QGIS Assignment Questions

1. Adding points and polygon layers: Plot the polygon layers and data points as below. Then, export or screen capture your map and paste it below.

a) Counties of the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) of Minneapolis, MN.

b) Fire station areas in Minneapolis, MN.

c) The city boundary of Minneapolis, MN.

d) Major fire stations in Minneapolis, MN.

e) Major hospitals in Minneapolis, MN.

2. Adding points: Add the confirmed fires and rearrange the order of your layers so that the fire stations and hospitals are at the top of all layers. The depiction below uses the confirmed fire cases in 2019. However, you can use cases of different years. Screen capture or save your map and paste it below.

3. Buffer Zone: Add a buffer zone of a 1-mile radius for each hospital. You can do this by going to the Vector tab and then choose, Geoprocessing Tools, followed by Buffer. Make sure that you choose the correct items, as it is shown below. Choose hospitals for the input layer and set the distance to a 1-mile radius. Screen capture or save the output and paste it below.

4. Manually measure distances: First, manually measure the approximate distance between the fire station in the city of Nokomis (i.e., the one in the bottom right corner) and the four hospitals in downtown Minneapolis (i.e., those three hospitals within the city boundary). For this question, you can use the ruler icon at the top of the window panel. The distances might slightly differ depending on how accurate you are with your mouse cursor. List the distances that you have measured and report the average.

5. Adding text balloon: Add a text balloon that shows the names of the four big hospitals in Minneapolis, MN. For simplicity, lets call them Hospital 1, Hospital 2, Hospital 3, and Hospital 4. For this task, use the Text Balloon icon at the top of the window panel. After you are finished, click the White Hand icon and return to the normal mode. Screen capture or save the picture and paste it below.

6. Measure distance to hubs: Now, go to the Processing tab and choose Toolbox. When you have done that, you will see a long list of analysis tools embedded in QGIS. Here, we will first use Vector analysis. Out of the many vector analyses, we will choose Distance to nearest hub (points). This analysis enables us to compute the closest distance from a fire station to a hospital.

After you Run this setting, you will get another layer called Hub distance. Right-Click on Hub distance in the panel on your left and choose Open Attribute Table. You can obtain the same result by clicking on Hub distance and then click on the Attribute Table icon at the top of the window panel. When the attribute table shows up, compute the average distance between fire stations and the Hennepin County Medical Center. Do also mention which fire station is located closest to this hospital.

7. Graphical analysis: In this question, we will keep working with the Processing tab and Toolbox. We want to depict the table in the previous question as a bar chart. This can be done by choosing Graphics in the Toolbox. On the list in Graphics, choose Bar plot and assign the categories as shown below. The bar chart will show you the aggregate distance from each hospital to a fire station. You can read all the distances by moving your cursor to each box. After you run the pop-up window, you can see the output by clicking on the link provided at your window's bottom right corner. Screen capture the bar plot and paste it below.

8. Number of points within a polygon: We are also curious how many confirmed fires there were within each fire district. To find out how many there were, open Vector in the upper panel, then choose Analysis Tools, followed by Count Points in Polygon. Make sure that you choose the correct polygon layer: The one that starts with 0dea13fd.

9. Measuring the area within the polygon: How large are the areas of the fire station districts? For this question, provide the picture where the fire station district that you chose shows up in yellow. Do also mention how large that district is in squared miles.

10. Creating your own shape files: For this question, create a point shape file and a polygon shape file. The point shape file should contain the three buildings that we have practiced in class. The points on your map should be visible (adjust the order of the layers)