Guest post by Dan Dougherty, Geography/History ’12
The GIS team did not only work on projects for faculty and staff members. Bucknell’s Administration was also interested in several mapping projects. Some are highlighted below:
Bucknell Parking
The continued growth of the University, coupled with limited space available for small scale expansion projects, has created a significant amount of vehicular congestion on campus. The amount of cars present has resulted in an increasing dearth in parking spaces. In order to analyze current trends and make recommendations for the future of parking on campus, Bucknell’s Administration asked for a series of GIS maps showing the current state of on-campus parking. The maps were produced in ArcMap 10, and the end result revealed that the parking situation in campus is much worse than expected. On any given day during the academic year, total lot capacity can be estimated at nearly 100%. A series of five maps were produced showing the entire campus; below are two of them.
Task Force on Campus Climate
Recent events on campus have encouraged the Administration to take a tougher stance against some of the negative behaviors associated with college social interaction. The Task Force on Campus Climate asked for GIS maps showing trends in reported incidents on campus. Since only a minority of events are reported to the Task Force, the map cannot be relied upon to provide the most up to date and accurate information, but nonetheless they provide a good starting point for future policy making regarding student safety on campus.
Bucknell SBDC
The Bucknell Small Business Development Center requested an update to a map which was made by a member of the GIS team during the previous summer. The Bucknell University SBDC helps business Start, Grow, and Prosper by providing entrepreneurs with the education, information and tools necessary to build successful businesses. Bucknell’s center is the first in the nation to be hosted by an engineering college and provides specialty Engineering Development Services throughout the Pennsylvania SBDC network. The map shows the number of Engineering Development Services (EDS) per county, with the symbology showing the regional grouping (yellow) and the the counties with affiliated EDS (green)