GeoProcessing

Site Selection

Background

While working for an engineering firm, you and your team have been asked to perform a study to identify potential landfill sites for a client. The client has already narrowed the scope for you and has chosen a general site vicinity.  You, the client, and your team have compiled (gathered) the necessary data for inclusion into a GIS for analysis. The projection is identified for the data.  Metadata does not exist, so you will still need to examine the data and make sure everything is defined correctly (a perfect example of why metadata is important).

The following are the criteria that must be satisfied for a piece of land to be considered a potential site:

• It cannot be within 1/4 mile from any local (strt_code = 5) street (some of the streets in the street layer are not classified as local)

• Soil type = 22 or 27 (Monserate sandy loam or Ramona sandy loam)

• Current zoning is either industrial or agricultural (Zone 2 = IND or AGR).

• It cannot be within the floodplain (outside of floodplain: FLD_ZONE = 1)

• It should not be within a fault zone (outside of fault zone: FLT_ZONE = 1)

• Slope must be less than 15% (PCT_SLOPE = 1, 2, or 3)

As you think about how to solve this problem remember there is almost an infinite number of ways to do it.  Before you begin, identify which data sets you will need, and what data they must contain? Write this up now as the first part of what you will turn in on your web page for this assignment (it doesn't have to match what you actually have, but I want you to think about what is needed based on the requirements listed above). This is an important step of a GIS analysis, and while this problem might be simple enough to just dig in right away, I want you to get in the habit of outlining your work.

Data

In this case we have gathered the data for you and it can be downloaded by clicking here (copy the site select.zip file into a working directory folder then extract all the files into the same folder).  You should have the following layers:

• ExStreet

• Soil

• Zone

• Flood

• Fault

• Slope

Open a new instance of ArcMap and select a New Empty Map document and add each of the layers.  You may need to Connect to the Folder.  The map and distance units should be in feet. The Data is projected in State Plane NAD 27 Utah Central.  You should check this in the Data Frame Properties after bringing in the layers.

In order to familiarize yourself with the data answer the following questions on your assignment web page:

1. The number of polygons zoned Industrial?

2. What is the soil type with the largest individual  perimeter?

3. What is the total area inside the flood plain?

4. What is the length of Sunnyside Ave (be careful there may be more than one line belonging to Sunnyside)?

I encourage you to further examine the files with ArcCatalog (or ArcMap) and examine the attributes to understand what is there.  Does it contain everything you will need to solve your problem?

Site Selection

Now that you are familiar with the database you are ready to find potential sites for a landfill create an outline of the processes you will use to solve your problem.  Include this outline of how you will solve the problem on your web page (do this now before actually doing the analysis).  Keep in mind that if you combine the less complicated themes (those with fewer polygons) first it will run faster, why?  

Analysis

Perform the analysis and note any differences between your outlined algorithm and what you really did (refinement).  Once you have completed the analysis create a layout to present your results.  Try to enhance the map a little, don't just show me the polygons selected from the composite, unioned themes.  Remember that you can create a new layer with only the selected features by Exporting to a shapefile.  Include the layout as a screenshot to your webpage(s), but also print out the layout (8.5x11 is fine and it can be in black and white or color).  Be sure it itdentifies all of the possible areas.

Model

Now create a model to perform this analysis.  In order to run the model you may have to reorganize some of your steps.  Save a screen shot of your model with a brief outline of how it works.  Your model does not need to perform every step, including loading/selecting features, but must do the main geoprocessing steps.  When you email the TA you should attach your toolbox and include the necessary instructions for him to run your model. You can assume that he has the same datasets you are using so don't send the data, but do tell him which data sets need to be loaded and any other conditions, such as whether something is selected or not that needs to exist for the tool to work.