Spatial Analysis of Community Public Education Activities

Author: Keith E. Hernandez
Organization: Sigma Associates, Inc.

220 The International Center
400 Monroe Avenue
Detroit, MI 48226
USA

Phone: 313-963-9700
Fax: 313-963-7626
emailsigma@aol.com

Communities are often seeking better ways to track certain maintenance and capital improvement activities. GIS has established itself as a worthy tool to assist in this endeavor. However, as the needs of communities expand, GIS tools must also expand to meet these demands. One such utility, the Public Education Activity application, has been developed for the community of Canton Township, Michigan. When developing this application, the idea was to create a GIS entity that would completely describe a watershed public education activity as well as gauge the effectiveness of the community's presentation. The ultimate goal of the application is to help analyze the relationship between location, activity, audience, and audience satisfaction. This paper seeks to explain how the analysis can be done using the variables that the community is currently collecting, and GIS technology can facilitate this analysis.

First, we will examine the relationship between the variables. Determining the strength of the correlation of one attribute to another will allow us to draw a conclusion on the public education effectiveness. Secondly, we will take the most closely correlated variables and use proximity analysis to investigate a relationship between the variables and location. Finally, we will present our findings and explain our conclusions.