Final Project: GIS4043

The Final Project for GIS 4043, Geographic Information Systems, was a huge task of analyzing the FPL Bobwhite Manatee Transmission Line Project.  The goals of the Final are to allow and encourage all of us to show off the GIS skills we have learned this semester. It was a great experience and I am looking forward to learning more next semester.

This is a real project that took place in Manatee and Sarasota counties beginning in early 2006; in fact FPL was probably already thinking about how to expand their capabilities in these counties long before the letters and updates were published. The Final Project is set in 2009; FPL has hired me as a GIS Consultant (Raven Consulting - I had to have this name) to conduct an analysis of the Preferred Corridor in relation to various criteria. The criteria I examined are:

1. Parcels or Homes Impacted by Corridor
2. Schools and Daycare Facilities 
3. Conservation Lands Impacted
4. Cost

The task was not an easy one, but I must say I did have fun with it. I used various Geoprocessing tools, such as Buffer, Clip and Intersect. I downloaded layers for Schools, Daycares, Conservation Lands and County Boundaries. I created an Empty Point Shape File and used Aerials - several DOQQs - to Digitize homes and other structures to satisfy the home count by digitizing them using the Edit feature. The aerials were particularly challenging as the more I zoomed in the more blurry the image got due to the cells merging so that I could not tell what I was looking at.

Here is my final maps: basemap, aerials, and Final with the Corridor and Buffer zones. I also provided the links to my presentation and slide comments.


 
           Gil Castillo Raven Consulting Final Project PDF

           Gil Castillo Raven Consulting Slide Comments