Malaysia Bid Round 2023 (MBR 2023)

The devil in the details

I have started to post some videos demonstrating some tools in ArcGIS Pro. Short ones and pretty quick ones which I strived for since I absolutely am frightened with the idea of irritating people with unnecessary voice-over. It has no garnered much response and it's cool with me. Although, the lack of traction does things to my insides, I go back to the real reason I am doing thing, which is to stash the tools that I managed to learn on my own by trials and errors and keep them somewhere I can refer back to it to remember how it works.

Creating maps involves a number of iterative processes made to suit the intended output. Although creating maps itself is a form of art; heavily reliant on target audience's knowledge and aesthetical preference, it is still an inherently democratic science. Thus, knowing the mainstream technology and tools in the industry to express your vision or message is given. So for those just starting out with using geographical information software (GIS) for your final year project or research, this videos are meant for you. The purpose is not to overwhelm you with too many information, or distract you with my narration, but to follow in real-time the process from the start up of the software to the running of tools that generates the information needed.

Knowing fully well that there is an endless variety of GIS software or tools out there, processes that you need to execute to make things happen may vary in name and functionalities. Forget the beef between ArcGIS and QGIS, of which one is the better tool; if it serves your needs, then use it. You're not obliged to pledge loyalty to software or brands although you are encouraged to maintain integrity in your beliefs when it comes to corporate versus open source tools in the industry. Both choices come with their advantages and disadvantages. Yours truly uses QGIS and ArcGIS Pro interchangeably. If it doesn't work in ArcGIS Pro, which I use primarily, I'll jump to using QGIS. It's not a big deal. If it works painlessly, there is no reason to feel bad about using it.

So far, the content I have made emphasizes mostly on ArcGIS Pro or Esri products since using them is how I come to learn more about geology and geography. QGIS was a name I did not learn of in my university years when ArcGIS versions start with the digit 9️⃣, so you can catch my drift.

We can go on and on about theoretical stuff and our smarter pals usually knows what to do when faced with the tools. Unfortunately, I fall in the percentile that needed to land on the job to understand what on earth I am supposed to do. This series of videos are for those who have the same problem as I do and need to see the magic actually happening before knowing what to do. And for the most part, there are so many things to read and try out before you get it right. So hopefully, the demos can kickstart some thoughts or observation in the logic within the software's ecosystem and become more than just a technical power-user.

This week, I touched on some tools that I found helpful when dealing with point vector data, so feel free to check it out 👇🏻

Next week, I'm thinking of exploring some series of point analysis and space time cube is beckoning for me to test it out. Until then, stay cool and drop a word if you need any clarifications on the demos!

Story Map for Noobs: Cascade | WWF Network

Story Map is a web application template product that has been popularized in ArcGIS Online for a user-friendly and comprehensive narrative of maps. The ‘Cascade’ template has become the seamless interface of choice due to it’s ribbon transitions and availability of content streaming from external sources. 

Please refer to the following link for resources used in this webinar:

Story Map for Noobs: Cascade web application

📌 Availability: Retracted in 2021

Malaysia Forest Cover 2020 | WWF-Malaysia

Tool: ArcGIS Pro 2.9.3, Operations Dashboard ArcGIS & ArcGIS Online Technique: Data transformation and geometric calculation

WWF-Malaysia Forest Cover Baseline is a dashboard of forest cover extent status in selected land uses across Malaysia's region, methodology of analysis and resources involved in the exercise.

The WWF-Malaysia Forest Cover Baseline and Forest Cover Key Performance Index (KPI) is a task undertaken by the Conservation Geographical Information System (CGIS) Unit to amass the discrete information of forest cover extent across Malaysia's 3 main region of legislation: Peninsular Malaysia, Sarawak and Sabah. This exercise produces a concise dashboard report in an online platform that describes the processed information on the forest cover status as well as their prospective areas identified for conservation work.

Report can be interactively accessed at the following:

The dashboard can be accessed at Malaysia Forest Cover 2020.

