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Final Project

Advanced GIS RA570


Eric Lindberg
The purpose of this report is to identify plausible locations for a vacation home in Boulder
County, Colorado. The report will focus on using spatial analysis to obtain both a suitability
study and a full match of listed criteria. In addition, a special interest area is analyzed with an
individual suitability study to highlight specific search criteria. This report would mimic what a
real estate advisor might undertake in advising a client as to where to focus their attention in
looking for a home site in an unfamiliar or broad geographic area.
The following procedures were performed in order to set up the study. While the study mimics a
search as for a client on request, the area chosen was based on download information availability.
In using raster analysis there is often a reliance on topography change to make the analysis
dynamic. That thought led the study to a mountainous foothill area. The City of Boulder,
Colorado and the Boulder County GIS appear to be leaders in the GIS community and had an
abundance of free downloadable material in predominately shapefile form. The information
from Boulder County was obtained and downloaded from the following URL :
http://www.bouldercounty.org/find/maps/pages/gisdldata.aspx .
After visiting the site it was apparent that there was potentially enough dynamic information
available to perform an informed and interesting spatial analysis. Each zip file was downloaded
and extracted. After opening the files, each shapefiles attributes were examined to determine the
contents. It appeared that a criteria study could be performed using topography to perform slope
and aspect surface analysis. There was also a number of prohibitive factors to site selection
including FEMA flood zones and open space restrictions. Other factors, while not exclusively
prohibitive to site selection, included rare plant community areas, critical wildlife habitats, and
wildfire zone ratings. These areas were identified and avoided out of sensitivity and safety
concerns. While setbacks were not consistently identified in zoning criteria, it became obvious
that waterous sites could not be built upon and that there was a minimum consideration to be
given as a setback to meet most zoning criteria. In addition to the actual waterways of streams
and lakes, a 100 buffer was added to both as unbuildable area.
To add an additional dynamic to the project, the areas identified by a shapefile called fishing
holes were considered. The suitability part of the project would take two courses with the
inclusion of this criteria. The perspective of the client, for which this study is purposed, is for a
vacation home site selection. There is a supposition added that the client is indecisive regarding
the criteria. Since this is a vacation home, the proximity to the fishing hole area may be of
paramount importance. The fishing hole information will be used both as part of the whole
study, as well as a primary focus, in case the client insists upon it as paramount importance.
Other information considered to be used was zoning and property ownership. The zoning area,
while appearing promising for identifying allowable low density development, was not inclusive
of all areas of the county and left out large areas where individual city jurisdictions possessed
their own zoning criteria. These holes in the zoning layer left this criteria as undesirable for
this study. The property ownership layer would have been desirable to identify park or
government ownership, which is prevelant in the western United States. This information was
very fragmented and it was determined to be appropriate to exclude it from the study. A
weakness of the study is the exclusion of these two criterion. The areas identified by the main
criteria would have to be further considered against zoning and ownership. The study does
however, narrow a large area of focus which could then be futher analyzed by the zoning and
ownership criteria.

Having located good criterion information, some type of Digital Elevation Model (DEM)
basemap was needed to pull it together and form the topographic basis. There appeared to be no
DEM available at Boulder County nor was there free availability of a contour map from which to
make one. It was determined that we would have to make a DEM from a National Elevation
Dataset (NED) which could be found through the US Geological Survey at the following URL:
http://seamless.usgs.gov/ . The NED at 1/9 second would produce a 10x10 meter or roughly
30X30 foot cell size. It was important to note that the cell size should then remain consistent
throughout the study and environments of newly created shapefiles and rasters. Cell size should
be set at 10 for meters or 30 for feet.
The NED is initially in Geographic Coordinate System (GCS) North American Datum 83
(NAD83). The data will need to be projected before it is used. The projection desired depends
on the location of the subdata to be added. In this case it is Colorado and could either be
projection to Universersal Trans Mercator (UTM) NAD83 Section 13 for Colorado or to the State
Plane Coordinate System. In this case most of the subdata appears to be in the State Plane
Coordinate System. Therefore the dowloaded NED was projected in an ArcMap session as:
NAD_1983_StatePlane_Colorado_North_FIPS_0501_Feet. The projection is accomplished
through ArcToolbox using the Data Management Tools => Projections and Transformations =>
Raster => Project Raster. Since the projection is in feet, an appropriate cell size environment
going forward is 30 for all units of measure in feet. The data frame containing the NED was
checked for validation of the same projection. In this case, the projection needed to be copied to
the dataframe as well. This projection will hold precedence for future added shapefiles and
rasters which should project on the fly to this setting or could be otherwise reprojected to match.
The subdata shapefiles, downloaded and extracted from the Boulder County GIS page are now
added to the ArcMap session. A matching projection will reveal subdata being projected on top
of the NED if the projection is set up properly and the drawing order had the subdata listed first.
It was noted that the polygon shapefile for MineralResourceAreas appeared to have the most
concise outline of Boulder county and would be used as a clip and mask instrument to trim and
set extents for the NED, and added shapefile and raster data. The NED, which was downloaded
from the seemless USGS site, was defined as an area larger than Boulder County to be certain to
contain the entire area. Figure 3-1 illustrates the masked area and county outline. The Spatial
Analyst Extension is used from ArcToolbox in the Spatial Analysis => Extraction => Extract by
Mask tool. In Figure 3-2 the NED is trimmed down or masked to the Boulder County boundary
area which can then be used in the topographic functions of surface analysis in this project.

