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Welcome to episode one of the DRC Online GIS Workshop Series -
Starting a GIS project.
Episode Objectives. In this video,
we will talk about conducting background research for a project,
developing project criteria, and determining data needs for a project.
Where should a new elementary school in Guelph be located?
For this and subsequent episodes of this workshop, we will be using GIS to decide this.
Working through this example will help you with your own GIS projects.
First, let's talk about conducting background research:
When we first pick a topic, we may know very little about it.
It's important to do thorough background research into our topic before we begin our analysis.
The goal when doing background research is to understand the problem we are trying to solve
and develop the criteria we will use to solve the problem.
We can start our background research by generating a list of words,
phrases, and concepts related to our topic.
In this example, I've brainstormed the following:
Elementary school, location, Guelph, urban planning
education, and school board.
Then, for each of these terms, I've identified some synonyms.
For example, some synonyms for elementary school include
primary school, K to 8 school, school, and campus.
For location, I've identified site and placement as synonyms.
I've also generated some alternate forms of these words, such as locate, locating, siting, place, and placing.
For the geographic aspect of our search,
Guelph is the most specific relevant geography.
I've also included Ontario, Canada,
and North America as geographical areas that could have relevance to my topic.
Finally, I've generated some synonyms for urban planning:
city planning, planning, education
schooling and school board, board of education, board of trustees.
Next, we can search for information using the words we generated as keywords.
The library has a wealth of resources in which we can find books and journal articles on our topic.
We can use Primo to search many of the library's print and electronic books and journal articles.
We can use Google and Google Scholar for journal articles,
government information, and more.
Google may be accessed at google.ca and Google Scholar at scholar.google.ca.
If you have trouble
conducting your background research, you can ask us via chat,
email, phone, or in person at McLaughlin Library.
When I went looking for information on this topic, I found a lot of useful
government documents on school siting in general using Google.
For example, this document, called "Planning for Schools and Livable Communities:
the Oregon School Setting Handbook," contains criteria that should be
considered when siting schools.
This document from the United States Environmental Protection Agency,
called the school siting guidelines, also recommends a number of school siting best practices.
Both of these documents were cited numerous times in articles and
discussions about locating schools,
so we can feel confident basing our school setting criteria on them.
I also found some information about schools in Guelph. The school board that
governs schools in Guelph,
the Upper Grand District School Board, has a website that contains information
about siting new schools.
In the planning section of the website, the frequently asked questions document
contains a section answering the question: "Who decides where new schools should be?"
This website also has maps and reports that can help us understand school
attendance, boundaries, and how they are decided upon.
Now that we've done some background research, we can start developing
criteria by which we will site a new elementary school.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency document on school siting,
one best practice is to site an elementary school within a half mile
or about eight hundred meters from the area in which most students live.
This recommendation will become one of the criteria by which we will determine
the best location for a new elementary school.
Another best practice is to locate the school within a half mile
or about eight hundred meters from community facilities such as pools and libraries.
This recommendation will also become a criterium.
The Oregon Schools Siting handbook mentions land use compatibility
and size of site as considerations, so these will also be added to the criteria.
The Upper Grand District School Board FAQ mentions having enough street
frontage for safe access to the school.
It also mentions locating the school next to a park if at all possible.
These will be added to the criteria.
Finally, Guelph's Zoning By-Laws have some minimum guidelines regarding properties
on which schools may be built.
Once we have completed our background research and determined our criteria,
the next step is to brainstorm the data we will need. This is a simple as
thinking about our criteria
and deciding what data will be necessary to evaluate a particular criterion.
To evaluate whether the school property will be within eight hundred meters of most students' homes,
the data needed includes the distribution of children under 12 across
Guelph, all current elementary school locations,
and current school attendance boundaries. To evaluate whether the school property
will be with an eight hundred meters of one or more community facilities
the data needed includes the locations of community facilities.
To evaluate whether the school property will be adjacent to a public park,
the data needed includes the locations of public parks.
To evaluate whether the property will have the correct
institutional zoning, land use and zoning data will be needed.
To evaluate whether there is at least thirty meters above street frontage,
the roads network will be needed. To evaluate whether the property is at least
forty thousand square meters, data on land parcels will be needed.
These are just some other datasets we might need for this project.
As you work on your own projects, you may realize that you need to conduct more
background research,
develop more specific criteria, or find more data.
It's OK to continually return to these first steps as the project progresses.
Episode recap: today we talked about conducting background research,
developing project criteria, and determining data needs.
Do you have any questions about the content at this workshop? Staff in the
Data Resource Center are ready to assist you.
Drop-ins and appointments are welcome. Please check the DRC's website for our hours.
You can also email us at drchelp@uoguelph.ca.
Thanks for watching!