issues such as the rise of regional ideological groups in place of party affiliation are directly affected by the geographic makeup of the country. Furthermore, clashes between historical ethnic groups that have thrived in Pakistan for centuries can be identified much more effectively with the aid of mapping visuals. Anna is finding that with the help of GIS research, the product that she will take with her to the conference will be much stronger.

Current Projects: Geoweb 3D WC Campus

2010-10-02T12:32:00.004-07:00

By: Tyler Brice ‘13

Over the summer the GIS lab embarked on a new and exciting project. This project brings the entire Washington College campus into the virtual world. Using a variety of programs such as Google SketchUp, Google Earth, Digital Photos, ArcMap 10 and Geoweb 3D, the lab is creating an accurate 3D visualization of the campus. The picture to the right is a detailed in-progress snapshot of the campus with accurately modeled buildings, call boxes, light post positions, and trees displaying the correct tree species found throughout WC.

Based on photos of the campus the GIS interns use SketchUp and create the buildings from the ground up to create a detailed, accurate model. Then, using ArcMap and data collected by previous interns, the students bring in detailed point fi les of tree and light post positions. The components were then brought together in Geoweb 3D to create a virtual campus. The GIS lab will use this project to give virtual tours of the campus, shows its appearance at different times of the day with different lighting levels, and even to model its development over the years. All of this brings the campus into the future.

WC Campus in Geoweb 3D as it looks today with accurately modeled buildings, updated call box and light post positions and the correct species of trees found throughout WC.

Example of an unfinished building in Google SketchUp.

Alumni in the Spotlight

2010-09-23T13:01:00.000-07:00

By: Nichole Bryant ‘09

A graduate of the WC Business Management program, Nichole took an interest in GIS while interning in the lab her senior year. Upon graduation she worked full time in the lab developing the online learning environment. Now, she is enrolled full time in the accelerated Masters of GIS Management Program at Salisbury University. She started in June of this year and already has 1/3 of the program complete! The program provides a practical, hands-on educational experience that prepares students for a career in the administration of GIS.

Eye on the Environment: GIS on the Chester

2010-09-15T13:07:00.000-07:00

BY; Smaa Koraym ‘13

The goal of GIS on the Chester is to make the Chester River the best mapped river in the United States, while providing an accurate set of data that will help a variety of different groups, show people self-responsibility when using the river, and teach them protection measures needed to preserve the Chester River and the Chesapeake Bay for future generations. The project is divided into four parts: Sub-Watershed Analysis, Towns, Natural Resource Areas, and General Themes. With approximately 19 students in the class, Professor Bruce has assigned each of them a different topic to cover diverse aspects of the project. To start off their assignment, each student is responsible for collecting data such as a boundary layer, roads layer, hydrography, and imagery in order to assemble a GIS of their sub-watershed. From there the students will use their skills to analyze any aspect of their choice in regards to the given area. Although each student is working independently, they will all be bringing different information to the table and collaborate, putting their ideas together to help make the Chester River cleaner.

Where is GIS Taking You?

2010-09-12T12:58:00.000-07:00

By: Tyler Brice ’13 and Corey Stokes ‘13

The GEOINT Conference is the preeminent event of the year for the defense, intelligence and homeland security communities (http://geoint2010.com/). Each year the conference has provided attendees a unique opportunity to learn from leading experts, share best practices, and uncover the latest developments from government, military and private-sector leaders. Stewart Bruce, Samantha Bulkilvish ’09, Tyler Brice ’13, and Corey Stokes ’13 will attend this year’s conference in New Orleans from Nov 1-4. The group will participate in the K-14 Academic Track as well as man a table in the exhibit hall.

Depth Finding on the River

2010-08-29T13:03:00.000-07:00

The GIS Program has launched our new research boat, the Cee Angel. This will allow us to continue our “GIS on the Chester” mission. In August we installed our ARGUS unit. Check out the ARGUS home page to learn more about this research project (http://argus.survice.com)

Points Collected by WC.

Maps

2010-07-08T06:30:00.000-07:00

GIS on the Chester attended the Upper Chester River Pilot Watershed meeting a few weeks ago. Representatives from a range of organizations were in attendance, including the University of Maryland, Washington College, DNR, USGS, NRCS, and more. The ultimate goals are to improve outreach to land owners, create a soil and water quality conservation plan, and implement best management practices, as well as to establish a baseline assessment for the watershed's health. If this collaborative project is successful in creating a viable management plan, then the Upper Chester watershed could serve as a model for other watersheds in the future. Hopefully you'll be hearing more from us soon on this exciting project. In the meantime, here are some of the maps we made:

This first one shows the locations of current monitoring sites run by several organizations.

