Special Topics Project 3 Prepare: GIS and Economic Development

The posted maps were created for the University of West Florida On-Line GIS certification program class, Special Topics in GIS (GIS 4930) as part of the Project 3 Prepare Week assignment focusing on using GIS as a tool for market analysis. The project will be focused on locating the best site for a new book store for a family-owned retail chain that has two stores in the San Francisco area called Better Books.

During the Prepare phase we were asked to do some basic market analysis research using GIS to review demographics and competitors as wells as to look at customer characteristics in relation to store locations.

The first map shows demographics by population block groups in the San Francisco area that are indicators of possible book-buying customers along with the locations of competitor stores classified by yearly sales:



The map was fairly easy to create. The biggest challenges being choosing appropriate symbology for all the elements and then deciding on the best possible layout. I chose to use the library symbol to represent the Better Books stores but made each a different color. You'll see why on the second map.

For each of the block group choropleth parts of the map, I wanted to use fairly muted colors so that the store points for both Better Books and it's competitors would show up. The problem with doing that was the low classifications generally had a color value of white which did not look good against the white background. I played with the color ranges a little bit to make sure I good get the colors to pop a little more. I used green for the money demographics for obvious reasons (money is green).

The second map shows the results of establishing a 1-mile market area buffer around each of the Better Books sites and using it to perform calculations on the demographic data from the census blocks as well as from a separate point data layer that contains sales data on the buying habits of members of a book club, Booklovers:



Again, the map was not too difficult to generate but the spatial data within it was used to perform a number of calculations on customers and potential customers within the market areas of each current store. I figured to lend more credence to my choice of store symbol, I'd go ahead and use the library symbol to create a logo for Better Books and used it to fill some empty map space. I envision the motto of Better Books to be, "Twice as good as going to the Library".

As you can see, this weeks work was not as stressful as the last two projects, so I was able to have a little more fun and focus a little more on map design.

Special Topics Project 2 Report: Urban Landscaping

This week concludes the second project for the University of West Florida On-Line GIS Certification course, Special Topics in GIS (GIS 4930) which focused on urban landscaping design concepts.

The first task for report week required summing up and extending the project goals for the previous two weeks in trying to show quantitative reasons for Marin City, California to continue to provide 25% matching funds to a the Marin City Tree Program in order for it to continue to receive federal grants for tree planting and maintenance under the Small Business Stewardship Assistance Act of 2010. I have presented this data via a report which is meant to be presented to the Marin City Manager which can be accessed via this link:

Report to Marin City Manager

The second task focused on a request to determine how many trees need to be planted to offset half the energy use of a proposed project to build the Marin City Center, a multi-use community building in the northwest part of the city. I have also chosen to present the data in the form of a report that can be accessed by this link:

Report on Marin City Center Energy Usage

Project 2: GIS and Landscape Design: Part 2 Analyze

Project 2 in GIS 4930 Special Topics in GIS focuses on GIS and Landscape Design/Management. The scenario involves using a GIS to answer questions related to Small Business Environmental Stewardship Assistance Act of 2010 which encourages communities to plant trees in urban neighborhoods in order to revitalize communities.

In the preparation phase ortho-images of Marin City, CA were reclassified to identify three distinct classes of ground cover - Trees, Grasses and Impervious Surfaces. Once reclassification was completed using ArcGIS Spatial Analysis tools, the analyze phase focused on looking at calculating percent tree cover, carbon storage and carbon sequestration for five selected neighborhoods within the city area. The analysis performed is a good demonstration of the way a GIS can be used to derive quantitative spacial information about an area from a basic image.

Using the reclassified image, each neighborhoods ground cover classifications were extracted allowing for the calculation of the area, acreage and percent of total coverage for each class of land cover. The data from those calculations was used to calculate estimated carbon storage and carbon sequestration values for each neighborhood based on CITYGreen methods and equations. The result is the posted map which shows each of the five neighborhoods statistics allowing for the easy determination of which areas in Marin City are more likely to benefit from tree planting programs.

Project 2: Prepare

Project 2 in GIS 4930 Special Topics in GIS focuses on GIS and Landscape Design/Management. The scenario involves using a GIS to answer questions related to Small Business Environmental Stewardship Assistance Act of 2010 which encourages communities to plant trees in urban neighborhoods in order to revitalize communities. The act requires matching funds to be provided by the city and the City Manager is requesting a study to show some quantitative reasons to fund the program. Specifically, the GIS is being used to classify ground cover in Marin City, California to try to answer three questions: 1) How does the stewardship program currently benefit the city in terms of energy savings. 2) How does the program benefit the city in terms of carbon stored. 3)How can the program help to identify areas within the city that would benefit from planting more trees.

