Lab 5 Final Project

Introduction:

Recently a friend from college has called and informed me of his plans for him and his family to move to Eau Claire to begin a new job.  Nobody in his family has ever been to Eau Claire before and they will not have much time to house hunt ahead of time.  Seeing as how I have lived in Eau Claire, he thought he would feel more comfortable finding a home sooner with my assistance finding the right neighborhood for his family, which consists of two children, 4 and 7, and a third due on the way.  He has said he can commute a little ways to work, so not to worry about that as long as it is within Eau Claire County.  He does, however, have a few criteria he would prefer to satisfy in order to be in the best situation for his family. 

- They would like to live on a block where there is a possibility of other children, but not a block that is really crowded.  With that in mind, he is estimating a block population of one hundred to one hundred and fifty people to be ideal.

- His kids can be pretty wild and like to horseplay.  Broken bones is nothing new and another baby will be coming soon.  It is very important that the families new house falls within close proximity to a hospital.  He has heard good things and was recommended to Luther Hospital. He does not want to be more than 2.5 miles away from this hospital.

- With his second child set to be in kindergarten next year, and his first child still in elementary school for a few more years, he says it would be also be really helpful to be near an elementary school where his kids can easily get to school.  He wants to know if there are any schools that satisfy his block population and hospital distance criteria and are within a quarter mile so his kids can walk.

He has asked for your assistance in narrowing down his possibilities for blocks to go house hunting based on these criteria.  He has additional desires with his new home, but those are flexible and can be dealt with once these three criteria are satisfied.  His one final question is how far away Lake Eau Claire County Park would be from the suitable block, as he likes to be outdoors with the kids.

Data:

The data that I used to identify the best possible scenario for a suitable block within one quarter mile of an elementary school and 2.5 miles of a hospital was used from http://www.esri.com/data/find-data.  From ESRI, I used data from the Schools, Counties, Hospitals, Parks, and Blockpop layer frames.  A couple of concerns passed over me as I performed my analysis.  For instance, some schools may not be fit for everyone and may not provide the most beneficial education.  This is something that was not looked at in my solution.  Additionally, crime rates and actual children presence on the suitable block was not measured, but rather just the population. 

Methods:

To begin, it was necessary to connect to the ESRI server to acquire the US data.  Once connected I determined the layers I would be using included Hospital, Schools, Blockpop, and finally the County layer as my area of interest.  First, I added the county layer to the map and exported Eau Claire County to a new layer.  Once this was done, I was able to add my additional layers and perform the Clip operation to limit them to my area of interest.  At this point, I was ready to begin my spatial analysis to determine if any blocks meet all criteria.  I performed a query to acquire a layer with just the blocks that have a population between 100-150 people.  Next I selected Luther Hospital and created a layer from the selection that I proceeded add a 2.5 mile buffer around.  I also created a layer based just on the selection of Eau Claire County Park as well as one for just elementary schools.  I proceeded to create a buffer of one quarter mile around the schools and then intersect that buffered layer with the Luther Hospital buffer.  Finally, to determine if any of the intersected buffers held a block within them I performed another intersection of blockpop and the buffer intersection.  This gave me one value that satisfied these requirements (Figure 1).  I performed a spatial join to determine the distance between my suitable block and Lake Eau Claire County Park.  A summary of my strategy used to determine my spatial question answers appears in Figure 2.

 

Figure 1. Green Star representing suitable block

 

 

Figure 2. Data Flow Model

 

 

Results:

Since my friend had a requirement of a 2.5 mile radius of Luther Hospital, it all but eliminated potential blocks anywhere outside of the city of Eau Claire.  It was found that eight potential elementary schools were within the required hospital radius, but a block with the population desired fell within the desired distance of only one of these eight schools.  From the spatial join, it was determined Lake Eau Claire County Park is a distance of 38,145 meters or about 38 km away (Figure 3).  A final map showing overall results is depicted in Figure 4.

 

 

Figure 3. Distance to Lake Eau Claire County Park

 

Figure 4. Finished Map

 

 

Evaluations:

 

I thought the project was a great way to require thinking and figuring on the students' own behalf.  I found difficulties along the way when I wanted to distinguish and figure something out, but there wasn't always the data I would need to proceed in that direction.  If I were to repeat the project, I would use a bigger county and try to develop a spatial question that involves more of the county rather than have almost all the results in one small part of the county that happened to be the City of Eau Claire.