GIS 4048: Applications in GIS Module 3

Module 3:  Data Management Skills and Tsunami Evacuation: Creating Evacuation Zones

This week’s lab had two parts: data management skills and the creation of evacuation zones for a tsunami.  The data management skills portion involved the creation of a file geodatabase, the creation of a feature dataset, addition of feature classes, tables with spatial coordinates, and raster datasets.

I found the tools used in relation to the raster datasets particularly interesting.  The Build Raster Attribute Table was used to get elevation value and count fields to be used for subsequent elevation analysis.  The Mosaic to New Raster was used to join multiple raster datasets together so that we did not have to run the same calculation multiple times because of separate and multiple raster datasets.  And the Calculate Statistics tool was used on the raster datasets so that the data could be later classified.

The second part of the lab involved the creation of radiation and inundation zones around the Fukushima II nuclear power plant in Japan.  Again the Multiple Buffer Tool was used to create buffer/evacuation zones which were later clipped to an administrative feature class on land to get rid of buffer zones in the ocean. 

I use the Building a Label Expression to join the City names and corresponding population in the labels – I found this very helpful.  A VBScript command was used in a SQL expression as follows: [City] &vbnewline & [Pop].  Model builder was used to create a model that used the Con, Raster to Polygon, Append, Create Feature Class, and Intersect Tools to process an elevation dataset of the area (DEM) to create three different inundation zones (at different elevation ranges) while also identifying cities, nuclear plants, and roads that intersected those inundation zones.  Overall, this was one of my favorite labs so far…though a very long one.

Below is the map representing Radiation and Inundation Zones for the Fukushima II Nuclear Power Plant in Japan.