From bdavenhall@esri.com Wed Jan 2 09:45:06 2002 Received: from mailscan3.cac.washington.edu (mailscan3.cac.washington.edu [140.142.32.15]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.11.6+UW01.08/8.11.6+UW01.10) with SMTP id g02HiFn61840 for ; Wed, 2 Jan 2002 09:44:59 -0800 Received: FROM mxu3.u.washington.edu BY mailscan3.cac.washington.edu ; Wed Jan 02 09:43:46 2002 -0800 Received: from esri3.esri.com (dwp.esri.com [198.102.62.250]) by mxu3.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW01.12) with ESMTP id g02Hhkm1021100 for ; Wed, 2 Jan 2002 09:43:46 -0800 Received: from highwire.esri.com (highwire.esri.com [46.1.2.250]) by esri3.esri.com (8.10.2+Sun/8.10.2) with ESMTP id g02Hhjw20405 for ; Wed, 2 Jan 2002 09:43:45 -0800 (PST) Received: by highwire.esri.com with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19) id ; Wed, 2 Jan 2002 09:43:44 -0800 Message-ID: <0DBA3D0D2559D311B69600508B12216E0833BB74@highwire.esri.com> From: Bill Davenhall To: "'waphgis@u.washington.edu'" Subject: RE: Free Mapping Tutorial Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2002 09:43:44 -0800 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Good! -----Original Message----- From: Peggy Harper [mailto:pharper@esri.com] Sent: Wednesday, December 26, 2001 11:31 AM To: waphgis@u.washington.edu Subject: RE: Free Mapping Tutorial Mike; I like your web page. I work with ESRI's Health and Human Services group on the education side. We would be very pleased to have an article to publish about your site for both our health and higher education newsletters. Would you have interest in putting together an article for us? Regards, Peggy Harper ESRI, Inc. Health and Human Services Solutions Group 978/777-4543 pharper@esri.com Join our Health User Group (HUG)! -----Original Message----- From: Michael Meuser [mailto:meuser@mapcruzin.com] Sent: Saturday, December 22, 2001 5:55 AM To: waphgis@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: Free Mapping Tutorial Hello - I recently learned that I had made an error on my page and it was not appearing correctly (or at all) for folks using Netscape browsers. I fixed it and all should be able to find the free mapping tutorial and atlas now at: http://www.mapcruzin.com/learn_to_map/ If any of you have been having trouble with this, I apologize. A little background if you're interested: Offering this map tutorial may seem like a simple thing and it really is, but for me it's one of the main reasons I went online with mapcruzin.com in 1995 (I think I actually got around to registering the domain in 96). MapCruzin began very simply with interactive toxic maps of my county. Folks could zoom in, pan around and click on facilities and get information about current and past Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) releases and transfers. These were the first interactive U.S.- based toxic maps on the net (I was inspired by FOE UK who was the first in the world!) My need to do this grew out of my frustration as a researcher. I found that very few people had a clue about TRI or what it could tell them about the risks posed by industrial facilities in their communities. Outreach, at the time, really sucked. I hoped that my project would encourage others. It has, but not as much as I had hoped. One "spin-off" was my being hired by Environmental Defense to do the first 2 years of the mapping interface for their chemical scorecard. The scorecard maps were based on our Santa Cruz TRI. In fact, the demo used to raise the funding for scorecard was a odified version of our mapping project. This was all very gratifying, but it still didn't "get it" for me. Showing folks maps on the web was one thing, helping them learn how to do it themselves was something else. I began by offering free map layers. Of course, if someone didn't already have a GIS program and the expertise, the map layers wouldn't do them much good. A key piece fell into place a bit ago. ESRI started giving away their free GIS viewer, ArcExplorer. It's a great tool to use to begin learning GIS and I have based my tutorial and atlas on it. This does not mean that you then have to get their ArcView program to do 'real' GIS. In most cases, you'll get quite a ways with ArcExplorer and if you need to move up, there are alternatives. (In my work, I've always used Maptitude because it's faster, cheaper and has more free data than all the rest). This tutorial won't help you get maps on the web, but it will help you to map toxics, do environmental justice mapping and much more if you take the time to go through the tutorial and play with the program. (Be sure to download the ArcExplorer documentation). So far this has been great. Several hundred of you have downloaded the tutorial and sample project in the last day or so. When I get time, and if there's enough interest, I'll do another tutorial that walks you through creating simple (meaning fast, useful, resource UNintensive, and free) interactive mapping projects for the internet. Til then... If you have any problems at all, please let me know. Sorry it took so long. here are some urls: My free gis layers: http://www.mapcruzin.com/free_gis.htm If you have a toxic related project or know of one, let me now and I'll link it here: http://www.mapcruzin.com/global_toxmaps.htm ArcExplorer and other free GIS stuff if you don't want to bother with the tutorial right away: http://www.mapcruzin.com/download_mapcruz.htm Our original Santa Cruz TRI (I'm two years behind on updating it, but you get the idea). http://www.mapcruzin.com/scruztri/scruztri.html Some projects we've done: http://www.mapcruzin.com/projects/ Free 1998 TRI map layers: http://www.mapcruzin.com/tri_1998/ I hope that some of this encourages you to do some mapping of your community. If it does, let me know. I'd love to hear about it. best, Mike +++++++++++++++++++++ Michael R. Meuser, meuser@mapcruzin.com http://www.mapcruzin.com/ Environmental & Social Cartography, WebMaps Environmental Justice, Right-to-Know Advocacy Free Mapping Tutorial and Atlas - Instant Access http://www.mapcruzin.com/learn_to_map/ .