Company
Date Published
Author
Mamata Akella, Cartographic System Designer
Word count
1564
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

Felt is a free tool designed for classroom use to help students learn spatial analysis by posing questions and conducting exercises, such as determining optimal sites for infrastructure installations or assessing the vulnerability of specific areas to environmental risks. An example exercise involves using Felt to analyze Mexico City's geography and vulnerability to flooding by visualizing the historic Lake Texcoco area and current flood risks, using data from the Government of Mexico City and NASA's SRTM elevation data. The exercise guides students through steps like creating a hillshade to understand elevation, defining an area of interest by dissolving neighborhood polygons, and overlaying flood risk and social vulnerability layers to identify high-risk areas. Ultimately, students perform buffer analyses to determine the number of rainwater collection sites within a specified radius of vulnerable populations, using various transformation methods within Felt to achieve their analytical objectives. Felt aims to streamline the learning process with intuitive tools and previews, enabling students to confidently engage in spatial data analysis and develop critical thinking skills in geography and environmental studies.