Name: _________________________________________

Objective: From a given set of apartments and their locations, find one or more apartments that best suit a set of pre-determined spatial and non-spatial criteria. This is a comprehensive application of the GIS concepts and technical skills that students have learned in this course.

Task Background: To promote local economic development and attract more businesses into the City of Denton, the Denton Chamber of Commerce initiated an array of projects to improve the investment environment in Denton, including a web-based Denton Apartment Search Information System (DASIS). Owing to the long-term GIS research and education at UNT, we were contracted with the Denton Chamber of Commerce to lead the DASIS development. Before the system can be fully operational on the Internet, its functions and data search paths must be defined and developed manually. This will involve the following steps. (1) Developing a set of spatial and non-spatial search criteria. (2) Identifying and collecting a set of GIS data themes to support database search against these criteria. (3) Manipulating and editing the data themes for data correctness and completeness. (4) Constructing and running search paths (queries). (5) Analyzing and reporting the results. (6) If necessary, going back to Step 1 to refining the search process. As a group of potential GIS gurus, you are "contracted" with your instructor in this course to investigate the ArcView-based DASIS functionality.

Procedures: The procedure of conducting a GIS project usually starts with user requirement analysis. The purpose is to establish a clear goal and a set of well-defined products that meet the requirements of the end users. Suppose this step is done, and we have come up with a set of criteria that reflect the requirements of the DASIS potential users (see the lecture slides). The next step is to backtrack from the criteria and find out what data themes are necessary to support the study. To do so, you need to carry out the following steps:

1. Log into your CAS account and copy folder Lab4 from the R: drive into your folder under directory turnin. Start ArcView GIS and a new project. Add all the themes in folder Lab4 into a new view.
2. Examine the data layers and their attribute tables. Compare the themes against the criteria. Make a checklist of data availability and note what is missing from our database (including both themes and data fields). Suggest a few solutions to the issue of completing the database. Neatly type this list in a separate sheet and hand it in as part of this assignment.
3. Add more apartment locations into our database. Open the theme table for Apartment and obtain a hardcopy by printing it to the laser-jet printer in CSAM. These are the apartments existing in the database. Compare the list to the apartment guide (can be picked up in any local grocery store or the University Union) or local phonebook and find addresses and phone numbers of at least ten apartments that are missing from the list. Call the management of these missing apartments for information to be filled out in the fields of the printed table. You might like to acquire some extra information such as the location of the apartment in terms of the left-hand/right-hand side and address ranges of the street segment.
4. Create a new .dbf table to hold the address information for the missing apartments. This table can be created in either Microsoft Excel or ArcView GIS. If you create it in Excel, be sure to save it in the dBase format and add it into your current ArcView GIS project. If you are not sure of the structure definition of the table, use the one from the previous address-matching exercise as an example. Once you finish with the table creation and uploading, you are ready to address-match these apartments.
5. Use dnstrt.shp as the address-matching reference theme. This is a street network theme with much more complete street names and address ranges for City of Denton. Since the map scale of its source is incompatible with the rest of the themes in the project, we only use it for address matching. Now follow the three-step procedure of address matching to create a new theme for the missing apartments. If there is any no-match, find a way to rematch it until all entered into the database. Print and hand in this table as part of this assignment.
6. Now you need to integrate the apartments that are stored in two themes (new and old) into one single theme. You need to find a proper tool in the ArcView GIS toolbox to handle this problem (Hint: it is in the GeoProcessing Wizard). In the space below, describe the problem in a clear, concise fashion. Indicate, study, and describe the solution tool of your choice. Try out the chosen tool. If the results are not what you expect, refine your thought and look again till you find the right tool. Print the theme table of the integrated apartment theme and hand it in as part of this assignment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7. Also expand the feature list in the Landmarks theme to include entertainment, recreation, and shopping locations of your choice. This time you may use address matching, on-screen digitizing, or GPS to enter the data. Print the theme table of the features that you have entered into the theme and turn it in as part of this assignment.
8. Go to the TNRIS website and download, from the Land and Water Quality category, all three files (e.g., landfill.e00) onto your account folder. Use ArcView import utility (outside of ArcView GIS) to import these files into ArcInfo coverage format. Add these coverages as themes into the view, and use Theme-on-Theme Selection to select the features falling within the Denton City boundary. Save the selected features as three separate shapefiles into your account folder. Print the tables of these newly created themes of Denton City and hand in as part of this assignment.
9. Take a look at the list of the spatial and non-spatial criteria for apartment searching given to you in a previous lecture. Revise and expand the list to your own preference. You are required to consider at least EIGHT criteria (five spatial and 3 non-spatial) in your work and include at least two socioeconomic conditions into the criteria (so it is a total of 10 criteria). There are arrays of attributes in the Block Group theme to describe the demographic characteristics (e.g., income, race, age, housing, etc.) of each census geography. Think of how to incorporate such information into your apartment-searching task. List below the 10 criteria of your choice (please categorize).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

10. Save your work into a new project file named "apartsearch.apr" in your account folder and quit ArcView GIS