Project Development  

 

Introduction

            A university campus obtains its life and vitality from its student body, staff, and faculty.  As such, every member of the campus community, regardless of race, religion, gender or physical abilities should have adequate access not only to their classrooms, but also to all other educational, business, and cultural amenities offered on the campus.  Until the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, this access was not always available for individuals with physical disabilities.

            Many actions and accommodations to assist disabled individuals have been applied to the physical landscape of the Oklahoma State University Stillwater campus.  During the spring semester of 2000, Ken Chance the Director of the office of ADA Compliance commissioned OSU Cartography Services to create a 20 x 24 in. double sided, four folded, four color campus map depicting the following types of handicap accessible information:

  • accessible restrooms by gender

  • all floors accessible (elevators)

  • handicap parking (location and number of spaces)

  • accessible and power assisted doors

  • ramps

  • curb cuts

  • non-accessible areas

    •  Digital Campus map

                 This Project focuses on the creation of a digital/GIS version of the earlier paper copy of the OSU campus accessibility map.  The researcher collected data by on site inspection and digital photography.  The data was manipulated using a combination of CorelDraw 8, FrontPage, ArcView 3.3, ArcGIS, and displayed the resulting map on-line using ArcIMS.

     Methodology

                 The original map was created in 2000, and many changes have been made to the campus since then.  The first step in this project was to resurvey the campus, verify the validity of the old data and update any new data.  While the researcher was accomplishing this on-site inspection, digital photography was taken of each building and accessible doorway.

                The original map was created by digitizing and piecing together sections of an older, paper copy of a campus map.  This was accomplished using an artistic drawing software package CorelDraw 8.  While CorelDraw 8 works well creating layouts and designs it lacks the ability to reference and project spatial data. In order to achieve referencing and projection, the data must be converted to a format suitable to be used in ArcView/ArcGIS.  Each layer was exported as an AutoCad (.dxf) file format.  Using the ToolBox functions in ArcGIS, each .dxf layer was converted to a coverage, transformed, and then converted to ArcView shapefiles (.shp).  Once in ArcView, the shapefiles could be further managed.  Html pages were created for each building using FrontPage.  Each html page contained a photo of the building, descriptions of the doorway and restroom locations, and a list and web links of the entities housed in the building.

                The final version of this on-line map is running on ArcIMS, ESRI's internet map-hosting program. 

     

    Future Updates

                The data on a map is only accurate at the time it was gathered and created.  Because of this, it will be necessary to continually update the map.  In addition to updating the data, the researcher feels new data layers should be created and added to the project.  These include crosswalks and bus routes on campus.             

     

     

              

     

    Back to Home