📌 Availability: Retracted in 2021

Taskade: Multi-platform planner and task manager

The year 2021 is looming over us and I am dying to have some sort of control over what I could be doing for the next 365 days. While 2020 had been a year of 'character building', I discover alot of things about everything around me and myself. For starters, I am an avid planner; surprisingly. But it does not mean that I follow through with them. See what I did right there? I am admitting the truth behind self-study and lifetime of learning.

With alot of things I have planned to breathe new life to my own progress and time management, I went hunting for some interesting stuff in the internet for inspiration and try-outs. And guess what? I found one and I think most people may have been using this already in full swing because the review is 5 ⭐!

🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑

Taskade is simply a project/team management tool. Ah ah ah...before you write me off, hear me out. Taskade is aimed to help teams to plan, organize or manage their tasks and prioritize output for decision-making. It is simply an interactive planner sans organizer sans dashboard that sees where you're at with your work, what you've managed to get done and communicate tasks among people in your team; IF you have a whole team working on some sort of project. Hence, the chat capability that is implemented in this tool.

At my job, I work in a team of only 2 people; me and another colleague, and we're the regional programme unit which is apart of the bigger unit of team mates spread elsewhere in other regions. So, just because your unit is small, it doesn't mean that your task load complements your pint-sized manpower. So, I've been looking for platforms that could help me organize our productivity and ensure high-quality output. Just because technology is more advanced, it doesn'e mean there isn't any learning curve, right? So I tried just about anything under the sun for project/team management; Asana, Slack, Discord, the pre-existing Google..., but none of them could nail all shortcomings precisely; due dates, assignment of tasks, progress, sub-tasks, interactive commenting, multiplatform sync, brainstorming etc. Channels in Slack gives me headache -- same with Discord, and Telegram channels is too 'static' and 'one-way street' for me to view everything.

I found Taskade after trying to find a complementary 'Forest: Focus' extension at the Google Chrome extensions marketplace. There are plenty of interesting high-quality extensions as of late and I am pleasantyl surprised because earlier this year, most of them were quite 'beta' in their functionality. I saw a 'Bullet Journal' extension that someone raved about and another individual commented: 'Isn't this Taskade?'. The curious cat I am, I googled it and was not disappointed. What are the main keywords that hooked me?:

FREE

Google-integrated

Remote work environment advocacy

Multi-platform

What features do Taskade actually have? ✨

Given that it is an All-in-One Collaboration tool, it is understandable if the GUI is pleasing on the eyes. I do understand that first-impression is everything; color, packaging, fore-front information and visual, but it was really the functionality that delivers me to salvation. If you're an active member of Dev.to, then you'll catch feels with this theme that Taskade delivers. Key features in Taskade that you should try out:

Task list

Collaborators invitation feature (no organizational handle required)

Chat feature (with a call feature!)

Workspace feature (nothing new but...I'll get back to this later)

5 interchangeable neural-forest task list templates; List, Board, Action, Mindmap and Org Chart -- seamless with no error.

The capability to utilize this very platform as a presentation or exported into PDF task list printout.

Safe to say, Taskade buried me alive with the curation of beautiful images for the background; again...not relevant but needed to be said.

The Live Demosandbo lets you try it out for yourself although, at first glance, you may be wondering what on earth you are looking at. But it won't take long before you discover that it is quite intuitive.

Did I mention you can download and access it from just about ANYWHERE? Laptops, browser extensions and even smartphone apps. I'm not kidding when I said Taskade is multiplatform; they work on Windows, Mac, Android, iOS and Linux. Currently, I am testing it out using the Chrome extension and installed the app in my Android phone. It works like I expect it to so far.

What is the difference between the FREE and PAID version? 💰💰💰

As I just mentioned, you can sign-up for it for free and use it for life...for free. The priced version is seemingly there to accommodate the file size per upload you require; as of now. For free plan, you can upload 5MB file per upload while the paid version increases the size to 50MB per upload. Both versions offer:

Unlimited storage

Unlimited tasks entry

Unlimited project creation

Unlimited collaborators addition

The development team is currently adding more functionalities such as Project Activity Tracking, Integration to Dropbox, Google Drive and One Drive as well as Email Integration -- available for free.

