Studying the Cultural Landscape of Greece

By Richard M. Thompson II
Abstract
In this digital world gathering and storing data
is critical for research purposes. This project
demonstrates how to gather data and assemble
it into a digital atlas. This project sets up a
model that can be used for data acquisition and
displaying techniques for assembling the data
into a digital format. Enabling it to be used for
any country where digital geographical data is
available. The country of Greece will be used as
an example in this project to demonstrate how
one would construct such a database. This
project will also implement various mapping
techniques from the ESI !rc"ap#$ GIS
%Geographical Information Systems& software.
The data gathered will then be used to project
various maps of the country of Greece.
Introduction
The purpose of this project was to create a
wor'ing geodatabase of the country of Greece
in an !rcGIS environment( during which the
following !rc"ap#$ tools will be utili)ed*
Georeferencing( Geocoding( Editor( and the
E+ect tools. I also wor'ed with several di+erent
data table types* excel( ,S-( ."/( and ."0
format to produce maps of Greece. Through the
implementation of these tools it will lay the
foundation to expand on this data base in the
future.
Methods and Materials
!cquired data
,leaned up data tables
Georeferencing( digiti)ing( and edited shape1les
Geocoded the locations of hospitals and airports
The following shape1le( raster( and ."/ 1les depict the
infrastructure and natural features of Greece. These 1les were
obtained from* www.diva2gis.org3gdata. Figures 1 illustrates the
di+erent administrative regions( Figure 2 represents roads
primary routs are the color red and secondary routs are green(
Figure 3 railroads( Figure 4 la'es( ponds( rivers( and Figure 5
elevation %aster 1le&. 4oints of Interest Figure 6 and 4laces
Figure 7 were acquired from*
www.mapcru)in.com3free2greece2arcgis2maps2shape1les.htm .
Figure 6 was altered to display dwellings. The data that was
gathered from*
www.eusoils.jrc.ec.europa.eu3ES567!rchive3ES56v83googleearth3inde
x.cfm
displays soil as seen in fgure 8 and land cover in fgure 9.
Geocoding was used to create figures 10 and 11. Georeferencing was used to
generate fgures 12 13 14 15 16 and 17.
Figure 18 was created by downloading a data table from !rc GIS
online www.!rcGIS.com and lin'ing it to administrative region 9 of
Greece.
!onclusion
I used di+erent mapping techniques to visually display
the data that I gathered on the country of Greece.
4roblems that I encountered during this project consisted
of the availability of data( language barriers( and messy
data sets.
"le#ation
Figure
5
Figure 1
!dministrative egions
Greece_RG2
Figure 6
$oints o% Interest
Rails
&ail &oads
Figure
7
$laces
Figure 8
'oil
Figure 2
&oads
Figure
9
(and !o#er
Figure 1)
Air*orts
Anal+sis
This project demonstrates how to construct a basic
digital atlas of the country of Greece in an !rcGIS
environment. :urth more it validates how to gather
geographical data and assemble it into a digital system
that can be used by intelligence agency;s.
Figure
3
,odies o% -ater
Figure
4

Figure 11
.os*it
als
Figure 12
!urren
ts
Ac/no0ledg1ents
-illia1 $ooler and 2hea 3oung
&e%erences
www.diva2gis.org3gdata
www.!rcGIS.com
www.mapcru)in.com3free2greece2arcgis2maps2shape1les.htm
www.eusoils.jrc.ec.europa.eu3ES567!rchive3ES56v83googleearth3index.cfm
Faults
(ines
4olcanic
Arcs
Figure 13
Figure 14
Figure 16 Figure 15
Figure 17 Figure 18
'u11er -ind
$atterns
-ind $atterns
'*ring
-ind $atterns Fall
-ind $atterns -inter
$o*ulation
2)1)
Figure
1