Special Topics Project 1: Analyze Phase Post 1

The posted map was completed as part of the University of West Florida On-Line GIS Certification Program class, GIS 4930/5945 Special Topics in GIS. The Special Topics class is focusing on one geographic area, the San Francisco Bay Area, and studying various problems faced by city GIS managers and analysts in that area over the course of the semester.

The first class project focuses on GIS and Public Health by looking at possible race and environmental factors that may be related to asthma hospitalization rates in the nine counties that comprise the San Francisco Bay Area.

The posted map shows county asthma hospitalization rates per 10,000 people and it forms a base map that can be used for later p[arts of the study:



The map is a fairly straightforward thematic choropleth map that highlights the counties showing the highest rate of hospitalizations per 10,000 people in the bay area, specifically Alameda County. The map also shows some hospitals that are within the study area that are likely to be receiving many of the hospitalized patients.

The map was fairly easy to construct using ESRI ArcMap GIS software, the biggest challenges being choosing a suitable color scheme of the county data and a background that highlighted the map data. I annotized the County labels for this map so that I could move them to open areas of the map and fit in the legend and other pertinent map data while keeping the scale as large as possible.