The first step in the process was to reclassifying ortho-images of Marin City into classified raster images that can be used to determine three general types of land cover classifications: Trees, Grasses and Impervious Surfaces. As part of the preperation process the following base map was created showing Marin County and Marin City with the area to be classified:

Special Topics Project 1 Report Phase

The posted maps were created as part of the first project in the University of West Florida On-line GIS certification course, Special Topics in GIS (GIS 4048). The project was a health study of air pollution, asthma and race in the San Francisco bay area. The study focused on looking at asthma hospitalization rates in the nine counties that make up the bay area to look for correlations between factors such as race and air quality.

The study had three separate analytical parts that required their own deliverables. Each of the maps posted here was part of one of those studies and they are being presented in the order of the study.

Public Health Analysis: Part 1 Demographics

The first part of the study was actually a separate study that took priority when the project leaders were notified that funds were available to help uninsured populations. The goal was to determine if there were any correlations between certain possible poverty indicators such as unemployment, race and single mother-hood and the uninsured population.









Public Health Analysis: Part 2 A Closer Look at Asthma

The second part of the study looked at the relation ship of race and air quality factors to the rate of asthma hospitalizations in the bay area. The goal was to try to determine if there was any correlation between these factors, determine which ones and locate both the target population and target county where funds would best be allocated to hospitals likely to receive the most asthma hospitalizations.









Public Health Analysis: Part 3

Part 3 of the study proceeds under the assumption that the previous phases of the study have shown a population most at risk of asthma hospitalization and the county that is the most likely to experience impacts from increased hospitalizations from the targeted population. The goal of this portion of the study was to look at where targeted asthma sufferers may suffer due to point sources of pollution and which hospitals are most likely to be utilized by the targeted population. The study mapped sources of pollution such as Toxic Release Index (TRI) point locations and roadways, hospitals and the distribution of the targeted population at the Census Tract level. These factors were compared via weighted overlays to identify the most likely "hot" zones where the proximity to a hospital, the pollution factors and the targeted population could most likely lead to increased use necessitating the need for an increase in staffing and funding.

Special Topics Project 1: Analyze Phase Post 1

The posted map was completed as part of the University of West Florida On-Line GIS Certification Program class, GIS 4930/5945 Special Topics in GIS. The Special Topics class is focusing on one geographic area, the San Francisco Bay Area, and studying various problems faced by city GIS managers and analysts in that area over the course of the semester.

The first class project focuses on GIS and Public Health by looking at possible race and environmental factors that may be related to asthma hospitalization rates in the nine counties that comprise the San Francisco Bay Area.

The posted map shows county asthma hospitalization rates per 10,000 people and it forms a base map that can be used for later p[arts of the study:



The map is a fairly straightforward thematic choropleth map that highlights the counties showing the highest rate of hospitalizations per 10,000 people in the bay area, specifically Alameda County. The map also shows some hospitals that are within the study area that are likely to be receiving many of the hospitalized patients.

The map was fairly easy to construct using ESRI ArcMap GIS software, the biggest challenges being choosing a suitable color scheme of the county data and a background that highlighted the map data. I annotized the County labels for this map so that I could move them to open areas of the map and fit in the legend and other pertinent map data while keeping the scale as large as possible.

Special Topics in GIS Project 1: Air Pollution, Ashtma and Race in San Francisco Bay Area

The following links were created for the first assignment in the University of West Florida's 2010 GIS Certification Program on-line course, Special Topics in GIS which began in the Fall 2010 semester.

The Special Topics class focuses on longer term projects centered on s specific area - the San Francisco Bay Area. The first project focuses on public health via a study that uses GIS to examine whether there is any correlation between asthma admittance rates in the nine counties that comprise the San Francisco bay area, air quality (based on ozone and particulate matter data) and racial demographics. The study initiators are local county hosptial officials who are looking into data to help develop resource allocation budgets for the county hospital system.

The prepare phase of the project required preparing demographic, air quality and asthma admittance data from various sources such as publications and the internet into a format that coud be utilized by the GIS and connected to spatial data utilized by the GIS (in this case the county geospatial data).

As all the GIS datasets were being created or altered from exiosting datasets, one of the project requirements was to update the metadata associated with each data file to reflects it's relevence to the current project and to provide future possible users of the data a way to understand what data was incorporated in the study for validation purposes.

What is posted here are the metadata files for all the datasets anticipated to be used in the project:

Demographics
Asthma Rates
Monthly Ozone
Particulate Matter

Bay Area Counties Shapefile
Bay Area Hospitals Shapefile
Bay Area Monitoring Stations Shapefile

In addition to ther preperaption of the data sets and the metadata, the Prepare phase required the production of a preliminary Process summary outlining the steps taken from inception to completion of the study and presentation of the data.