Parking Lot Data Collection

To truly understand the nature of geographic data and related data quality issues, you need to have a degree of ―ownership‖ of the data. This exercise emphasizes the data collection and entry phase of a GIS project. Before you begin to collect data, you must have a clear understanding of the end product; in this exercise, you must design your database so that the end product provides you with the capability to query the spatial and attribute data and display spatial relationships.
Data Collection Procedure

• For data collection you can work in pairs.  However, the GIS lab portion will be done individually.
   
• Select a section of 20 stalls in the Parking Lot on campus. For each parking space, record 6 attribute values in tabular format on a piece of paper.  You will record license plate number and value for each vehicle, in addition you need to collect at least 4 other attributes, such as make, model, colour, # of doors, truck/car, etc. 
   
• You must record the license plate numbers consistently — either with or without a space between the numbers and the letters. If there is no car in a parking space, record the letter A for the first empty parking space, the letter B for the second empty space, and so on.
   
• Make certain you have a clear idea of the type of questions that a user of your data may wish to ask about the parked cars as you are given only one opportunity to design your database and collect your data.
   
• Make copies of the data that you have recorded so that each student has their own copy. Be sure to bring this data to the computer lab so that you can enter it into the GIS.