This one shows the current status of historic aerial imagery. The images in the empty portion may exist somewhere, but they haven't been georeferenced yet. In order for aerial imagery to be useful, it has to be georeferenced first - that is to say, someone has to go in and match up the landmarks on the aerial image to their locations on the map, so that the image lines up correctly.

This cool map shows elevation and bathymetry for the watershed area.

This image is from the Quickbird satellite. In simple terms, the Quickbird divides light into a number of spectral "bands" based on wavelength, including wavelengths outside the visible light spectrum such as infrared. The particular band highlighted on this map, Near Infrared, is especially good at showing vegetation. All of the bright green represents biomass.

Finally, this image shows all the parcels that fall partly or entirely inside the watershed area, and their land use classifications. Urban and suburban areas have a different kind of impact on the watershed than agriculture or forested areas, so it's important for watershed analysts to know the primary land use types in an area.

Website

2010-06-10T10:24:00.001-07:00

It's been a while since our last post. Just thought I'd stop in to say that our website is up and running, at http://gis.washcoll.edu/gisonthechester/index.php.

Check it out - all the student project presentations are up. Watch us online and see video demonstrations of what we did in GIS. It's pretty nifty.

Check back regularly for more updates!
-Reported by Emily Aiken '10

Eye on the Environment: Bathymetric Analysis of the Chester

2010-05-01T13:58:00.000-07:00

By: Capt. Zach Hall ‘13

As a bathymetric analyst in Washington College’s GIS Lab, I have the exciting job of heading up the premier bathymetric analysis of the Chester River and surrounding Chesapeake Bay area. Bathymetry deals with the depth of a body of water. Its application is mostly seen in the form of a nautical chart used for navigation on the water. Maritime navigation is tricky and needs to be monitored very closely. Unlike navigating a vehicle on the land, seafaring vessels face constraints by their draft or how low they sit in the water. With these constraints it is vital for mariners to have an accurate and up to date understanding of the changes in the depth of water. My projects deal with the depth of the Chester River and the surrounding bay area. What was once a laborious process using a line with a weight on the end to measure how deep the water is, this data can now be acquired by a depth-finder and logged into an onboard chart plotter every second using an Autonomous Remote Global Underwater Surveillance (Argus). Washington College has partnered with Service Engineering, who developed Argus, to help field test the new device. Using this technology we can get accurate and up-to-date soundings of the river. The data is then compared to the soundings that have been taken of the Chester River by NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) many years ago. We are working to re-measure and update the current set of bathymetric data on the Chester and use it to analyze the changes in the riverbed and to map potentially new navigational hazards. The fuel behind our work here on the Chester River is the relatively low boat traffic, which in turn leads to a diminished need for an updated sounding of the area by the government. We hope that as our data accumulates we can ultimately work with government organizations such as NOAA and make the Chester River the most up-to-date and best mapped river in the US.

GIS Close to Home

2010-04-12T13:32:00.000-07:00

Staff member Samantha Bulkilvish ‘09 is instructing students at Kent County and Easton High Schools as well as Chestertown Middle School the basics of GIS. She started by putting together a three week intensive course for the STEM students at KCHS which opened the door to the other two schools. Samantha hopes to open new doors for the students by teaching them skills like using Google SketchUp and Google Earth to create a 3-D model of their towns.

Aerial Adventure

2010-04-11T00:55:00.000-07:00

This Sunday I spent the day with Hunter Harris of Aloft Aerial Photography. A few days before setting flight I contacted Hunter to see what I needed to do. After listening to his advice I chose to concentrate on getting images of 11 historic sites along the river. He also suggested that I bring extra clothes, as it is much colder in the sky.

We met at the Easton Airport Terminal a little after 10:30 and then I followed him to his hangar. While Hunter was getting ready for flight he had me condense my maps and put them into clear plastic envelopes so they would be easier to handle in the air.

As we taxied down the runway I got a good lesson on how airport traffic is handled. Hunter and I communicated in the plane through headsets which also broadcasted the control tower and of course Chestertown’s radio station, WCTR. I got some of the best shots I’ve ever taken or seen of the Chesapeake Bay area. The window to the left side of the pilot has a cut out so that the image won’t get distorted through glass. Hunter focused on getting shots of the historic houses, while I took shots of everything I could out my window. We spent about an hour in the air, and then it was time to land. Hunter dropped me off at the hanger with plans of taking a short break and then heading south in the plane to get some work done.

Being up in the air was like being on an hour long roller coaster ride. Hunter explained that as the earth heats up through the day warm air rises in columns. Sunday was no exception; there were plenty of bumps in the ride caused by these lifts. We traveled at amazing speeds. In no time at all we went from Easton, to Rock Hall, then back to Kent Island. We were even able to fly over my Uncle’s house in Huntingfield to say hello to my mother and father who were working in his yard! This was a very special experience, one that I will not soon forget. Thanks Hunter and Stew for giving me this opportunity.

