Workshop: Exploring and Creating Vector Data

An opportunity to explore one of the spatial databases discussed in the presentation to look more closely at how their data is organized and to create your own simple spatial dataset.

Create a few spatial points of interest using the format we saw above ObjectID, X (long), Y(lat), or any other attributes you want using GoogleSheets/Excel/OpenOffice; or explore one of the databases above and practice downloading and opening the datasets to get comfortable dealing with vector datasets.

Remember to save your file as a .csv when you are done!

Some Boston Spatial Databases:

1. Analyze Boston

2. MBTA Open Data Portal

3. Mapping Inequality in New Deal America

Possible Datasets

Possibly useful datasets for exploring questions about segregation and redlining.

• Hospitals (download CSV)

• Neighborhood boundaries (download Shapefile)

• Farmer Markets

• Boston Social Vulnerability (download Shapefile) [play with attribute and drawing style options]

• Public Schools (download CSV)

• Non-Public Schools (download CSV)

Bonus

Want to check your csv data real quick? Go to Google My Maps, create a New Map, and click "Import" to import your CSV data to make sure it's looking good. Otherwise, we will be checking it later when we get to ArcGIS online!