Objective 3

Rachel Chung and Amaris Gerson

Objective 3 - Implement the GIS model to identify a suitable location for a recreation facility in the City of Guelph and analyze the results

The GIS model defined in objective 2 was applied to the City of Guelph using ArcGIS. An MCE was used on the social criteria to create a computed value for each census tract. This value was then incorporated into the Accessibility MCE. The results from the Environmental MCE will identify the most suitable site for a new recreation facility. All of the data was vector based and projected with the NAD 1983 UTM Zone 17N coordinate system.

Social MCE

Guelph is divided into 27 census tracts defined by Statistics Canada (2006). This was interpolated into a nine-by-seven raster grid as shown in figure 5. Data for all social criteria was collected for each tract from Statistics Canada’s 2006 census. It was then added as new fields into the new raster grid. The focal statistic function calculates statistics of a raster cell based on its neighbouring cells. The mean focal statistics function was applied to the raster grid using a three-by-three cell neighbourhood for each social criteria. The results of this can be seen in figure 6, figure 7, figure 8 and figure 9. The data for each cell was recorded from the grid and was assigned to its corresponding tract in the original Guelph tract layer. To complete this analysis, a field calculation using the following MCE equation was done in a new field in the attribute table.

This resulted in a numerical value being associated to each tract. This can be represented as a vector layer that shows the suitability of each census tract according to all the social criteria combined (figure 10).

Accessibility MCE

The accessibility criteria layers are created by using a multiple ring buffer tool. Distances are inserted into the buffer tool, the results are ranked on a 0 to100 scale in a new field. Higher ranks are assigned to distances that are more suitable, as seen in table 4. Results from the residential, school, recreation centres, bus routes and cycling routes buffers can be seen in figure 11, figure 12, figure 13, figure 14 and figure 15 respectively. Finally, all buffers were combined with the original tract dataset using the overlay intersect tool. To interpret this information, the final MCE was calculated in a new field. It used the following equation in the raster calculator:

Environmental MCE

The soil environmental constraint was added by creating a new field and ranking muck, stream courses and water as 0 and every other soil type with a value of 1. The results from this can be seen in figure 16. The final MCE incorporates all accessibility and environmental factors:

The output from this can be seen in figure 17.

Identify Suitable Site

The final MCE calculation resulted in unique values for each segmented portion of the City of Guelph. Segments with the highest value were selected as suitable sites. To ensure that they were of adequate size, area was calculated by adding a new field. Two sites were identified and were both located in the same census tract. Both exceeded the required land size of 11,334 m² specified by the Recreation Master plan for the City of Guelph (Monteith Brown Planning Consultants et al., July 2009). Both sites are located in the South-eastern corner of the city.