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Now, let's continue our work on data from Central Pennsylvania, where Penn State's University Park campus is located. This week, we'll see how this ancient topography affects the contemporary problem of determining potential locations for a new high school.
Note that this project is more involved than some of the earlier ones. The instructions are also less comprehensive than in previous projects - by now you should be getting used to finding your way around in ArcGIS. Of course, if you are struggling, as always, you should post questions to the discussion forums.
Introduction
The Centre County region of Pennsylvania is among the fastest growing regions in the state, largely as a result of the presence of Penn State in the largest town, State College. Growth is putting pressure on many of the region's resources, and some thought is currently being given to the provision of high schools in the region. In this project, we will use raster analysis based on road transport in the region to determine potential sites for a new school. This will demonstrate how complex analysis tasks can be performed by combining results from a series of relatively simple analysis steps.
Project Resources
The data files you need for Project 7 are available in Canvas. If you have any difficulty downloading this file, please contact me.
Once you have downloaded the file, double-click on the Lesson7_project.ppkx file to open it in ArcGIS Pro or unzip the .zip file for use in ArcGIS Desktop 10.X.
This project contains a geodatabase with the lesson data (Lesson7.gdb) and a raster file with a digital elevation model to provide context.
Open the ArcGIS Pro project file or ArcGIS Desktop .mxd file to find layers as follows:
- highSchools- four high schools in Centre County, Pennsylvania
- centreCountySchoolDistricts - the corresponding school districts
- majorRoads - major roads in the region
- localRoads - minor roads in the region
- centreCountyCivilDivisions - showing townships and boroughs in the county
- representativePopInSchoolDistricts - a point layer derived from census block group centroids with attributes for total population and children aged between 5 and 17 from the 2017 release of the 5-year American Community Survey population estimates
- centreBGdemographics - more complete demographic data from the 2017 release of the 5-year American Community Survey population estimates associated with polygons representing the block groups for which the data were collected
- centredem500 - the topography of the county at 500 meter resolution.
Summary of Project 7 Deliverables
For Project 7, the minimum items you are required to have in your write-up are:
- Describe in your write-up how the distance analysis operation works, including commentary on how you would combine multiple distance analysis results (one for each high school) to produce an allocation analysis output and the differences in the straight line distance allocation and the actual allocation of places to school districts in the present example.
- Describe in your write-up how you created the roads raster.
- Perform the cost weighted distance analysis for high schools using the roads raster layer. Examine the resulting allocation layer. How does it differ from the straight-line distance allocation result? Do the roads account for all the inconsistencies between the straight line distance allocation and the actual school districts? Answer these questions in your write-up.
- Estimate the number of school-aged children in the four school districts, and also in the road travel cost-weighted distance allocation zones associated with each school, and put these estimates in your write-up. Also, describe how you arrived at your estimates.
- Insert into your write-up a map and other details of your proposals for a new high school and associated district, including arguments for and against, possible problems with your analysis, maps, and explanations of any analysis carried out.
Questions?
Please use the 'Discussion - Lesson 7' forum to ask for clarification on any of these concepts and ideas. Hopefully, some of your classmates will be able to help with answering your questions, and I will also provide further commentary there where appropriate.