new jersey geographer

When you look at the maps produced for the NJ State Plans, you can see a not-so-surprising trend.

State Plan maps spanning 70 years.

Encourage development in and around our cities. Preserve areas of environmental importance, such as the Highlands and Pinelands. Plan accordingly for agriculture.

I’m always surprised when environmentalists and developers claim that a proposed plan or regulation will have severe ramifications one way or another. The current course on which we are traveling has been set a long time ago. We still march towards statewide build out, while simultaneously preserving thousands of acres of farmland and open space.

That being said, we still need to plan to ensure that on a micro level to ensure that development is encouraged where appropriate and that the environs protected or reserved for later growth. The 2009 New Jersey State Plan is currently available from the Office of Smart Growth’s web page for informational purposes only. The public comment period will likely begin in June. However, you don’t have to wait until June to take a look at the draft final plan and map. I’ve also made the draft final map available on NJ State Atlas.

Currently on Rowan’s homepage is an article on the Geography Department’s work on bring GIS to the greater university community. The article focuses on our recent web mapping work; specifically the Land Use Change viewer and NJ State Atlas.  I’m quoted several times in the article, so I’m excited about that.

Direct link to the full article: http://www.rowan.edu/today/news/index/FS/118

I recently requested from the NJ Lottery a list of all the big prize winners, from 1988 to 2008. The winner’s location information is reported by ZIP Code, so I now have a map of the winners plotted out across the state and region.

Among the values mapped for each ZIP code area are the number of winners within, the total amount won, and a location quotient value that highlights areas where the number of winners in each ZIP code is far greater than the average distribution of winners throughout the state. Clicking on the map will highlight the ZIP code area selected, provide a summary of the statistics I have recorded, and allow you to see the entire list of winners by game, amount won and date.

So, here’s the Top 5 ZIP codes by number of winners, total amount one, and by location quotient ratio. The links will bring you to the Geography of Luck page.

Number of Winners

• 07002: 222
• 07083: 178
• 08753: 161
• 07111: 152
• 07055: 146

Amount Won

• 07070: $180,832,210.10
• 08221: $129,030,839.52
• 07010: $97,466,773.00
• 07002: $82,966,249.31
• 07090: $65,758,689.67

Location Quotient

• 07842: 22.2007 (2 winners in a ZIP code of 47 people for a total of $1,374,417.60 won.)
• 07428: 17.6869 (2 winners in a ZIP code of 59 people for a total of $20,000.00 won.)
• 07970: 15.4585 (8 winners in a ZIP code of 270 people for a total of $318,703.00 won.)
• 08036: 14.6081 (7 winners in a ZIP code of 250 people for a total of $288,700.44 won.)
• 07846: 9.6618 (1 winner in a ZIP code of 54 people for a total of $20,000.00 won.)

The location quotient is the (number of winners in ZIP/total number of winners)/(number of people in ZIP/total number of people).

I’m still working on some additional functionality, so if you think of any way I can improve this (or any other map on NJ State Atlas), please let me know in the comments, or by leaving feedback on Get Satisfaction. This project is done entirely in my spare time, so please be understanding if something is broken or not-quite-yet-perfect.

Digital Urban has a writeup of one of the newest, perhaps most exciting feature to be added to Google Earth. Historic aerial photography! For many places around the globe, you now have access to previous aerial photography, as far back as 1950 in some places. I’ll have to take a look into what Google has for New Jersey; are the 1930s aerial photographs available in Google Earth?

In the ESRI news feed today, an article out of Geospatial Solutions on preserving place names, including native language versions. While the article deals with the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, there are numerous towns in South Jersey that have disappeared back into the Pines, the only record of which is a few stone foundations and their names on USGS quad maps. The place names used on the quad maps are from GNIS, a program of the Board on Geographic Names. Many of these “forgotten towns” where rediscovered by Henry Charlton Beck in the 1930s and compiled into an aptly named book, “Forgotten Towns of Southern New Jersey.” The irony is that because of their inclusion in GNIS, these long-abandoned places are in Google Maps. It is somewhat funny that Web 2.0 can find you directions from Hampton Furnace to Harrisville, two uninhabited places in the Pine Barrens. However, not all of the places in GNIS made it to Google; for instance, they left out Hog Wallow. I guess the map label reflects the bogs and not the settlement and was omitted.

Just another reminder of the breadth of social sciences in which GIS plays some role. History and archeology are often overlooked when thinking or discussing GIS.

I just recently picked up a BlackBerry Bold. I admit, I’m a CrackBerry addict; I’m an even bigger fan now that I know their browser has a GPS location object that is accessible through JavaScript.

I have a sample set up here that demonstrates how the browser provides the phone’s coordinates and javascript that converts those coordinates to US National Grid coordinates.

I’m going to spend more time thinking about integrating mobile/GPS applications into websites like NJ State Atlas. I might try making a Smart Growth Locator that performs a lookup on where you are currently located. One of my longer term goals would be to create some sort of social networking site that is based on the National Grid. The Grid would allow you to handle proximity and fuzziness in a way not currently offered in other location-based social networking apps.

The Highlands Land Use Capability Zone Map has been added to the Smart Growth Locator on NJ State Atlas. This update also incorporates the changes to the State Plan map from the end of December 2008.

This is a minor update; in the near future, all of the pages will receive a minor layout update that should fix some of the rendering issues in IE and improve the overall usability of the site. There are a few mapping projects in the pipeline that will be released soon.

If you know of any geospatial data in New Jersey that could be incorporated into NJ State Atlas, please let me know!

I just recently updated NJ State Atlas with a USGS Topo Map mashup. It’s a pretty simple, straightforward application. I’m pretty pleased with it, as it’s part of a larger upgrade on the site: now, the State Plan Map, Land Use Change Map, and the Topo Mashup are all served up using TileCache. The maps should now load much more quickly, as it’s no longer rendering the map from the GIS data every time.

The Traffic Map now has “live” incidents from NJ DOT, as well as the 100+ traffic cameras throughout the State. I also migrated all of the map pages to the new look.

Check back often, as I am always making updates. Also, let me know if you think I should create a map, or make some improvements to one of the existing maps. I’m always open to suggestions.