Week 5 Applications in GIS

This map shows the potential impacts that a proposed development will have on traffic. Knowing what impacts a development will have is important in the decision making process being that any negative impacts would need to be mitigated or could possibly terminate the project all together. Knowing a projected increase in traffic will affect noise levels in the are, a need for wider roads or an increase in traffic signals. I really enjoyed this exercise being that a previous impact assessment class I took just showed all the probable impacts as words with no visual components. A map makes it very clear as to which areas will be affected by increased traffic and by how much, which will lead to more efficient decision making.

The second map shows the Pewter City University student occupancy rate. Knowing the student occupancy is important in determining the social impact on an area. In order to determine the student occupancy, all areas containing residential buildings first needed to be established for the area. Then through a survey of students addresses a thematic map could be created to show the greatest number of university students residing in each area. This information is important to planners to depict population distribution which will aid in the development of more affordable housing and student based activities. The creation of the map went well and was pretty straight forward, I really enjoy the thematic map aspect of GIS.