American River College, Geography 350 : Data Acquisition in GIS; Spring 2004

Title Where to Build a New Park in Chester County, Pennsylvania

Author Name Wendy Boemecke 916-845-8275 email: Wendy.Boemecke@oes.ca.gov American River College, Geography 350: Data Acquisition in GIS; Spring 2004 Figure 1 Picture of Nottingham County Park, located Southwestern Chester County, Pennsylvania

Abstract Purpose: To find the best suitable place to build a new park.

Introduction Since I was born and raised in Sacramento I thought I would do a project that was located elsewhere in the United States. My co-worker is from Pennsylvania so I decided to do a spatial analysis project on Chester County. At first I was going to do a project on where to build a house however I was unable to acquire all of the data that I needed therefore my project is now on where to build a new park in Chester County, Pennsylvania.

Background Literature was assembled through Internet sources. In order to use Spatial Analysis to find the location that would best be suited for the new park I had to set what criteria would have to be met. The criteria that I choose is as follows: Far away from other parks. In order to get the best possible use of this park you want to make sure that this park is not located near any other parks. Far away from airports. Since children would be at this park you will need to make the environmental as safe as possible. Far away from railroad lines. With the possibilities of train derailment and people trying to cross rail gates when they are down, I felt it would best be suited to have the park located away from railroad lines. Close to schools. Since kids love to play at parks, we should make it convenient for those who choose to go to the park. Close to wetlands. To help beautify the park it should be in an area that is close to a wetland.
Methods 1. Downloading files. I went to the federal clearinghouse in order to find out who had what data available that would be in acceptable format and I clicked on the link that led me to the PASDA Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access (www.pasada.psu.edu). I carefully reviewed each file that was available and noticed that Chester County itself had it own data file. So I went to Chester County and downloaded all necessary files and printed the full meta data that was available for each file. The files that were downloaded are County boundary, roads, railroad lines, wetlands, schools, parks, and airports. Once these files were downloaded I used winzip to unzip the files. The next step was to use the Arc tool box for projections. I used Define projection wizard (shapefiles) and applied the State Plane, NAD 83 Pennsylvania South. I then went to Project Wizard (shapefiles) and applied the same coordinate system. Which than allowed me to add this data to my map. 2. Distance – I first had to calculate the distance by going to spatial analysis, distance and straight line for each of my five area. Once this process was completed I went to the next step. 2. Reclassifying layers – From this point I reclassified the distance layers that I just create. All of my layers except for the county boundary was converted to raster. I reclassified each layers using five groups of equal intervals. Number 1 being the closest distance and number 5 being the longest distance. 3. Raster Calculator – I than used the raster calculator under spatial analysis to determine which area was best suited for a park. The calculations I used were as follows. Wetlands 0.10 Railroad track 0.35 Schools 0.125 Airport 0.5 Parks 0.75 I rated each one in the order of preference. I felt it was necessary to have the park near a wetland to add natural beauty to the area. If the park was near a school this would allow the teachers access to the park for activities for the kids in school or if the school had a day care facility on site it would be really convenient for activities during good weather. I felt it very necessary that this new park be located away from railroad tracks, airports and other parks. The railroad tracks and airport for safety reasons and away from other parks so that a different area of the county can experience the joys of a neighborhood park. Figure 2 Map of Chester County, Pennsylvania with all of my layers added. Parks, schools, railroad tracks, wetlands, and airports

Results Figure 3 illustrates the results of using the raster calculator in where to locate your new park in Chester County, Pennsylvania. The resulting layer gave me several ideas on where a new park can be built in Chester, Pennsylvania. The pink colors toward the bottom of the map are the sites that are most suitable to build a park in Chester County, Pennsylvania. The higher value numbers are the most suitable and the least likely places are the lower numbers.

Analysis Once my results came in I wanted to add the street layer to Chester County however, I was having problems with projecting and reprojecting this file. Even though the files came from PASDA, a different agency create these files and therefore they were in a different projection. When I tried reprojecting the file I kept getting an error message. I learned a couple of things in doing this project. No project is simple, and just because you get available data from one website doesn’t mean it will be usable and ready to go. One very important thing I learned is that one tiny mistake can throw your project complete off and you end up with inaccurate information. With this type of program you must be very detailed and accurate with the information that you are obtaining and using.

Conclusion My spatial analyst query using the raster calculator gave me several areas to choose from that fit my criteria in building a new park. It met my expectations, but it was no easy task. I would like to add that this method could be a useful way to illustrate many of the capabilities that ARC GIS can be useful to many federal, state and local government. All of the information is out there for everyone to use and with partnerships like the FGDC more information can become available. There are so many other analysis that can be done by using Spatial Analysis, like tracking poverty level in cities and counties, best place for land development, where to build a shopping mall, where to build housing development, best locations for schools. This is just a handful. Until someone uses ARC GIS they wouldn’t truly under the powerfulness and the capabilities of this program.. It is totally unbelievable what is there and what data is available for the user.

References Coverage downloaded from PASDA http://www.pasda.psu.edu/, which is a member of the Federal Geographic Data Committee http://fgdc.er.usgs.gov/.