-Reported by John Anderson '11

A Day on the Water

2010-04-07T01:01:00.000-07:00

First day of hands-on field testing! My project for this year has been focused on water testing; in addition to collecting existing data from sources like USGS and the Maryland DNR, I'm hoping to set up a water testing network for GIS and Washington College students to use in the future. You could consider this my "beta testing stage," in a way - by going out and actually doing the water testing, when I write up my instructions for students to come, I can include details on what worked and didn't work.

We got an early start... VERY early, by college student schedules! I was up and in the chemistry lab at 8:15 AM to pick up the testing kits & other supplies, and by 8:45 we were headed down to the boathouse. We didn't get back until late afternoon, 5 PM or so. I was surprised that we covered so much ground, because I wasn't expecting to get too far beyond Cliffs City, but we got a lot done in one day. It was a beautiful day on the water: we were moving fast enough most of the time to have a pleasant breeze, but when we stopped it would warm up fast.

This was only my second time out on the boat, but this time we were well-equipped with lunch, drinks, sunscreen... All the essentials. Not to mention the water testing supplies, and my safety goggles and gloves, since I actually did all my testing and analysis while on the boat. When you're handling acids on a moving vessel, you want to make sure that you have all the appropriate gear on hand. Safety first! One of the nice things I discovered about the pontoon boat is that you can collect water samples by just laying on the end of the boat and sticking your arm in the water, which is very convenient, if a little funny-looking.

An interesting note about water sampling - one of the most important tests we performed, dissolved oxygen, is very finicky. It must be performed as soon as possible after the water sample is taken. Fish and other aquatic organisms need oxygen just like we do, and they rely on the oxygen dissolved in the water in order to breathe; too little oxygen in the water can result in a "dead zone" where nothing can live. But exposing a water sample to air for too long can change the amount of dissolved oxygen in it, and that's bad for your data. So that's why it was so important to do the testing on the boat, rather than waiting to do it on solid ground. Overall it worked pretty well.

Caryn and John met us at Cliffs City, and we spent the afternoon photographing historic houses, docks, and buoys. If you look at the map up above, you'll see a few places where our path doubles back on itself, or goes around in circles. That was us trying to get good photographs of all the buoys! A lot of them had writing on them, labeling special harvest areas and such. Stew thought it would be a good idea to get close-up photos of that writing. That way, we'd have the GPS points, and we would know what the buoys meant just by looking at the pictures. But sometimes it would take a few tries to get the angle just right... and sometimes we would just run into the buoy. Oops.

After plenty of exploration - you can see from the map that we almost made it to Rock Hall - we dropped Caryn and John off at Cliffs City again, and headed for home. I took one last water sample along the way home, and then we were done for the day. I'm hoping to get the chance to do this again soon!

-Reported by Emily Aiken '10

Eye on the Environment: GIS on the Chester

2010-04-05T13:40:00.000-07:00

By: Elise Keller ‘10

The goal of GIS on the Chester is to make the Chester River the best mapped river in the United States, while providing accurate data that will help a variety of different groups, show people self-responsibility when using the river, and teach them protection measures needed to preserve the Chester River and the Chesapeake Bay for future generations. Professor Stew Bruce’s students work on a different aspect of the project. Marta Laskowski ‘12 examines historic and recent oyster bars that are along the Chester River. She wants to map out oyster areas that are currently protected and others that will be protected under new legislation. Marta will identify watermen who fish for oysters and collect data on oyster fishing licenses. Matt Stiles ‘12 is mapping the locations of public boat landings and where they are on the river. He will also collect data about public fishing. Ellen Liebenow ’12 is working with Stew Bruce to locate point and nonpoint source pollution along the Chester River; they will then put the high polluters into a color coding map. Student Emily Aiken ’10 will collect water test data and then create a point file hyper linking the data to spatial locations. While each student works on something different, they collaborate in order to make the Chester River cleaner.

Heading South

2010-03-31T10:31:00.000-07:00

Today we went south on the boat since last week we went north. Sounded like a good reason to me.

John Anderson, Emily Aiken, Samantha Bulkilvish, and I went out. John was looking to get more historic houses and this time he prepared a field map that exactly identified which homes along the river were considered historic house by the Maryland Historic Trust (http://mht.maryland.gov/). Emily was scouting sites for her project on establishing an environmental water testing grid on the river.

Before we left we had a nice talk with John Wagner, Waterfront Director, and told him of our idea to test water coming out of the town sewer plant. He informed us something we did not know which is the town now dumps the outflow from the sewer plant from a pipe that is submerged into the river. We need to find the exact location of this pipe so we can submerge a test collector and sample right where the outflow comes into the river. I thought we would find a simple pipe draining right into Radcliffe Creek and we could just sample the outflow as it poured out of the pipe.

