Explain Georeferencing To Me as If I Were a Five-Year-Old

[AdrianWelsh]

I really liked how Denzel Washington used the phrase “explain this to me as if I were a xxx-year-old” in the movie Philadelphia (1993).

Reference: Philadelphia. Philadelphia, PA: Jonathan Demme, 1993. film.

So, I will take it one step further and attempt to explain the concept of georeferencing to an actual five-year-old.

Five-year-old:

Five-year-old engineer says, “I have this PDF of a site plan. I want to put this on a map and have it line up properly.”

 

Here is my map.

 

We need to zoom in a little bit closer.

 

<-- click to make larger

A little bit more.

 

<-- click to make larger

Almost there. Zoom in some more so that our site plan will fit better.

 

<-- click to make larger

Much better. Now, we need to shrink the site plan to a more usable size. Currently, it’s larger than our map.

 

Let’s make it a little bit smaller.

 

Perfect. Now we need to place the site plan on our zoomed in map and adjust it to fit by rotating it and resizing it.

 

Great! Now, after some quality control of adjustments and transformations, we can rectify this image and call it georeferenced!

 

<-- click to make larger

We can make the georeferenced image transparent to where we can see the basemap behind it.

 

<-- click to make larger

Finally, we can add existing linework and other GIS files to give the image a more solid reference.

 

<-- click to make larger

Voila!  

Please leave comments and let me know if this is helpful and/or what I should change with this blog post. Thanks for reading!

[DanPatterson_Retired]

Love it!   Good help is hard to find... you have excellent support.

[AdrianWelsh]

Haha, thanks Dan! It's true, good help is hard to find.  

[JoeBorgione]

That's great! 

[KimberleeShulsen]

I really liked this explanation!!!

[PanGIS]

Still laughing.

That's great!

[MelodyRose]

This is an excellent presentation! It is very creative. I am still somewhat new to GIS and this is a good lesson for someone who is new to GIS. Thank you for sharing!

[AdrianWelsh]

Melody, I'm glad you liked it! I suppose I should make more GIS-for-beginners-type blog posts! Thanks for the comments.  

[MelodyRose]

Adrian, you're welcome.

[Lake_Worth_BeachAdmin]

Very nice! 

[AnthonyPankala]

Huh, so that's the technical term for what issues I keep fighting so hard to figure out .  This will make my Google searching A LOT more useful when trying to find the solution .

[Nicholas-Furness]

That's superb! Thanks for posting this and congrats to the assistant. Great job!

[LasseElden]

Gr8!

Let's say this 5-yearold now was 42 and just had just got ArcPro.

How would he (or I) geoforce a TIFF file into ArcMap. Let's say... 100% step by step?

[HeidiRagsdale]

I think this is a great explanation!  Kids really do get it! 🙂

[AdrianWelsh]

Hi Lasse,

Take a look at this link for instructions on how to georeference in ArcGIS Pro.

Georeferencing tools—ArcGIS Pro | ArcGIS Desktop 

Let me know if you need more guidance.

Thanks,

Adrian

[PROBERT68]

Awesome !!!!!

[PernillaLindblom]

Great! I'd never heard about georeferenced before and know little about GIS but I understood this, so great work, wonderfully explained

[AdrianWelsh]

Pernilla,

I am glad it was helpful!

[EvanD]

I think the devil is in the, "Now, after some quality control of adjustments and transformations, we can rectify this image and call it georeferenced!" part.

[MauriceCasalta]

I love it!

[AdrianWelsh]

Well, yeah. I think that each of those terms could possibly be broken down to be 'explained' to a five-year-old as well. It just might take quite a bit longer...

[AyeletGreenberg]

Wonderful 🙂

[AnitaPalmer1]

This was brilliant. Please do a series...I would be a big fan! Thanks!

[ElamarHienrich]

This is great! 

[AdrianWelsh]

What would be another topic to explain to five year olds?

[yangzhang]

Great! Look forward next topic

[RuiSantos_EsriPT]

This is great! I will try to use this 5 years old exemple to other topics.

[JohanesFerdinand]

Congratulation for this great work, its interestesting and easily understood.Keep it up!

[AnjoletteSpradling]

Geocoding. I once tried to explain it to adult IT Analysts.

[GünterDörffel]

Nice! It proves that

• work plus fun : possible
• gis plus family (I assume): possible
• and finally: Georeferencing: possible 🙂

[MuhaimenAyyub]

Nice one.

[AdrianWelsh]

Hmmm, geocoding would be a great one. I don't use geocoding enough to feel like I could explain it to a five-year-old. The simple gist of it could be easily explained, but explaining how to create an address locator and what all the options are for what can go wrong/right, etc. ... that could get complicated quickly! I'll have to think about this one.

[RebeccaStrauch__GISP]

Suggestion....think locally.  How would you explain your address to your daughter.  Then how would you explain the address of you neighbor...or next apt, if that is the case.  The say, start with country, state, city, street address, house number....and reverse.

[AdrianWelsh]

Ugh, now I have to think more...   Thanks for the suggestions. These are quite good. I'll give it some thought see if I can come up with anything clever or creative.

[AdrianWelsh]

Just adding a link here to the next blog post:

/blogs/AdrianWelsh/2017/05/26/top-ten-things-a-five-year-old-would-do-at-the-esri-user-conference 

[AndréPiasta]

Awesome!
I'm an instructor and you did a far better job than I've ever done explaining georeferencing.

At risk of putting myself out of a job, I'm going to point my future classes at your post(s).

[AQeelhilali]

Simple and helpfull, thanks

[JanHalatsch1]

Nice one! Thanks.

[AitorCalero_García]

Absolutely great!

[AtharCush]

I have been agonizing over this problem for almost one year.

[MarilyPaipeti]

Just lovely!

[ArleneOwen]

Excellent!

[AlexWood2]

This is absolutely adorable. I wish everything in life could be explained by and to a 5-year old XD

[AnninaHirschi_Wyss1]

Hi Adrian Welsh‌

Love it!

Do you plan to "Explain Projections To Me as If I Were a Five-Year-Old" ? (even if she's six by now...) That would be of great great use for our GIS introduction courses 😉

cc Connie Schmidt‌, Nicole Ueberschär‌

[AdrianWelsh]

Hi Annina,

That is the next one I want to do. Time and other things have completely gotten in the way of this, unfortunately. But I'll surely post something here when I do (if I do) make that blog post.

[CoryBlackEagle1]

Great post and explanation!!!  Only question is this:  what exactly do you mean by "some quality control of adjustments and transformations"?  Kind of like that great cartoon.

[AdrianWelsh]

Cory,

This is more-or-less another way of saying that there is more involved in this process than just simple insert-map-and-be-done. Here is a link showing how to align the raster with control points (the adjustments):

http://desktop.arcgis.com/en/arcmap/10.3/manage-data/raster-and-images/fundamentals-for-georeferenci...

And here is a link showing how to use transformations (from the same article):

http://desktop.arcgis.com/en/arcmap/10.3/manage-data/raster-and-images/fundamentals-for-georeferenci...

[JpersonalLundquist]

love this. Thank you, at 62 humor is refreshing. I am returning to the fetal position and probably the mind of a 5 year old. I have to say georeferencing is one of my favorite things to do; it can be a challenging (to get it right for the job at hand).

Thanks

[RiccardoKlinger2]

One year ago I was trying to explain a polynomial transformation as well. Maybe not for the five year olds 😉

[AdrianWelsh]

That was nice, I liked it!