gis final project: where to live in oregon and...
TRANSCRIPT
GIS FINAL PROJECT: WHERE TO LIVE IN OREGON AND MARYLANDBy Parker Johnson, Shawn Proctor, Jeremy Griffith, and Melanie Engle
BACKGROUND
� The first decision made in the process was determining what two states we wanted to look at specifically.
� Of the many options, Maryland and Oregon were the two chosen, for a number of reasons.
� To fully encapsulate the wide variety of cultures found in the United States, we chose locations on opposite sides of the map, states with generally temperate climates, and that had some level of access to the ocean.
� Portland has become a beacon of urban culture in the northwest, and Maryland is part of the Eastern megalopolis, which gives it the benefit of being heavily urban.
� Among the team members, the variety in culture, the presence of an urban environment, and the fact that the two states are generally in the better half of states on most attribute lists made them attractive choices
WHAT WE WILL USE TO MAKE OUR DECISION
We are using 4 indicators with different variables in order to determine the best place to live.
• Quality of Life
• Access to food, Air Quality, Vulnerability to sea level rise, Disposable Income
• Education Attainment
• Percentage of population with High School Diploma & Graduate Degrees
• Access to Nature
• Parks and Trails
• Individual Freedoms
• Crime Rate, Access to public transportation
SCOPE AND CHARACTERISTICS
� When applying the indicators to make a meaningful decision, it was essential to determine the numerical boundaries to the data sets and to be sure our indicators represented the data in a meaningful way.
� Some parameters like Education Attainment were relatively easy to find by zip code and set our variables. Other types of data however, took more work to collect and display in a manner that made sense.
� AQI (Air Quality Index) is a characteristic that is quite general in a spatial context, it does not follow boundaries very well, so we decided to rule out areas that reach hazardous levels of air pollution according to the EPA.
� Food security similarly has predefined parameters as established by the USDA, so our process used the presence the classification of a "food insecure community" as a factor that makes the location unsuitable, based on if it met certain criteria
HOW WILL WE DETERMINE In order to narrow down all of our data to one specific location, we had to make a hierarchy of our indicators by importance.
Access to Nature
Quality of Life Individual Freedoms
Education Attainment
ACCESS TO FOOD
Oregon Maryland
AIR QUALITY INDEX
Oregon
Maryland
VULNERABILITY TO SEA LEVEL RISE
Oregon Maryland
DISPOSABLE INCOME
Oregon Maryland
POPULATION WITH HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA
Oregon Maryland
POPULATION WITH GRADUATE DEGREES
Oregon Maryland
ACCESS TO NATURE – MARYLAND
ACCESS TO NATURE - OREGON
ACCESS TO PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION – MARYLAND
ACCESS TO PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION - OREGON
ACCESS TO PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION – OREGON
CRIME RATE
Oregon Maryland
FINAL MAP OREGON
FINAL MAP OREGON – PORTLAND - CRIME
FINAL MAP OREGON – PORTLAND - INCOME
FINAL MAP MARYLAND
FINAL MAP MARYLAND – INCOME - CRIME
FINAL MAP MARYLAND – BALTIMORE
FINAL DECISION MARYLAND – CHEVY CHASE
FINAL DECISION OREGON – LAKE OSWEGO
FINAL DECISION OREGON – LAKE OSWEGO