Mini Term Project
New Locations for Hospitals in Brown County, Wisconsin
Jake Charneski
2016
Geog 335, Geographic Information Systems
Dr. Cyril Wilson
Objective:
Our
target location will be Brown County, Wisconsin. Brown County is located in
north eastern Wisconsin. Brown County is commonly know because it contains
Green Bay which is home to the Green Bay Packers. We are going to look for a
good location to build a new hospital. We want to find an appropriate place to build
a new hospital that will allow the hospital to be economically efficient and
also serve the most people as possible. The targeted audience are urban
developers and the general public who will potentially need access to the
hospital. The development of a new hospital will help further meet the needs of
the growing population within Brown County. The hospital will also help to keep
the population safer and healthier. We will specifically look for locations
that are within the urban populated area and within 0.25 miles of a major road
and within 1 mile of a school. The hospital will also need to be 2 miles away
from any existing hospitals. We will use different tools and queries to select
the correct locations and present a map showing the locations.
Data:
The
data referenced will be taken from ESRI 2013 DBO USA data. We will look at
Schools, major roads, hospitals, counties, and urban populated areas. This data
can be found on the University of WI- Eau Claire’s geography file server. The
data can also be found at http://www.ArcGIS.com as downloadable content.
The concerns I have with the data are the fact that the data was taken in 2013
or earlier. The data that ESRI collected also came from many third parties at
different times. This could lead to accuracy problems leading to some
inaccuracies in the final result.
Methods:
First
we need to select the target location of Brown County. We will import the
counties layer form the ESRI 2013 DBO USA data. We will make sure to project
the data in the correct coordinate system. For Brown County, we will use the
coordinate system of NAD_1983_StatePlane_Wisconsin_Central_FIPS_4802_Feet to
best represent Brown County. We will perform a select by attributes within in
the counties layer, first selecting Wisconsin and then only Brown County within
Wisconsin. From this we will create a layer just for Brown County that we will
clip all other layers too.
Next we
will add all the layers that we will use to analyses where to place a new
hospital. We will add a school, urban area, major roads, and hospital layers.
We will make sure to project each layer in the NAD_1983_StatePlane_Wisconsin_Central_FIPS_4802_Feet
coordinate system to match that of our created Brown County Layer. Next we will
clip all of the projected layers to the created Brown County layer so only data
shows up for Brown County.
Next we
will create a buffer of 0.25 miles around major roads and a 1 mile buffer
around all schools in the area. We will also create a buffer around existing
hospitals that is 2 miles. We will perform an interest between the major road
and school buffer and the urban area clip within Brown County. This will yield
good potential area to build a new hospital but we have not taken account the
hospitals. We will now perform an erase action on hospitals buffer to eliminate
the 2 mile radius around hospitals. This will ensure that the new potential
hospital to not fall within 2 miles of existing hospitals. This erase combined
with the intersect action will yield the best location for hospitals based on
the stated criteria. Here was what the data flow model will look like for a
visual explanation.
Results:
The area
to build a hospital is neatly labeled on the given map, FIG 3 below. This data
will help urban developers better decide where to build a new hospital without
having to do the research. The area meets the criteria laid out perfectly. If
the city needed to vote on a new location for a hospital they can reference
this map to make sure it meets the criteria stated. If more criteria is needed
this map can provide a great reference to build further criteria off of.
Evaluation:
The
project overall did not seem that difficult. After doing all of the labs and
tutorials throughout the semester the tools and queries that should be used are
easy to think of. I enjoyed coming up with our own research topic. Coming up
with the initial idea was slightly difficult because I could not find data for
my original idea. After changing my idea I was able to find sufficient data to
complete the project. If I were asked to do the project again I think it would
be interesting if we were all giving a problem to solve from the professor. I
found it interesting to solve giving problems, though coming up with our own
problems leads to more creativity. It also allows to really test the skills we
learned. I would not change much for the project and keep it the same as it is
now.
References:
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