Although it is mentioned that the free version of Taskade includes unlimited tasks, collaborators and all essential features, it was also mentioned that you will need to upgrade if you exceed the workspace limits which doesn't actually have any entailing elaborations which I will try to dig soon enough. But safe to say that if you are a single person using this tool, you are considered a team of 'one' where your shared projects in workspace to your 'editors' are still considered free. Only workspace the addition of workspace members are billed. This may imply that there are certain limits to how many individuals you can add into your workspace before you are required to upgrade. So far, visually, I see that the limit may be 2 people that makes up to 3 people per workspace (including yourself). You can find some details to pricing and FAQs here:

Taskade | Simple Pricing

Personally, I don't think USD5 is a hard bargain if you're self-employed and work with external parties collaboratively. If you're apart of an organization, feel free to ask for demo from them. Discount is possible if you're from a nonprofit or educational institution.

How I use Taskade? ☕

Well, given that it was free to sign-up, I tried it out straight away and I'm happy to report that I successfully managed to use it without having to google nor view any how-tos. That is a good thing! In fact, I am quite elated with just how easy it is to use this tool that I have used my personal email to help centralize and manage my work and personal work side-by-side. If you prefer some satellite view of your progress and all the task you need to complete to clear off certain objective, this is not a bad organization.

So I created 2 workspace: one for work and one for my personal tasks. Then I just collate all my tasks into monthly projects.

My personal tasks involve me updating my study progress and curating stuff I like online into my Tumblr blog.

Create studyblr workspace

Create new project in the studyblr workspace to organize and brainstorm Tumblr contents I plan to create and post: Tumblr: 2021/01.

Utilize the Mindmap template from all the options of templates shared and start creating the and organizing the content I want and tasks I need to execute to develop them.

Et voila! There all there is to it! It is easy peasy and you can start adding due dates as reminders and links as resources as well as hashtags for filtering in future. Check out some drafting I did so far in the screenshots below!

For more updates, check out their Updates page that fully utilizes Taskade to share all the updates straight from December 2017 till present and the chat function is there available for you to ask the Taskade team about the feature updates directly. Now that's awesome cause you know something's good if the one who makes them, actually uses them.😎😎😎

There is a moment where base maps just couldn't or wouldn't cut it. And DEMs are not helping. The beautiful hillshade raster generated from the hillshade tool can't help it if the DEM isn't as crisp as you would want it to be. And to think that I've been hiding into hermitage to learn how to 'soften' and cook visual 'occlusion' to make maps look seamlessly smooth. Cartographers are the MUAs of the satellite image community. 

I have always loved monochromatic maps where the visual is clean, the colors not harsh and easy for me to read. There was not much gig lately at work where map-making is concerned. The last one was back in April for some of our new strategy plans. So, when my pal wanted me to just 'edit' some maps she wanted to use, I can't stop myself with just changing the base map. 

The result isn't as much as I'd like it to be but then, we are catering the population that actually uses this map. Inspired by the beautiful map produced by John M Nelson that he graciously presented at 2019 NACIS; An Absurdly Tall Hiking Map of the Appalachian Trail. What I found is absurd is how little views this presentation have. The simplicity of the map is personally spot-on for me. Similar to Daniel P. Huffman as he confessed in his NACIS 2018 talk; Mapping in Monochrome, I am in favor of monochromatic color scheme. I absolutely loathe chaotic map that looked like my niece's unicorn just barf the 70s color deco all across the screen. Maybe for practical purposes of differentiating values of an attribute is deemed justifiable but surely...we can do better than clashing orange, purple and green together, no? 

So...a request to change some labels turn into a full-on make over. There are some things that I realized while making this map using ArcGIS Pro that I believe any ArcGIS Pro noob should know:

Sizing your symbols in Symbology should ideally be done in the Layout view. Trust me. It'll save you alot of time. 

