GEOG 483: Problem Solving with GIS
Project 1 Report
Brian Buchanan
January 13, 2008
Jen and Barry are two graduates of the Ice Cream Science Program at Penn State University who have plans to open a brand new ice cream shop known as “Jen and Barry’s Ice Cream”. They decided to open their business in a city that met certain criteria. For this project, I took the sample data and the criteria that Jen and Barry established in order to run analyses in a GIS to determine the best site(s) for the ice cream store. Two separate maps were created showing these sites.
For the first analysis, Jen and Barry set up criteria for the location of their business based upon a combination of both business and quality of life criteria (King 2007).
Business Criteria
1. Greater than 500 farms for milk production
2. A labor pool of at least 25,000 individuals between the ages of 18 and 64 years old
3. An interstate within 20 miles
Quality of Life Criteria
1. Low crime index (less than or equal to 0.02)
2. At least one recreation area within 10 miles
3. A population of less than 150 individuals per square mile
4. A location near a university or college
I started by determining which layers would need to be queried and which of the above criteria would be used to query the layers to determine the locations of the sites. Next, I used Select by Attribute to query the counties layer for number of farms (greater than 500), amount of people between 15 and 64 years old that were still in the labor pool (greater than 25,000), and for the population per square mile (less than 150) all within one query. Using the selected counties, I then selected all the cities within these counties using the Select by Location query. This gave me a list of cities that I queried for a low crime rate (less than or equal to 0.02) and whether or not there was a college or university nearby. Finally, I ran the last two queries (within 10 miles of a recreational area and an interstate within 20 miles) using Select by Location on the narrowed down list of cities. This left me with four cities that could be used by Jen and Barry for the location of their store based upon the given criteria: Whitney, Geyserville, Nittanytown, and Driggs.
Figure 1: Map showing the location of four cities that fit Jen and Barry's Criteria for the location of their business. Created using ArcView 9.1
Jen and Barry decided that there were other criteria needed to include in the site selection for their ice cream store. They decided they wanted the location of their store to be within 10 miles of a river or lake and within 40 miles of a landmark (King 2007). To begin my second analysis, I first loaded the hydrology and landmark layers into my project. Because I knew that the hydrology layer contained more than just lakes and rivers (King 2007), I queried the hydrology layer to select only the features that are rivers or lakes. Next, I ran a Select by Location query to determine which of the four cities (Nittanytown, Whitney, Driggs, and Geyserville) were within 10 miles of any river or lake. Then using those selected cities, I ran another Select by Location query to determine which one(s) were within 40 miles of any existing landmarks. The result was that only one selected city fits all of the criteria established by Jen and Barry for a good location of a brand new “Jen and Barry’s Ice Cream Store”.
Figure 2: Map showing Driggs, the only city that fit all of Jen and Barry's criteria for the location of their business.
These two maps were created using different analyses which were dependant upon both business criteria and quality of life criteria. These criteria were met using GIS by querying attributes and locations in relation to where Jen and Barry would place their business. By using GIS, the city of Driggs was found to fit all of their criteria and presumably will be the best place to situate their new business.
For this project, all maps were created using Environmental Systems Research Institute's (ESRI) ArcView 9.1 on January 13, 2008. The sample data (including characters) was provided by Beth King within the online lesson for Penn State World Campus GEOG 483: Problem Solving with GIS.
Source
King, Beth (2007) Problem Solving with GIS, Lesson 1. The Pennsylvania State University World Campus Certificate Program in GIS. Accessed 11 January 2008.
This document is published in fulfillment of an assignment by a student enrolled in an educational program of The Pennsylvania State University. The student, named above, retains all rights to the document.