New School Location

The first overlay gives the three fire station distances and population percentage equal weight. The second overlay gives 40% weight to population percentage and 20% weight to each distance.

The school board of Lake County, FL wants to build a new K-8 school in northeast Lake County. Currently, the children are bused to schools many miles away and those schools are overcrowded. To relieve crowding and cut down on fuel costs, a new school will be located in this corner of the county. There are no hospitals in this area and therefore one of the criteria is that the school be located near an ALS (advanced life support) fire station. Quick response from high level medical personnel is a must. The other criteria is that the school be located in an area of high percentage of 5-17 year olds. This decreases the amount of children that would need busing. This is a very rural area, and therefore the census tracts are large. It was more difficult to pinpoint small areas for the school location.

Location, Location, Location

Starting with the base map, the couple looking to relocate to the Maricopa County area could get a decent visual of land use and cities located in the county. The couple can then see each of their four criteria in separate layouts. The final maps depict their criteria with equal weights and more weight on two of their biggest concerns - traffic and travel time. Very interesting work! I learned how useful GIS can be in location decisions.

Urban Planning and Impact Assessment

Three of the four maps. One thing I learned this week was about the layout templates. I like being able to bring in a template to complete the project. It gives you more options for the final product. I enjoyed working with this weeks material as well. Putting a visual on statistics or surveys has a major impact on decision making. I can see how useful these type assessments/planning tools would be.

Flood Debris

This map shows homes in the study area. The water level in this area ranges from a little over three feet to over seven feet. I included the ranges for estimated residential loss for total replacement. The transparency for the water level is set at 30% to enable residential loss to be viewed.

This map depicts building-related debris generated by the flood. I would have liked to enhance this map a bit, but due to all the errors and freezes of the vm, I simply ran out of time.

Hurricane Katrina - Land Types Flooded Acres/SQMiles

The two graphs depict the acres and square miles of flooded land. I think the graphs show a better visual of these values than the table did. Again, this was difficult for me since I am not proficient in graph making. I am learning more and more everyday though!

Hurricane Katrina

This is the third map in the Hurricane Katrina series. It depicts the infrastructure, hospitals and churches within the flooded areas. This was a difficult task to accomplish and took much trial and error to label only the interstate and US highways. It was very interesting to see how much of the flood covered the roadways and gave a visual to how desparate the residents must have felt with their transportation routes wiped out.