In addition to John Anderson getting a lot of house images we also helped Matt out and got a lot of dock images for his project. We videotaped a couple of marinas too for Matt. Note to self, we need a better video camera with a gyro stabilizer.

The highlight of the trip I think was when we saw a bald eagle sitting in a tree next to the river.

Photo courtesy of John Anderson

When it flew away we got to see an aerial bird fight as the osprey seemed to chase it away. And we saw more deer which I got on video tape along with osprey sitting around. With all of this and the literally hundreds of different other kinds of seagulls, ducks, cormorants, and other birds it was like the wild kingdom on the Chester today. Another great day on the river!

-Reported by Stewart Bruce

Late Night Bath

2010-03-29T10:23:00.000-07:00

Andrew Newell is doing his class project on a bathymetric analysis of the Chester River and was having trouble finding the data from the NOAA site. There is this thing called ENC Direct and you can download vector files but it seems kind of clunky way to go about it. I did some more searching and stumbled across a cool site (http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/bathymetry/hydro.html) where you can search for actual bathymetric surveys. I did a word search on Chester and instantly found digital versions of the 1846 survey of the Chester. Pretty cool. Later on that night I leaned there is also a web map search version which is oh so much easier then the text search I started with. I also found 1898 maps and 1940 maps that had actual digital xyz data. I thought this is exactly what Andrew needs.

Then I wondered if I remembered how to turn that into a 3d scene of the bathymetric data so I could quickly show Andrew how to do it in our weekly meeting the next day. This was about 9 pm. I went ahead and converted the xyz text into an excel spreadsheet and brought this into ArcView. I used the Add XY event tool and created a point file. Then I used the point to IDW raster and made a raster image of the points. I brought this into ArcScene and then used the option to layer the raster surface against the z values for depth. This should make a cool 3D surface.

It did not work. I used a vertical exaggeration rate of 5 as this is what I had been using when I did the same 3D surface when I used elevation data on the area around campus. I tried several things, redid the entire process and even used the online help to see if I was doing something stupid. Well finally after a few hours I figured out that I need to make the vertical exaggeration 200, not 5. Victory!

The other interesting thing to realize is that the latest bathymetric survey of the river dates from 1940. We can also digitize the older surveys and look at change in depth over time. This will be a lot of work so I suggested to Andrew the next day that he do one small area as a pilot project and future students can pick up where he leaves off. While I don’t think Andrew will get a chance to do this when we get the prototype Argus unit (http://argus.survice.com/) on the Reinell we can then track the same survey line that they did in 1846 and compare depth change from 1846 to 2010. That is change over a 164 year period. Should turn out to be very interesting indeed.

-Reported by Stewart Bruce

On the River Again

2010-03-24T10:14:00.000-07:00

Spring has sprung and the weather finally got nice enough to take the old pontoon boat out on the water so we could start collecting data for our GIS on the Chester project. Our new donated boat, a 22 foot Reinell, is trapped at Handy Point Marina by sailboats until they put these boats back in the water. We boated right past the new CES research vessel with envy in our eyes and decided to head up river since it really was kind of windy. John Anderson, Matt Stiles and I were on board with Andrew Wright acting as Captain. It felt really good to be back on the water after a long and blizzard like winter.

Matt needed to collect images of docks for his class project and John was looking to get some images of historic homes from the river for his river tour guide map project. I brought along our really cool Ricoh camera with built-in GPS so we could collect images and GPS points. The Ricoh camera is nice but the GPS Photo Link software that goes with it allows you to simply take a picture and after you process it the software creates a shapefile with a hyperlink to the image already for you saving hours back in the lab. This means more time for us to do fieldwork of course. John brought his own camera but had no way to record what he was taking so he used the Ricoh too. I think his camera may be better but it doesn’t have GPS.

It was a little chilly but we all had jackets. Next time we need to take hats as we all got red faces from sunburn. Just because its cold doesn’t mean you don’t get sunburn. Andrew used the boat hook pole to check depth so we did not mess up the new propeller on the new engine. We had to cycle the new engine to break it in so we took a rather lazy track up river. We saw lots of Osprey nests and one Bald Eagle nest where we could see the white head of the eagle. And we saw a small herd of deer swimming across one of the small creeks too but too fast for us to get a picture. The map shows our route and we plan to make one of these maps every time we go out on the river so check back on our progress.

When we finally got back to the boathouse the rowers were out and so was the Sultana so we did a little diversion to check these out. (These are the little circles on our route map) We ended up down at the yacht club and used our video camera to record the marina there. A single picture won’t do justice to any of the marinas so we decided to video tape all marinas. It is interesting now that most of them are empty with all the boats on shoppers. We will redo the videos at the peak of summer so we can see the contrast.

