Lab 4: Final Project

Introduction: The purpose of this lab was to create a spatial question, then utilize the geoprocessing skills learned throughout the duration of this class in order to answer my spatial question. For this lab, my spatial question was "where are the best places to raise a family in Austin, Texas." In order to answer this question, I established certain criteria: the place needed to be within 1/2 mile of an elementary school and a park, it needed to be 2 miles from an expressway or freeway, and it needed to have a block population greater than 20, but less than 200. The intended audience for my spatial question is new families with younger kid-- families moving with older kids or without any kids may not care about accessibility to elementary schools or parks. The people who would utilize the information depicted on my map are people wanting to provide the best environment for raising young children. 

Data Sources: For this Lab, I utilized the "Mastering Arc GIS" textbook data. I obtained the data from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire geospatial data database, in which they obtained the data from the creators of Arc GIS (so ESRI). I don't have too many concerns with the data utilized in this map; ESRI created this data, and ESRI is known internationally for its accurate data. The only real data concern I have is the age of the data; the data is from 2014, which is not that old compared to other data; however, some of the data parts of Austin may have changed within the 3 years this data was created, so the map may not be the most accurate. 

Methods: In order to answer my spatial question "where are the best places to raise a family in Austin, Texas," some qualifications needed to have been met. I figured in raising a family, prime location to elementary schools would be imperative--young children need to attend school--so I created a stipulation that the area needed to be within 1/2 mile of an elementary school. Also, I wanted it to be farther than 2 miles from an expressway or a highway, to alleviate potential traffic and noise concerns. I wanted the area to be within 1/2 mile of a park, so the children have a social area to play, and I wanted the area to have between 20-200 people, so it's not too crowded, but there's not too little of people. 

Figure 1-Data Flow Model

In accordance with Figure 1, I utilized a multitude of different spatial tools in order to determine the best place to raise a family in Austin. The tool "buffer" was imperative in creating distance radius's for the elementary schools, the parks, and the highways. Erase was important in determining the desired distance away from expressways and highways; intersect was imperative in combining all of the spatial data. Lastly, the tool "spatial join" was important in providing a summary of the total population of the inter lapped polygons that resulted from all of the buffering, erasing, and intersecting. 

Figure 2: Map of Best Places to Raise a Family in Austin, TX

 Results: The results of the map are highlighted in Figure 2. In the map, the red lines are the highways and expressways, the gray lines depict streets; the green polygons depict parks; and the yellow polygons depict the best place to raise a family in Austin, Texas. Elementary schools, park area, and highways were depicted on the map in order to provide reference to the areas best suited to raise a family (or the yellow areas). In analyzing the map, it's noted the majority of the yellow area is located in the center of the city. This might be due to the abundance of parks located in the center of the city, and the abundance of elementary schools. There are scattered plots of yellow located in the southern and northern parts of the city; however, there seems to be a lack there of in the western parts of the city. From the looks on the map, it seems there is a lack of parks and schools comparatively on the western side of Austin, which probably explains the lack of yellow area.

Evaluation: The overall impression I had on this project was it would take all of the tools I learned this past semester in order to create both a cartographically pleasing map coupled with accurate data representation. Some of the challenged I originally faced was trying to obtain data; trying to locate data in and of itself presents a challenge, however the utilization of the "Mastering ArcGIS" data helped curtail the challenge. Also, it's acknowledged this map isn't perfect; there are some shortcomings that need to be taken into account. For example: neighborhood crime data, in my opinion, would be another important variable for families to determine where they want to raise a family. Also, the qualifications for raising a family are based on my personal preferences; other families might want different stipulations (i.e. maybe a family doesn't care they're within certain distance of an highway, or maybe they want to be within a certain distance of a pool). If I were to change this project, I might try and locate data, versus simply utilizing the Mastering ArcGIS data, because that would create a more "real-world" application to the type of GIS work I would want to do.