Hurricanes Are Rough (GIS 4048- Applications in GIS)

 Continuing with natural hazards, we have hurricanes. Our focus was on Hurricane Sandy which eventually developed into a category 1 and made landfall in New Jersey. Our task was to create a map showing the track of the storm as it began its journey and damage assessment of the area of Ocean City, New Jersey.

To begin, XY data, which contained the date, position, wind speed, and pressure, was converted to a line. The symbology was then changed for the individual points to convey what type of storm it was at that given location. These symbols were created and it's a great use of the Symbol Property Editor. Graticules were added to show the parallels of latitude and meridians of longitude.

The second map used aerial imagery of before and after the storm. A raster mosaic was created to create a collage of all the images.Utilizing the Swipe tool, it was easy to view the before and after imagery in order to create the data assessment. Using the edit tool, point data was created to assess to what extent residential buildings were damaged.

The map showing the overview of the storm is the coolest map I've made, in my opinion. Being from the gulf coast, I've had my fair share of hurricane experiences and I can tell you, they're no fun to deal with. But these two maps also go to show that a hurricane can go just about anywhere and it's important to track them and prepare the population.