Award-Winning Student GIS Project Helps Pinpoint Pollution
By Laura L. Hunt
Andy Turner (left) and Brad Lenz display the poster for their award-winning project that used GIS to point out runoff pollution "hot spots" in Milwaukee. Rich Shaker and Adam Wirtz were the other two members of the team. (Photo by Laura L. Hunt)A team of four urban planning students has won multiple awards for a project in which they used Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to identify areas in the city of Milwaukee that are most prone to storm water runoff pollution and where plantings could relieve it.
GIS is technology that allows any kind of data to be plotted on a digital map where it can be compared, measured and analyzed. The project will be one of those on display tomorrow in the American Geographical Society Library as part of UWM’s GIS Day.
The team – Brad Lenz, Andy Turner, Rich Shaker and Adam Wirtz – completed the project for a course, but they also were working for a community client, the Milwaukee Community Service Corps. The work earned two top awards at the Wisconsin Land Information Association’s Map Gallery Competition & Poster Contest. It also took second place in UWM’s Student GIS Project Competition. A separate project by Shaker took first place.
Using a variety of sources such as the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission (SEWRPC), the students created a list of a dozen variables, both known contributors and mitigators to runoff pollution. Each variable, like degree of land slope, existence of brownfields and, of course, the presence of large stretches of concrete, was mapped separately and weighted equally.
“By overlaying them,” says Turner, “we could calculate the relationship of each one to the other variables.” With color coding indicating a close relationship among many variables, they were able to finger the “hot spots.”
Their poster highlighted the worst four parcels, which are all near the Menomonee Valley and downtown.
“We found it to be 93 percent accurate by cross-checking our map with satellite images of the area,” says Lenz.
You can see more of the project during UWM's Observance of GIS Day. The team's project, along with Shaker's first place project, will be on display in the American Geographical Society Library on the third floor, east wing, of UWM's Golda Meir Library.
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