Exercise 5 - Creating A Geodatabase with Domains

Introduction

Geodatabases are a key part in using GIS technology and analyzing geospatial data. When creating one to be used in the field you must create domains beforehand to make collecting data in the field easier. A domain is a key for the data to follow when you are collecting it in the field in order to reduced the occurrence of data mishaps. An example would be setting a temperature field to between 0 and 100 so that if you accidentally input 200 degrees instead of 20 the feature class doesn't allow you to do that.

An important part of creating a geodatabase is planning your field methods ahead of time in order to get as much information collected out in the field as possible. In this exercise we used the example of collecting micro-climate data at different points on campus which we will do in the following exercise. We first need to plan out what we will be looking at and then any domain we will need to create for those fields. The table below shows the field of the factors we will look at in the field as well as any domains needed for the data collection.

Field	Domain
Temperature (surface)	Floating integer (-30-60°F)
Temperature (head level)	(same as above)
Dew Point	(same as above)
Wind Chill	(same as above)
Wind Speed	Floating integer (0-50 mph)
Wind Direction	Floating integer (0-360°)
Ground Cover	Text with coded values: GRA - grass SNW - snow CON - concrete BLK - blacktop SAN - sand GRV - gravel OTH – other (specify in notes field)
Notes	Text (extra information not included in the fields above)

The following video goes through the process of creating the geodatabase, domains, feature class and fields. Once this is finished we can clip a basemap using the Extact by Mask spatial analysis tool and we'll be ready for next week's exercise out in the field.