When making outlines of anything at all, consider using a tone or two lighter than the darkest of colors and make the line thinner than 1 pt. 

Halo do matter for your labels or any textual elements of your map.

Sometimes, making borders for your map is justifiable goose chase. You don't particularly need it. Especially if the map is something you are going to compact together with articles or to be apart of a book etc. 

Using blue all the way might have been something I preferred but they have the different zonations for the rivers, so that plan went out the window. 

And speaking of window...the window for improvement in this map is as big as US and Europe combined. 

Have you ever heard of the binning technique?

My favorite cartographer is John M. Nelson. In fact, he's the one who actually got me searching what 'cartography' really is. Fortunately, he's a mix of a storyteller/technical support analyst/designer. So, his techniques are the ones I have least trouble understanding. And this is by no means a comment meant to offend because really, I'm a little slow and John is a very 'generous' teacher when it comes to explaining things; even through replies in posts. You can witness his work first hand at his own blog posts here;

https://adventuresinmapping.com/

So, the first of his work that captured my attention is the Six Month Drought of the American Southeast map created using the binning method. I didn't even know what binning is, but the map was so pretty it had me announcing my loyalty to #cartography hashtags. 

So what is binning? According to GIS Lounge, binning is a data modification technique where original data values is converted into a range of small intervals called bins. Bins will then be replaced with a values that is representative of that interval to reduce the number of data points. 

Okay. It should be a no-brainer. But the data he used was the polygon shapefiles of droughts' extent and their severity. Although it is still unknown to me how USGS actually collect this data but his map is sang the deserving anthem to their hard work. But alas, I never had the chance to reproduce it. I do not have the knack of identifying interesting data of any sort, so I either am stuck with reproducing a redundant work or waste my time in a wild goose chase for data; I'm a noob with a tunnel-vision focus. I won't even vote myself if we have a jungle excursion that requires mapping cause we'll be stuck longer than necessary. 

Even so, one year later, precisely this moment...I found a valid reason to attempt this. And it's all because I need to validate satellite imagery classification some colleagues made to show hot spots of global deforestation. I am not a remote sensing wizard, but vector data...now that I can work with. 

Using the same binning technique, I can summarize the steps as follows:

Merge all the data of deforestation variables  Generate hexagonal tessellation  Create the hexagon centroids  Use 'Spatial Join' to sum up the weights of overlapping polygon features of the merged data and join it with the hexagonal centroids   Then configure symbology 

Visualizing was a herculean effort for my brain. The map John made is a bivariate map. And compared to his data which has 2 numerical variables to enable that, mine only had one and it is the summation of the ranking weight I ensued on the deforestation variables. He merged all the shapefiles of weeks after weeks of drought severity readings. Me...I just manage this >>>

My first attempt was to just visualize the probability of the deforestation using the centroid point sizes.

That wasn't much of a success because visually, it doesn't actually appeal to my comprehension. It looks good when you zoom in closer because it gives off that newspaper print feel with that basemap. From this whole extent, it's not helpful.

So, after I tried to no avail to make it work with toggling the size and the colors, I found that instead of trying to make it look nice, I better opt on answering the questions posed by my colleague; could you identify the areas of high likeliness of prolonged deforestation? For that purpose, only hexagonal mesh would do the trick. So based on the 10 km sq size of their hexagons that depicts the areas of deforestation based on image classification, I used 'Spatial Join' too again and join the centroids back their predecessor hexagons to carry the binned values. 

Et voila!

The weight summation was of the degree of prolonged deforestation likeliness and the values range all the way to 24. I made 4 intervals which gave a practical visualization. Eight intervals were pushing it and 6 was not pleasant. It could be my color palette choice that made them unappealing but too many intervals will defeat my purpose. 

Yay or nay...I'm not too sure about it. But I do believe that this summarizes the areas where conservationists should be on the alert with. 

After having a discussion with a colleague, yeah...this technique has a lot of gaps. 

ONE; this is not a point feature. Using the values where the centroid touches/overlays ONLY is not exactly a precise method. Although, it is not wrong either.