It is determined that the ideal slope for the project would be less than 15 degrees. A slope raster
can be created from the Boulder County NED. Using ArcToolbox and the Spatial Analysis =>
Surface => Slope, the Boulder Slope is created as in Figure 3-3. The slope raster is then used to
create a boolean criteria for slopes < 15 degrees. The reclassify tool is used within ArcToolbox,

Spatial Analysis => Reclass => Reclassify to set the classes of slope < 15 degrees equal to a
value of 1 and the remaining classes to a value of 0. This creates a boolean raster for our
slope criteria as illustrated by Figure 3-4.

It is determined that to take advantage of solar exposure, that the site would have a southerly
aspect. ArcToolBox is used to operate the Spatial Analysis=> Surface => Aspect tool using the
NED as an input. The result is illustrated in figure 4-1. The southwest, south, and southeast are
used in a boolean raster as defined by a 1 value in a reclassification, with the remaining
directions labeled with a 0 value. This boolean raster for aspect is illustrated in Figure 4-2.

The legally prohibitive factors such as Flood Zone and Open Space Restrictions are now
explored. The Boulder County site included a shapefile defining the FEMA Flood Zone area for
Boulder County. The shapefile is converted to raster with ArcToolbox, Conversion => To Raster
=> Feature to Raster. The raster is projected in Figure 4-3 and then reclassified to 1 value for
non-flood and 0 value for flood zone, creating the boolean for flood zone Figure 4-4.

The Boulder site also included shapefiles for Open Space areas. This represents land areas of
either public or private ownership that have been set aside from development. In some cases, it
represents lands where conservation easements are present which would perpetually block
development and keep the land open. The shapefiles included listed a closed area of defined
open space and another file which included areas with pending or upcoming agreements. For the
purpose of this study, we utilized the closed area open space shapefile. The polygon shapefile
had properties outside of the county frame and first had to be trimmed with ArcToolbox,
Analysis Tools => Extract => Clip to clip off excess data at the county boundary. The shapefile
was then converted with the conversion tool to a raster Figure 5-1 and further through
reclassification to a boolean raster with a 0 value for open space and a 1 value for nonregulated area Figure 5-2.

The non-prohibitive but suggestive criteria were then analyzed. The avoidance of building on
fragile, rare, or endangered habitat while not always restricted is a best practices application.
Two criteria involved areas to be avoided. The first was rare plant communities and the second
was critical wildlife habitat. In both cases the attributes were either a yes/no contribution to the
site and were readily converted to rasters and boolean raster criterion. The results are displayed
in Figures 5-3 through 5-6 below for both criteria.

An additional criteria related to land use was found in the shapefile Significant Agricultural
Land. This shapefile and subsequent layer represents agricultural land identified as being of
local, state, or national importance. Attempting to build on these types of properties is not
advised even if it is legally permissible. Figure 6-1 is the projected shapefile against the county
outline. The shapefile was again clipped with the county mask/clip file Mineral Resource Areas.
Once clipped it was converted to raster. In ArcToolbox, Spatial Analysis => Map Algebra is used
to produce a true/false statement by code that produces a boolean raster of significant agricultural
lands at all levels. The boolean raster is displayed as a layer in Figure 6-2.

