This is my final project for my class. Its a map of the busiest fire and rescue stations in Prince William County (PWC) Virginia .I chose this topic and area because its the county that I volunteer for. I got the data off of the PWC fire and rescue website and it includes EMTand Fire calls. (In the fire service 75%-85% of the calls we go on are EMS.) To show this on a map I chose 4 different size circles and scaled them down (used 75%, 50%, and 25%) with the biggest being the busiest and the smallest being the least busy. As for the data I tried to split the data into quartiles but that failed because the data had a wide range. For example one jurisdiction ran 13,000 calls in a year when another one ran 600 calls in a year. So splitting the data was a very hard task. This how I did it.
1. Busiest- stations that ran 10,000 or more calls
2. Stations that ran between 4,000 and 10,000 calls
3. Stations that ran between 1,0000 and 4,000
4. Least busy- Stations ran less then 1,000 calls
The problem the data though is that only 2 jurisdictions ran over 10,00 calls and then the second highest number after that 5,000 calls. Talk about giant leap.
I like how I included the pictures of the hydrant, the flame, the axe, the firefighter in the legend, and the firetruck in the top right corner. I also like how I made the cirlces transparent with the roads on top. The one thing I don't like about this map is the numbering of the stations. When I first started this project I wanted to put the number in the middle of the cirlces but that didn't work because the east end (city) has all the firestation that are really busy and literally next to each other and you can see this by the overlapping of the circles. So instead I had to use a line pointing to the center of the cirlce. I also don't like how the west end (country) is empty. It makes map look really odd. Overall I think this is the best map I have made for this class.
5 links for this map.
1. PWC Fire and Resuce Link
http://www.co.prince-william.va.us/default.aspx?topic=040061
2. Data
http://www.pwcfirerescuevolunteers.org/
3.The station where I volunteer at
http://www.buckhallvfd.org/
4. News arctilces on Fire and Rescue
http://www.firehouse.com/
5. Counties in VA that have Fire and Rescue
http://www.usafireandrescue.com/va/