-Reported by Stewart Bruce

Pot Luck Projects

2010-03-02T13:36:00.003-08:00

Food, People, & Planet Mapping

By: Heather Black ‘13

The diets of human beings have changed dramatically throughout history. When comparing the diets of tribal groups to those of the modern western world, one can see that there is also a large contrast. We all know how modern diets impact our health, but just what types of food were involved in the diets of tribal groups? Are they healthier than ours? And where are they located? Professor Schindler’s GRW class: Food, People, and the Planet, set out to answer these questions and with the help of Andrew Wright used GIS software to map the location of each group. The project involved studying the research of Weston Price, a dentist who traveled the world and documented the diets of 14 different groups isolated from the industrialized world. The class discovered that the diets were vastly different from ours and consisted of variety raw foods including raw milk and dairy products, unprocessed grains, organ meats, and quality animal fats. Dr. Price also documented the almost complete absence of tooth decay, obesity, and the other “western” diseases such as diabetes we currently suffer from in the modern western world. The class placed this data into excel sheets and with the help of Andrew Wright used ArcGIS 9.3 to map the information, showing the locations of the different groups.

Professor Bill Schindler:
"People making important changes the modern food system and our diets are still utilizing the data the Weston Price collected in the 1930's. Many of these people believe that infor¬mation such as this can provide better guidance for how humans should be eating than modern food science can."

Cartographer: Ann Hoang ‘13

Alumni in the Spotlight

2010-03-02T13:34:00.000-08:00

Samuel Evans‘09

Sam frequently uses ArcGIS for normal things like digitizing or geocoding, but he also gets the chance to do fun things like building custom geoprocessing tools. He is actually in the process of using the ArcGIS software development kit to build completely customized application from the ground up. He regularly programs in C, C++, C#, Python, Java, and VBScript, just to name a few. He works for a development, research and commercialization firm.

Current Projects: Bay Watch Chesapeake

2010-03-02T13:08:00.000-08:00

By: Caroline Grier ‘10

The Washington College GIS Department in partnership with Aloft Aerial Photography has designed a new pilot project that will allow concerned local citizens to report environmental problems in the Chesapeake Bay. The Bay suffers from numerous environmental problems. While some are reported many remain unreported and unresolved. To help solve this dilemma the GIS lab created a central reporting and tracking program that is tied with a web mapping interface. This allows anyone to view all the locations of the problems and the status of each reported problem. Once a problem is reported and mapped, different Federal, state, and local non-profit organizations can take action. The Bay Watch Chesapeake pilot will determine if it is feasible to have all of these recorded problems in a single accessible source available to everyone. By completing a beta version of the program we have taken a huge step forward bringing environmental protection and awareness to the age of Facebook & Twitter.

Above is a pilot of our program that allows individuals to report environmental violations through the use of Google Maps.

Chris Farley ‘11
“Working on the Google API code and Bay Watch has enhanced my knowledge of the environmen¬tal problems on the bay and has furthered my knowledge in GIS and computer coding.”

Otto Borden ‘13
“Working on the Bay Watch project has taught me a lot about Google API and Java Script. “

Example of a problem being reported.

Crime! Works So Good it’s Practically Criminal

2010-03-01T13:28:00.000-08:00

Maryland Crime Mapping and Analysis Program

With a renewed grant, the GIS lab continues its work to provide crime mapping in the state of Maryland. The Washington College GIS Lab also conducts an outreach program, which invites law enforcement agencies to sign up for crime mapping training. Caryn Thomas ’05 M’09 and Andrew Wright guide student interns in the lab. Here are some recent projects that these students are doing.

Mary Kelley ‘11
I am working on a project to evaluate differences in crime rates between communities designed with the principles of new urbanism verses traditional cul-de-sac style communities. This is a fairly controversial subject and should generate a lot of interest when I publish the final report.

Tracey Bienemann ‘11
I am working with the 2000 United States Census data to define disadvantaged census
blocks based on previous research. The challenging census data first had to be decoded to determine what exactly each column of data contained, followed by selecting the criteria found to be important in the classification of disadvantage level in census blocks. Once the data is decoded, the necessary criteria will be brought to a map, and then it will be organized to show the chosen data in ranks to display census blocks containing some of the following features: low income, high numbers of vacant housing and house/apartment renters, high percentages of school drop-outs, high percentages of mother-only households and high percentages of unemployment. Determining disadvantaged neighborhoods may allow authorities to further aid those who are impoverished and in danger of crime. One area that maps may focus on is census blocks around the city of Baltimore.