Another characteristic of the western plains is the frequency and danger of wildfire.
Accordingly, Boulder County has a rating system for wildfire likelihood and a shapefile to
display its geography. Aside from the safety issue, there is a significant measure in how homes
are insured depending on their risk appropriation. A judgement was made to separate the fire
risk between the moderate and high risk ratings with the possibility of building on anything of
moderate or less risk. The shapefile classified for display is in Figure 6-3. The shapefile was
converted to raster with the feature to raster tool and reclassified by fire risk rating to a boolean
criteria with a 1 value on anything with moderate or less risk and a 0 value on anything with
high or very high risk. This is displayed in Figure 6-4.

In the absence of consistent building code data and the inability to build on wet sites, a buffer
was performed on both lake/pond and stream features. Figure 7-1 shows the buffered stream and
Figure 7-3 shows the lake/pond shapefile before buffering. ArcToolbox was used in both
instances with the Analysis => Proximity => Buffer tool set at 100. The resulting shapefiles are
easy to convert to boolean criteria raster, as all the polygons are wet or buffered and NoData can
be converted to a 1 value. The Stream and Lake/Ponds conditional rasters are illustrated in
Figures 7-2 and 7-4.

The last criteria is from the shapefile fishing holes. The criteria is the proximity to it. The raster
is formed from ArcToolbox using Analysis Tools => Overlay => Proximity => Buffer. The
proximity input was 3 miles. The output is several concentric circles around each fishing hole
area. Some intersect and one of the circles crosses the county boundary (Figure 8-1). A clip of
the county boundary is used to clip the edges of that circle to within the boundary. A raster is set
up by reclassification that assigns all values outside of the circles to a 0 value and everything
inside the proximity buffer circles to a 1 value. The boolean criteria result is illustrated in
Figure 8-2.

All of the criteria to locate a possible building site in Boulder County have been established. The
raster data can be multiplied together to form a boolean overlay. The established boolean grids
are set over each other to determine matching overlay characteristics. Only the grid cells that
match in overlay of all statistics will be displayed by a 1 value and any cells missing a single
positive value for an overlay area will display a 0 value. Because of the use of the fishing
holes overlay in what will be a duel analysis, the boolean overlay is first ran by multiplying all
factors except the fishing holes together in Arc Toolbox using Spatial Analysis => Map Algebra
=> Raster Calculator.

There is a fairly large amount of positive area as the criteria appear to have been non-stringent
and/or the area is fairly conducive to development aside from the zoning and land ownership
issues discussed earlier that would certainly fine tune the analysis. Another significant factor
may have been to add some type of proximity to roads or electricity if available for analysis in
GIS format.
The fishing hole factor was added to the above as an overlay to determine a final boolean overlay
based on all criteria. Its displayed below as Figure 8-4.

The factors are also added together to form a suitability analysis for the entire site. The darker
orange and brown colors offer the greatest suitability with the data provided.

The analysis is anticipating some indecision in the process. Some criteria prove to be stronger
factors than others. One manner of handling this scientifically is to assign weight to certain
characteristics to achieve a weighted probability analysis. Another method, which was
performed here, offered two different scopes. It is anticipated that the site chosen for recreation
purposes was centered around the proximity to fishing holes. The fishing holes locations are
relatively isolated in the eastern portion of the county. To accommodate this, the first analysis
ignored the fishing holes sites completely to avoid the negative impact on more suitable western
sites. The second and final analysis involved a clipped view of the fishing holes proximity sites
with all criteria in mind for suitability. If a user had the fishing holes sites as a must, this view
offers a view of the greatest suitability in what is already a relatively small area. By setting the
proximity buffer as a clip, the user can view the best criteria within the clip (Figure 8-6).

In conclusion, the analysis performed well and would have been even more conclusive with the
inclusion of the zoning and ownership data sets if available. The inclusion of the fishing holes
helped narrow a large area of possible sites. While more is not always better, it is becoming
evident that information is not always available in a usable GIS form. A few other areas of data
desired for a study like this would have been accessible power, proximity to roadway, and
occupied/vacant parcels. The positive aspect of producing the outputs is that when or if more
criteria factors are discovered or become available, they can be added into suitability or overlay
analysis without having to start over.
Another positive point of this project was the search for NED or DEM data. The mining search
for elevation or DEM data led to the discovery of the USGS site and a tutorial on projecting GCS
spatial data.
References
http://seamless.usgs.gov/
http://www.bouldercounty.org/find/maps/pages/gisdldata.aspx
http://www.bouldercolorado.gov/index.php?
option=com_content&view=article&id=7252&Itemid=2781

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