Parking in Westwood Utilizing Google Maps

View Residential Westwood Parking in a larger map


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The mashup that I have created using the very free and easy Google Map application, My Maps, consists of documenting the street parking conditions of the very northern most part of Westwood’s residential area. Every day students suffer the over crowded residential neighborhood of Westwood in order to find parking that won’t result in a parking ticket or tow. However, this is harder than one might think, due to the numerous signs that litter every curb around the hill. Many signs have strict stipulations on what days and what hours you can park there and for how long. If you miss a sign or simply miss read one, you can end up with a sixty dollar parking ticket or worse, a tow.

Neogeography, from what I have grasped is something that is extremely useful to average person, however the main two problems I see with it are first the lack of knowledge about certain open source and free applications on the internet like My Maps, and secondly, the intricacies of the program itself. I consider myself pretty internet savvy and use the internet very frequently. I receive 90% of my news and current events from the internet, not to mention all the social networking I do on the internet, from Facebook to forums, I like to think of myself as one that knows my way around pretty well. However, I was not aware of the mashup capabilities that Google Maps allows the average person to play with. I knew about all the other Google applications, but surprisingly not the map-making part.

The second qualm I have with this is the program itself was mildly frustrating, albeit my choice in line use was probably the reason for this. I know that most people probably stuck to plotting point, but that was just not going to suffice for the charting of street parking, therefore I had to use to the line tool along roads. The problem I encountered was that the lines would reset to straight lines rather than the lines that followed the road that I had originally laid down.

When it comes to Neogeography as a whole, the main pitfall one can immediately see is that since it is open sourced, many people can use faulty information, knowingly or otherwise. However, I am very behind the idea of open source programs and think that Google is moving in the right direction when it comes to its map application as well as the many other application it has for users.

Lab 2, Week 2

1. What is the name of the quadrangle?
Beverly Hills Quadrangle

2. What are the names of the adjacent quadrangles? Canooga Park, Van Nuys, Burbank, Topanga, Hollywood, Venice and Inglewood

3. When was the quadrangle first created?
1966

4. What datum was used to create your map?
North American Datum of 1927 and the National Geodetic Vertical Datum of 1929.

5. What is the scale of the map?
The scale is 1:24,000.

6. At the above scale, answer the following:
a) 5 centimeters on the map is equivalent to how many meters on the ground?
1/24,000 = 5cm/D
D = 5cm x 24,000 D = 120,000cm
converted to 1,200 meters
b) 5 inches on the map is equivalent to how many miles on the ground?
1/24,000 = 5in/D
D = 5in x 24,000
D = 120,000in converted to 1.89 miles
c) one mile on the ground is equivalent to how many inches on the map? 1/24,000 = 36,360in/1 mile
24,000/36,360 = 2.64 inches
d) three kilometers on the ground is equivalent to how many centimeters on the map?
1/24,000 = 3cm x 100,000cm/1km
300,000cm/24,000 = 12.5cm

7. What is the contour interval on your map?
The contour interval on this map is 20 feet

8. What are the approximate geographic coordinates in both degrees/minutes/seconds and decimal degrees of: use a ruler to measure the width of the map, then measure the distance from the target to the far right side. to find minutes! but you also add it to the original time on the far right corner for Public Affair
a) the Public Affairs Building; d/m/s: 34°04’12"N; -118°25’48”W
DD: 34.07°N, -118.43°W;
b) the tip of Santa Monica pier; d/m/s: 34°00'31"N; -118°29'52"W DD: 34.00°N, -118.50°W
c) the Upper Franklin Canyon Reservoir; d/m/s: 34°07'10"N; -118°24'37"W
DD: 34.12°N, -118.41°W

9. What is the approximate elevation in both feet and meters of:
a) Greystone Mansion (in Greystone Park); 560 feet, 170.688 meters
b) Woodlawn Cemetery; 140 feet, 42.672 meters
c) Crestwood Hills Park; 660 feet, 201.17 meters

10. What is the UTM zone of the map?
Zone 11

11. What are the UTM coordinates for the lower left corner of your map?
The UTM coordinates for the lower left corner of the Beverly Hills Quadrangle are 3763000 northing and 362000 easting.

12. How many square meters are contained within each cell (square) of the UTM gridlines?
There is 1,000,000 square meters in each cell of the UTM grid.

13. Obtain elevation measurements, from west to east along the UTM northing 3771000, where the eastings of the UTM grid intersect the northing. Create an elevation profile using these measurements in Excel (hint: create a line chart). Figure out how to label the elevation values to the two measurements on campus. Insert your elevation profile as a graphic in your blog.*The two blue-boxed points are the elevations on the UTM northing 3771000 that include UCLA.

14. What is the magnetic declination of the map?
The Magnetic Declination is 14 degrees.

15. In which direction does water flow in the intermittent stream between the 405 freeway and Stone Canyon Reservoir?
The stream between the 405 freeway and the Stone Canyon Reservoir flows from the direction of north to south.

16. Crop out (i.e., cut and paste) UCLA from the map and include it as a graphic on your blog.