Jeffrey Nutting ‘13
Once I graduate from Washington College my career goal is working with the FBI. When I learned there were openings within the crime analysis and mapping division of the GIS program I saw it as a great opportunity. The crime maps, among other work I’ve been doing this year, has helped reinforce my goal. This year has been a great experience and is extremely beneficial for me. I appreciate the opportunity that has been given to me to work with in the lab.

Geospatial Technology Summer Camp

2010-02-26T13:25:00.001-08:00

By: Smaa Koryam ‘13

During the time period June 20th - 26th, the GIS lab at Washington College will be hosting a Computer Mapping Technology Summer Camp. Computer mapping technologies such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) offer great professional opportunities for the future. For this reason, Washington College has designed the summer camp to expose students to the field, allowing them to apply skills and address real community issues. During this exciting and stimulating week, students will engage in A Day in the Field, where they will collect data and from it derive a project, which they will later present to their family and fellow campers. Along with this, campers will also have the opportunity to enjoy activities such as kayaking, swimming, and the grand GIS scavenger hunts. If interested please go to http://gis.washcoll.edu/summercamp.php and download the appropriate forms or contact GIS Educator Samantha Bulkilvish for questions or concerns.

Digital Education

2010-02-12T13:16:00.000-08:00

By Nich Tremper ‘13

The Washington College Geographic Information Systems lab has continued its commitment to provide education to students today to make them competitive in the geospatial workforce of tomorrow through the Geospatial Education Technology Initiative (GetIT). The curriculum is taught through an online classroom called Moodle. Our Moodle program currently moved to a new more user friendly, website (www.wcgetit.org), that is used by WC students in GIS classes, adult professionals utilizing distance learning and K-12 schools throughout the country. Our new website allows these students easier access to our staff and other means of assistance as they go through the curriculum.

Through a renewal of the Base Realignment and Closure Act (BRAC) grant we are able to offer quality education in GIS to Maryland adults who want to begin learning (or continue learning) about GIS.

Our program also developed a way to help K-12 schools across America. The GetIT program allows teachers to use our curriculum to teach GIS to their students; however the program is designed to be easier for teachers to introduce data from their own areas to make GIS more applicable to their students.

The site has a guest accessible section featuring our special topics courses.

This is an incredible feat and none of it would be possible without the hard work of our student interns; Heather Black ‘13, Otto Borden 13’, Anna Burress ‘13, Glenn Chew 13’, Joe DeStefano ‘13, Caroline Grier ‘10, Andrew Hale ‘10, Elise Keller ‘10, Smaa Koraym 13’, Nich Tremper ‘13 and Megan Wise ‘10.

Our New Training Site wcgetit.org

Screen Capture from Digitizing Lesson

Education for the Future

2009-12-02T11:24:00.000-08:00

The Geospatial Education Technology Initiative (GetIT) partnership is providing Moodle based geospatial technology curriculum at no cost to participating school districts throughout America. The goal of the program is to get youth interested in careers in geospatial technology in order to help meet future needs for trained personnel for the geospatial intelligence workforce of tomorrow. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has been identified as one of the top ten high growth career fields by the U.S. Department of Labor. The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency has identified a serious shortage of skilled workers required to support our nation’s national defense needs. These organizations recognize the need to increase the number of youth with interest and knowledge in this STEM related field.

Schools throughout our nation are suffering from budget cuts, a lack of affordable training materials and teacher training opportunities that are needed to introduce geospatial technology curriculum into their school systems. Our program and the Tuscarora Intermediate Unit 11 (in rural Central Pennsylvania), are developing a comprehensive curriculum program to meet these needs and is supplying this program to schools at no cost.

Our curriculum is designed to be easily modified to use local geospatial data, therefore it is more interesting to the students taking the courses. The GetIT program currently supports many schools with an interest in teaching their students geospatial technology by taking a three pronged approach to training youth in geospatial technologies. The National Science foundation promotes this approach to engage youth in STEM related careers through K-12 in-school programs, after-school programs, and summer programs.

Washington College also offers exciting and challenging summer camps in geospatial technology. The camp combines GIS with other disciplines such as chemistry, environmental science, and underwater robotics to apply the geospatial skills to other STEM related disciplines. Washington College also runs summer camps for teachers who want to use GetIT in their classroom. Our students make significant contributions to updating and editing the curriculum materials. Each student provides a unique ability that adds to improving and strengthening the curriculum. While some make sure that the materials have a finished appearance, others validate technological processes, create quizzes, or publish it in the Moodle environment. Their work is delivered directly to teachers in the field on a daily basis.

Megan Wise ‘10:
“I am finishing up quizzes for the Introduction to GIS section of the Moodle website. I have completed many quizzes and from these I am strengthening my teaching skills. As an elementary school intern it is important to learn what information needs to be assessed in a lesson. Completing quizzes for GIS helps me establish and enhance these skills by using them on a weekly basis.”

