Introduction
In addition to being a cheap date excursion, holiday lights cue the holiday spirits, and bring communities together. The city of Eau Claire, Wisconsin has some beautiful light displays put on by homeowners and businesses. A few neighborhoods were toured in this study to inform which homes or neighborhoods to skip, and which ones are a must see.
Study Area
The study area included parts of the second, third, and fourth wards in Eau Claire.
Methods
Criteria
Display lights were graded based on the variety of colors, number of decorations (inflatables, stationary decorations), if there were moving parts or flickering lights, if there was music associated with the display, and the overall aesthetic. A geodatabase was set up with domains to accommodate this criteria. Screenshots of the criteria setup are in figures 1-6.
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| Figure 1: Decorations Domain |
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| Figure 2: Grade Domain |
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| Figure 3: Movement Domain |
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| Figure 4: Music Domain |
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| Figure 5: Notes Domain |
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| Figure 6: Colors Domain. There was an error in generating this domain. The minimum value should have been 1 and the maximum value should have 5. |
Data Collection
The database was shared as a service so that it could be used with ArcCollector. Data was collected around town using the ArcCollector app on a mobile device. Data was only collected at homes with specifically holiday lights/decorations.
Discussion
Conclusions
