Hieu, Tristan and myself have decided on creating a project which analyzes the trends of students in the residence halls over the years, how this has changed and how this data might correlate with, say, field of study, interests and class year. We would also like to examine how the process of the Room Draw has changed and what weight each number truly has/what halls have been prioritized over the years. The idea is to create an interactive map which fluctuates according to the time period the client chooses. The map would display an accurate Carleton campus for the time, a graphical representation of the aforementioned groups and student distributions in each hall, as well as media of each hall (possibly as outbound links) in the form of either images or SketchUp files.
Data
Most importantly we would need information regarding the housing information of all students at Carleton, a data set which is easily accessible for the current four years. For previous iterations we hope the Carleton Archive still holds some of this information.
This will most likely manifest in the form of a flat database, an excel spreadsheet or something of the likes, which we can populate easily. However, how we use the data is heavily dependent on what form it is provided to us in the first place.
The data would be separated first by year, and subsequently by residence hall, and presumably the percentage of each class (% freshmen, sophmores, etc.) that resides within. Most interesting would be the movement of freshmen since they are placed into housing by the school, whereas the rest of the population gets some semblance of a choice, so the disparities between those two sets should be interesting.
Tools
- A flat database of some sort (Excel, Google Spreadsheet).
- ArcGIS/GoogleMaps as the main display.
- SketchUp for complementary media.
- WordPress for main site.
- …
Timeline
By Week 7 – Finish gathering of data, create a realistic plan for the final version of the project with the data we have managed to find.
Week 7/8 – Organize the data into a selected database which we can easily manipulate using some of the other tools. Establish subsections of information.
Week 8 – Complete complementary media files; find pictures, create SketchUp files of each residence hall. Setup basis for the website the project will be hosted on.
Week 9 – Bring together databases and media into the map. Add finishing touches to the website. Create presentation.
Similar Projects
Because our project is as unconventional as it is, there weren’t many projects acting as precise guidelines to what we want to do. However, many of the population tracking projects share a similar goal to what we have in mind.
Mapping Danish Population – Change in population over time in Denmark.
Animal City – Analysis of role of animals in San Francisco and where they lived.
Encompasses more of what we seek: “What urban spaces did they inhabit and how did those spaces change over time?” in regards to different classes (in our case).
Team ResLife,
I like this plan and think it has a lot of potential. Your decision to focus not just on Carleton through time, but on the residence halls and the experiences of students on campus should allow you to tell an interesting story, not just make a pretty map.
I can help you get the building footprint layer from campus GIS sources, and you can go from there. Let’s talk more after the CityEngine demo today in class, which should give you some new ideas.