TWO; The merged polygonal data came off as OVERLAPPING polygonal features. 

Overlooking the shortcomings and just using it to visually aid cross-checking...yea maybe. Even then...it's not as laser-point precise as one would aspire. I stand humbled. 

Uninspired

I am a reckless uninspired person. I call myself a map-maker but I don't really get to make maps for reasons that I don't think I should venture outside of my requesters' requests. But mostly, I am compelled to get it right and I feel good if I can deliver what they need. The thing is, I no longer get spontaneously inspired to make maps anymore. Just as the rules become clearer the more you read books on cartography, fear just crop themselves up like 'Plant vs Zombies' 🌱 in PlayStation.

So, I am scared that I'm beginning to wear off my excitement about making map; really making them and not just knowing how to make them.

What sort of idea is great? I mean, what should I focus on trying to make? There are so many data out there that what I will attempt may be missing the train or just pale in comparison to other incredible work. I don't really mind it but I'm not that young to not understand self-esteem does ease the thinking process.

Can't say much, I mean...30 Days of Map Challenge hasn't been all that well with me. I should've prepared something before the event event started. I quit after the 3rd challenge cause I overthink and get panic attacks every time I feel I'm doing stuff half-ass.

Despite all that, I am lucky to have aggressively supportive siblings. They just can't seem to stop the tough love and always kicking me to just barf something out.

'It's the process that matters!'

When did I start forgetting how wonderful the process, huh?

Please come back home

🌱 Google Earth Engine 101

Uploading a shapefile as an asset in GEE and making use of it

🟢 Beginner-friendly.

🆓 Free with no hidden monetary cost.

🤚🏻 Requires registration so sign-up 👉🏻https://signup.earthengine.google.com/, access via browser and Internet connection

🖥️ Available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Google Earth Engine or lovingly called GEE is another free and open platform provided by Google to provide a very vast and comprehensive collection of earth observation data. Since Sentinel-2 is no longer available for download at USGS Earth Explorer, I find the alternative too challenging for me so GEE seems like the easiest way to go. If you're looking for a one-stop platform to access satellite imagery for free, GEE is a great place to start. You don't have to learn JavaScript explicitly to start using this tool.

📚 Nature in the Heart of Borneo (2020)

Tool: ArcGIS Pro 2.6.1

Technique: Annotation, Labeling and Symbology

A series of maps were created for the book published by WWF-Malaysia and FORMADAT (Forum Masyarakat Adat Dataran Tinggi Borneo) back in 2020 called Nature in the Heart of Borneo.

This book was meant as a guide to some of the natural attractions at Northern parts of Sarawak. If it was clear, Northern Sarawak is where the we have our very own highlanders which consist of primarily the Lundayeh/Lun Bawang, Sa'ban and Kelabit people. Some of the beautiful settlements up in the north that should not be missed are Ba'kelalan and Long Semadoh. They have beautiful homestays and even more beautiful landscapes with trekking activities lined up for tourists. And this is the culmination of ardent passion by my two absolutely wonderful colleagues, Alicia Ng and Cynthia Chin.

Most part of the maps were made using readily available basemap provided by Esri in their Living Atlas. But in entirety, many of the features and details are drawn manually within ArcGIS Pro. Like many other mapmakers out there, the labeling feature is horrendously temperamental and I either end up using annotations instead.

In summary, technically, there are 2 lessons learned here:

1️⃣ Establish concept or pick an idea before you start drawing

A concept of the map and palette should be established at the earliest stage possible. And don't just throw the task of making maps and split them evenly between cartographers. They won't have similar ideas or similar interpretations of the concept. It'll only give you double the pain of creating the maps again from scratch.

2️⃣ Omit borders

If you're making maps for books, don't border trying to make borders and fully utilize the whole layout. In the end, you'll need to export out your maps and they will resize it anyway and it'll compromise the maps you created. As if it wasn't graining enough in the first place, it'll look absolutely microscopic by the time they're done.