Friday, July 20, 2012

Local Property Appraisal Participation Assignment


Part 1: Research Local Property Appraisal Services
1. Conduct a web search to locate a property appraiser's office in your area.
- Does your property appraiser offer a web mapping site?
* No, the property appraiser does not offer a web mapping site.  In fact, every appraiser site I looked at in the Tri-State (Delmarva) area is very basic, they do not offer web mapping or selling prices or recent properties assessed.
* The website I chose is: http://fielsappraising.com/services.html
* They do not state how you obtain your data either.

2. Most property appraiser's websites offer a list of recent property sales by month.
- What is the selling price of this property?
*As I said above, none of the sites list selling price of any properties.

3. The selling price and assessed price will differ in most cases. 
- What is the assessed land value?
* total value is $20,000 with improvements
- Based on the land record data, is the assessed land value higher or lower than the last sale price?
* higher



Q4. Share additional information about this piece of land that you find interesting.  Many times, a link to the deed will be available providing more insight to the sale.
* There is no link to the deed.  However, this house is on a finger of a river, is highly elevated for this area and is an old property with only 3 owners.

Part II: Mappingn Assessment Values

Q1. Which accounts do you think need review based on land value and what you've learned about assessment?
* Looking at the map, other than the 4 corner pieces which are not developable, there are 6 properties that are of much lesser value than the surrounding properties.  They are: 090310105, 09031071, 090310320, 090310325, 090310260, 090310245.

Monday, July 9, 2012

Homeland Security: Protect

This lab was a second part to a lab we started last week. Last week we gathered the data and prepare our information.

This week the objectives were to be able to:
- Create a hillshade surface in ArcMap
- Edit attribute features in ArcMap
- Create new point data
- Create a new shapefile within ArcCatalog
- Create a line of sight
- View 3D data in ArcScene






This is a map of the Helioport at Cheyenne Mountain with a 500 foot buffer around the Helioport and a 3 mile buffer around NORAD and the Helioport.  I included 2 small maps of the area for reference.
















This map is of the Ingress and Egress Routes, particularly where the local roads intersect with the 500 foot buffer zone around the Helioport.  I, again, included map insets for reference.















PART III: Process Summary Details 
III. Site surveillance Locations around Critical Infrastructure

I have to say that this was not as fun an exercise as I thought it would be when I read over the notes.  It seemed very awkward and was hard for me to determine if I was doing it correctly…most likely because so much of the projects have given me issues that I just don’t trust it is coming out right.
i.       Generate Hillshade

1.       Used the 3D Analyst  for the Elevation group layer to create the “Hillshade” relief area.  Used 270 for azimuth, 39 for altitude and Model Shadows for the template.
2.       Created a new shapefile in ArcCatalog called “CMB_surveil_pts”
3.       Added surveillance points to the hillside using the Edit tool.

ii.       Generate Viewshed
1.      Used the 3D Analyst tool for Elevation group layer to create the “Viewshed” area to check visible coverage from surveillance sites..
2.      Set the parameters for default for the first one.
3.      Added a field to the Surveillance Points attribute table and set new field to 10  to account for setting the surveillance points on a 30ft tower.
4.      Ran the Viewshed analysis again to see new visibility.

 
iii.      Create line of sight
1.      Used the 3DAnalyst tool for Elevation group layer with the ‘Create Line of Sight’ tool. 
2.      Used 10 as the observer offset and 1 as the target offset to compensate for the 30ft NORAD entrance height and viewing objects low to the ground.
3.      Worked with this tool a bit to see the surveillance areas.
4.      Created ‘Line of Sight Profile Graph’ using the ‘Create Profile Graph’ on the 3D analyst tool.
5.      Exported graph and added  to Deliverable 3.
 
v.      
View 3D line of sight
1.      Opened ArcScene from the 3D Analyst toolbar.
2.      Added the Elevation layer (by typing in Elevation, it would not come up in a drop down box)
3.      I was told the solution to figuring out how to get my TOC to show so was then able to keep working on the lab.
4.      Using the Base Heights tab in Properties, selected ‘Floating on a Custom Surface’ and made sure the Elevation layer selected.
5.      Repeated with the NORAD layer.
6.      Neither image looked very good.  The Elevation layer did not change too much from 2D to 3D and the NORAD layer was really jagged looking.
7.      Used the Navigate tool to rotate the layer to show the road and tunnel, this took quite a bit of time and it never did look right.
8.      Copied and pasted the line of sight polylines. 
9.      I had to zoom in quite a bit to see this and the polylines did not match up with the NORAD layer. 
10.  As I tried to export the 3D image into a jpg, the jpg option never showed.  According to other students, only the 2D image allowed exporting to a jpg, so I did this. Saved and exported  as CMB_HS_Colorado_LineOSight.jpg.