Sustainability Modeling

The purpose of suitability modeling is to determine where something, such as a business or habitat, should be located. The purpose of this course is to introduce you to the types of real-world problems that can be solved with a suitability model. In the next section, you will learn how to define a problem in terms of an analysis goal and suitability criteria that can be modeled with data. A suitability model will also teach you how to prepare data. After completing this course, I am ready to create a weighted or simple suitability model by using the data that I prepared in this course as input the goal of these exercises were to Define a problem that can be addressed by a suitability model. Prepare data for a suitability model.as well as applying methods used to transform data for a weighted suitability model and use a weighted suitability model to find the best sites or regions.

Strategies: For the first exercise, I used ESRI's ArcGIS Pro 3.0 along with tools such as distance accumulation, raster calculator and aspect for the second exercise I used the In the Suitability Modeler, which uses the use the Suitability tab to create the final suitability map, to define the settings that will be used in the model. Specify the following: Name of the suitability model. Type of input range of the suitability scale and method to weight and the locate tab to the Locate tab to identify the best locations to site something or to preserve an area.

Methos: The development of any suitability model type is driven by an effective goal and criteria. To complete this assignment the first step was to create a spatial analysis model I named Bald Eagle habitat then followed by setting a goal and determining the criteria's which will be represented by a raster that has a 1-to-3 suitability scale. I used the sustainability tab to modifies the following parameters: input raster, weight and parameters: Input raster consisted of Lake distance, developed distance, canopy cover and aspect, allocating decreasing weight from Lake distance to aspect. Next, I changed the percentages and allocate lake distance the highest percentage followed by developed distance aspect received the smallest percentage in series in the transformation pane within the sustainability tab. After completing the transformation, I used Locate tab to identify the best habitat for bald eagle in square meters.

Process diagram

During the completion of this assignment, I learned how to utilize ArcGIS spatial analysis tools and GeoDesign concepts to perform suitable location modeling and identify optimal locations.

New problem statement: A Wake county -based wind energy company has hired me to identify several potential sites in the state for the installation of high-efficiency wind turbines. Selecting an appropriate site is key to the success of any renewable energy project. The selected site must meet several characteristics: Located in the state of Colorado and in counties where the population as of 2010 is at least 20,000 and Within 5 miles of existing wind farms containing turbines where the rotor diameters span at least 100 feet.

Data needed: U.S landmass raster data from USGS. NC census data from U.S census website and NLCD.

Analysis procedure: To solve this problem I imported the following layers NLCD map, U.S territory map and U.S Census tabular data. I used to add join tool to join the census table to the U.S territory polygon layer. I first created a sustainability model in the Settings tab I specified the name of the model Potential sites. Followed by opening the sustainability tab to set my criteria with equal weight and equal percentages' the Suitability Modeler, I used the Locate tab to identify the best locations