This topic includes site suitability, location-allocation, cost paths, and deriving information from surfaces.
ArcGIS can be used to determine the
appropriateness of an area for a particular use. The intrinsic
characteristics of an area, to some extent, can be either suitable
or unsuitable for planned development.
How can I find the best locations?
By defining areas that have a particular set of characteristics, those locations that meet your criteria can be retained while those that do not can be eliminated from further analysis (using Boolean logic). In other cases, all areas that could be considered desirable, again using the specified characteristics, can be rated on a scale (rated or ranked suitability). Criteria can be based on data values (attributes) or using spatial location, such as proximity to other locations.
This topic includes a number of case studies that, in part, use GIS to identify locations that fit specified criteria. These are exploratory analyses, designed to demonstrate an approach to a specific problem using ArcGIS. For each case study, additional resources have been made available including workflows that describe how the analysis was done in ArcGIS and a GPK (geoprocessing package) in which all resources (models, scripts, data, layers, and files) needed to perform the described analysis are included in the package
What questions can I answer?
By finding locations or paths, you could answer these types of questions:
- Which sites meet all the criteria?
- What is the least cost path between the two locations?
- Which sites are the most and least suitable?
- Where should the corridor be located?