Samantha Bulkivish ’09:
A past intern of the GIS Lab, Samantha now works as a staff member. Among other projects, Sam teaches in a traditional classroom setting as a guest lecturer. She also teaches distance learning to adults from all over Maryland. They all have jobs ranging from working with NOAA and DNR to Easton Utilities. Taking Samantha’s Introduction to GIS class, the adult students hope to further or change their careers. Even though they can get frustrated easily, Samantha is able to divert the situation by walking them step by step through their problems. She is also involved in a three week Introduction to GIS class with Kent County public high school. The lab is also working with Easton, St. Mary’s, and Queen Anne’s county high schools. She believes Moodle is a good tool which makes learning GIS easier and will take the lab many places.

Getting Dirty in Idaho

2009-11-25T11:36:00.000-08:00

GIS: A tool for Smart Land Management

In June of 2009 Ms. Daryl Swanstrom, a member of the Washington College Board of Visitor’s and Governors, invited Stewart Bruce, Josh Biringer ‘12, and Samantha Bulkilvish ‘09 out to her 44 acre ranch in Vasser, Idaho. On the ranch she raises beef cattle and chicken and hopes to, one day in the near future, get her ranch certified organic.

The team’s goal was to collect data that would help her better manage her growing ranch. The team spent the week using GPS to take waypoints, videotaping, and taking pictures from every corner of the ranch. Using GPS they mapped such things as the wells, springs, and other water features. They also took many videos of the ranch to document what they saw with plans to link the videos to the finished map. This way Ms. Swanstrom could show her Ranch to anyone in the world. They also used GPS to map the trails, roads, utility boxes, her house, and barns.

Upon her return to the GIS lab, Samantha was tasked with sifting through all the data collected. She spent hours labeling the videos and pictures so she would know which GPS points to hyperlink them to. She also digitized the streams layer, received from the Latah County, Idaho planning office to better fit the aerial imagery. Samantha also linked the forestry plan, given to her by Ms. Swanstrom, to the digitized forest stands. At the beginning of the Fall Semester she received additional help from Dalbir Kaur ’12 and Lisa Jones ’11. Dalbir started digitizing the land use within the Swanstrom Property but soon finished and moved on to the land use of Latah County. Lisa has stepped in to finish hyperlinking videos and pictures and to clean up the rest of the GPS points and other features added to the map. As of October, Ms. Swanstrom received a draft copy of her map which she can view in ArcReader. She plans to use her new mapping tool to come up with a strategic plan for the future development of her ranch.

Daryl Swanstrom & Samantha Bulkilvish ‘09

Pot Luck Projects

2009-11-14T11:32:00.000-08:00

Otto Borden ‘13

A Walk in the Past: Following the Revolutionary
Foot Steps of American & British Soldiers

As many know, Maryland and Pennsylvania are full of historic battlefields and footpaths that American and British soldiers used during the Revolutionary War. Gettysburg is one of the most popular spots, but what about the others? What do they look like? How did the fields and paths appear to the soldiers hundreds of years ago? Professor Bruce and Otto Borden ‘13 set out to answer these questions with their 3D rendition of these historical sites. Their goal was to recreate the fields as they looked during the war and place 3D soldiers to move around the maps, in order to show the paths that they took.

This project involved the use of Google Earth to create this sequential tour of the movement of both American and British forces during the battle of Brandywine. The research involved finding websites for townships and counties that were involved in the battles. Otto used their historic sites to gather information about what happened in the battle and replay that information back in order in Google Earth. Historical maps were found on the internet to ensure that the placement of the troops was correct. This project was challenging, but rewarding, says Otto Borden.

GIS Close to Home

2009-11-09T11:28:00.000-08:00

Kathy Gerhart ‘10

Kathy has completed the Chamber of Commerce street map and resource guide. A graduate summer intern made significant strides with the map this summer. The map highlights points of interest in the Kent County area. You can see an example of our work in the Chamber of Commerce Office in downtown Chestertown on the Corner of Maple Avenue and Cross Street.

Where is GIS Taking You?

2009-11-05T11:29:00.000-08:00

Lawerence Baker ‘13

Lawrence went to Rock Hall Wildlife Refuge to help plant oysters into an artificial oyster bed. The bedrock went across an eighth mile wide cove in the shape of a “C” to help fight against waves. The team that he worked with placed oysters onto the bedrock by hand in chest deep water. Afterwards, they used a Garmin GPS to mark waypoints along the bedrock so they could project an image of the “C” in ArcGIS.

