The posted map was created for the University of West Florida On-Line GIS certification program class, Special Topics in GIS (GIS 4930) as part of the Project 4 Prepare Week assignment focusing on using GIS and Transportation. The project will again focuses on business and marketing aspects of a GIS, this time on using GIS to help a fictional wine company, Napa's Best (NB), define sales territories and identify prospective customers in Napa County, California.



The objectives for the Preparation week were to:

1) Create and explore a base map of Napa County depicting number of households by census tract.
2) Display prospective customer stores by location and store type.
3) Explore average household restaurant and liquor store purchases by census tract.
4) Calculate and display wine purchases by household by census tract.

I chose to combine the four thematic (choropleth) maps and the base map into one map to allow for the viewer to easily compare census tract data. I decided to do the main map in a larger scale to allow for more separation between the symbols for each prospective customer. I could do so because the outer parts of the county do not contain any stores and have smaller concentrations of population over a wider area which meant the entire base map did not need to be displayed at the higher scale, just the part that had the geographic features important to the overall theme. Symbolizing choropleth part of the inset map for household numbers in the same color scheme allows for the viewer to make the connection to the distribution of stores in the main map as applied to the county as a whole as seen in each of the other maps. Also, the shape of the county lent itself to such a design as the sales distribution choropleth maps could be squeezed closer together allowing more room to display the base map. I did cheat a little on the bottom map, extending it over the border of the two top ones, but I actually think that touch adds a little pizazz to the map and helps to tie all three choropleths together as thematically similar elements.