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Track: Local/State Government, Cadastral, Land Records
Peter LaPlaca
TASC, Inc.
12100 Sunset Hills Road
Reston, VA 20190-3233
Telephone: 703-834-5000
Fax: 703-318-7900
E-mail: pjlapaca@tasc.com
Nature Park Site Analysis in Fairfax County, Virginia, Using the ArcView Version 3.0 Spatial Analyst Extension
Defining Issue: Nature park site location in a near-urban environment. GIS Solution: Developed a final cost surface that isolated areas for a new park based on various physical and social preferences. Methodology: The purpose of this project was to locate a new nature park in Fairfax County using raster GIS modeling. Fairfax County is experiencing rapid growth due to its proximity to Washington, D.C. As more and more communities develop in the County, it will be important to provide people with open space for new recreational opportunities. Using what is known as suitability modeling, cost grids were created based on the physical and human-made parameters that people find most attractive in a nature park. Suitability modeling transforms raw data measurements, such as elevation, into numeric values (1-10) that can be combined mathematically using map algebra expressions. The result was a series of grids containing the same range of values, resulting in an apples-to-apples comparison as opposed to an
apples-to-oranges comparison. A final cost grid identified several areas for a new park. Software: All the work was done using the ArcView Version 3.0 Spatial Analyst extension on the Windows NT platform. Several Avenue scripts were written to access Spatial Analyst requests. The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the application and to examine the technical challenges encountered with using the Spatial Analyst extension for this type of modeling.
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