Alumni in the Spotlight

2009-10-25T11:30:00.000-07:00

Buffy Conrad ‘08

Buffy graduated with vast experience and skills in the GIS field. While attending Washington College, she took Professor Bruce’s GIS classes and interned in the GIS lab, all of which helped her prepare for her career after graduation. Buffy has carried her love for the GIS field into her new job with the Maryland State Highway Administration. Buffy provides GIS data for engineers such as aerials, contours, and maps. She takes photographs of sidewalks and mediums. The engineers then use these images and maps for better roadway design. She is currently working on a website, which is very new to her, that is about point collection and contours. Buffy enjoys her job with the Maryland State Highway Administration and is glad that she could use her GIS skills in the workforce.

Crime! Works So Good It’s Practically Criminal

2009-10-25T11:26:00.000-07:00

Maryland Crime Mapping and Analysis

The GIS Lab received funding from the Governor’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention (GOCCP) to provide mapping and support in Maryland. The crimes that are mapped range from traffic accidents to homicides. The Washington College GIS Lab conducts an outreach program which invites any law enforcement agency to sign up for training. The majority of the lab’s promotion comes from word of mouth and conferences. Staff members Caryn Thomas ‘05 M’09 & Andrew Wright guide student interns in the lab teaching them the ins and outs of crime mapping. In addition to map¬ping, the GIS Lab has also worked with the Division of Parole and Probation (DPP) to create a web mapping viewer to display the over 100,000 individuals on parole or probation. This application is available to law enforcement to aid them in crime analysis.

Caryn Thomas ‘05 M’09:
Crime Mapping Analyst, was hired through the second grant the college received from GOCCP. She provides maps on demand for the Governor’s Office and other law enforcement agencies. She also provides training and technical support for crime analysts across the state of Maryland in their endeavors to produce high quality maps that will assist their officers.

Andrew Wright:
Crime Mapping Analyst, was hired through the third grant the college received from GOCCP. He mainly focuses on providing outreach and assistance to law enforcement agencies in the field. Andrew recently began teaching our 3rd Introduction to GIS course for crime analysts. Andrew trains law enforcement to use our Maryland Division Parole and Probation web mapping application that allows law enforcement to view offenders statewide.

Tracey Bienemann ’11:
“I am currently working on research to establish solid evidence for characteristics of disadvantaged neighborhoods to eventually draw conclusions about how the GIS Lab can evaluate its census block data to determine which neighborhoods are in the disadvantaged category in Maryland. I am also continuing work on the Maryland Sex Offender Mapping Errors. I have learned a lot about dangerous and unhealthy neighborhoods.”

Mary Kelley ’11:
“I am editing the crime maps that were previously made. The maps show specific crimes in Easton, Maryland. There are separate maps for separate crimes. The crimes mapped are assaults, robberies, burglaries, and theft. For each type of crime there are two maps; one for crimes in 2009 from January to July and one for crimes in 2008 from January to July.”

Current Projects: Historic Chestertown in 3D

2009-10-12T10:43:00.000-07:00

Washington College’s Stewart Bruce and his Introduction to GIS students are putting together a 3D model of the current Washington College campus. Photos and building footprints of the campus are acquired, than placed into Google Sketch Up where students rebuild the campus in 3D. Once the project is completed, it will be placed on the Washington College website so that alumni or prospective students who are not able to visit the campus will be able to take a virtual tour of Washington College. Yet, the project does not stop here. A 3D time series will also be created in order to show how the campus has changed over the years.

The GIS Lab is doing something similar with historic Chestertown. Student Stephanie Olsen ‘12 strolls the streets of Chestertown, taking pictures of the homes, than brings them back to the lab. Once in the lab, they are placed in ArcMap and Google Sketch Up where students Jimmy Bigwood ’12, Tyler Brice ‘13, Lydia Powell ‘12, and Kim Zepeda ‘13 reference the footprints, aerial photography, and street view photography to add them in developing accurate 3D representations of the buildings today.

Welcome to Water Street, Chestertown Above 3D Rendering of North Water Street, created by Washington College 3D Modeling team pictured here.

120 North Water Street

What’s New With History?

2009-09-12T11:23:00.000-07:00

Chris Brown ‘12

“The Historical Chestertown geography project is creating a Geographic Information System database for Chestertown. The project uses the historic Sanborn maps and census data to create interactive maps that highlight historic properties and allow the user to analyze demographic trends. The project georeferences the Sanborn Maps to current Chestertown GIS data. Access databases have been created to store the census data for the years 1900, 1910, and 1920. At this point in time I am working on linking the 1920 census data to the now georeferenced Sanborn maps. At the same time we have also started rebuilding the buildings in Google SketchUp in order to have a visual representation of what the town looks like today. The final project will be made freely available to members of the Chestertown community, the Kent County Historical Commission, as well as the Kent County Public Library and the Kent County School District.”