Network Analysis

Goals and Objectives

The goal of this assignment was to be familiarized with network analysis in ArcGIS. The objectives to be fulfilled was to learn to load features into Network Analysis window, calculate a route for trucks carrying sand, find the closest facility and best route to that facility, build a model that would calculate the closest facility, and find the cost incurred by each county,

Methods

To create a network analysis system I had to add the streets network data to ArcMap. The Network Analyst Extension was turned on after streets were added. If the streets were added after the extension would not have worked. I added all the geocoded mines from our previous exercise and queried out all mines that were rail loading locations as well. These mines were then merged together with the rail_terminals2 from the Ex 7 folder. Next was to load all the mines as stops with the Network Analyst. Next was to run a closest facility layer with the stops as facilities and the mines as incidents. I had to edit all the mines that were irrelevant to the situation. The next step was to build a model that would run similar to the closest facility this is shown below.

Results

The mines were found using Network Analyst and Model Builder. 

Conclusions

The Network Analyst tool ran very smoothly and efficiently.

Data Downloading and Collecting

Goal

The goals and objectives of this lab were to download data from different sources on the internet and import that data to ArcGIS, join the data together, project the data in one coordinate system, and design a geodatabase for the data.

Methods

The first website that the data was downloaded from was the National Atlas. The data at this site was railroad data. The data was in shapefile format, The file was zipped when downloaded. I had to extract it or sometimes referred to as unzipping. Next I was to download data from USGS National Map Viewer. The data downloaded from this site was Land cover data for Trempealeau County. Unlike the railroad data this data was not easily downloaded. I had to receive it via email. Again after downloading I had to unzip the file. The next website to download data from was the MRLC website. This data was for elevation data and was a DEM. Like the land cover data it was ordered by email. I had to Mosaic the grids together to get a complete cohesive image. USDA was the next website that I gathered data from. The data for this was land cover data for crop lands. Like the previous two processes I received this via email. Soils for Trempealeau County was next.

For the next part I viewed some of the data in Microsoft Access. The data that was viewed was in a geodatabase format.

Creating a geodatabase for all the data I gathered was next. I had to make feature datasets for my data and set a coordinate system. I had to import all my data to the geodatabase and create a relationship class. For the data that was not in the correct coordinate system I had to project that data so that it matched up with the geodatabase. I had to create a map document for all my features.



Conclusion

This lab was not only practical but also fun. The shutdown of the Government did cause some fault with the collection of data.