GEOG 613 Term Project Suitability Analysis on Second Home Areas Selection in Smithers British Columbia Zhengzhe He November 2005 Abstract Introduction / background Data Source Data Manipulation Spatial analysis method/process Analysis Results Conclusions Future developments / works References Abstract This project is designed to apply GIS in real estate second home sites selection. Through suitability analysis of geographic information in Smithers, British Columbia, this project will help to find the best second home building sites and potential real estate development areas. As more and more people want to close to natural and improve their quality of life, there are extensive requirement on second home market, especially in rural scenic mountain communities. People buy their second home to spend their vacation and leisure time. Most the second home are selected around the regions full of natural amenities such as lakes, rivers and forests etc. In British Columbia there is increasing demand for developing second homes in non-metropolitan areas where close to natural amenity, recreation areas. Smithers is one of the places that second home buyers prefe Introduction Study area Smithers, British Columbia Town of Smithers is situated in the Bulkey Valley of northwestern British Columbia along the Canada Yellowhead Highway (Route 16). It acts as a regional service center that well connected highway, rail and air to the rest regions of British Columbia. Research Question: Where are the suitable areas to find and develop second homes in Smithers, B. C.. The problem existed in this study: 1. 2. 3. First we need to combine the municipal boundary with the TRIM data to strict the research region within city boundary; some information such as soil types is not available within this study area. We assume Smithers city have the same soil type. There is no existed criterias on factors that weighting the suitablitity areas Data Source The important goal of this project is to gain an understanding of data management, presentation and analysis. All analysis for this project was done in ESRI ArcMap, ArcToolbox, and ArcCatalog. The data required in this project was TRIM I data and boundary data of Smithers British Columbia. 4 TRIM I data sheets: 93L074, 93L075, 93L084 and 93L085; Smithers British Columbia Boundary data. All the Trim I and Trim II datasets were WinRaR zip files
All Trim I data needed to be unzipped and extracted to my local home directory as well as imported from interchange files to coverages ALL the datasets can be found at N:\hez\geog613\project All the datasets are gathered in GIS Lab UNBC. Data Manipulation 1. First check each datasets are the same geographic projection system. As the dataset of Smithers Boundary data are different Geographic Projection with other datasets, I re-define it into UTM-NAD 1983-9N. This is the geographic information around Smithers and location of Smithers, British Columbia 2. Use the Smithers Boundary shape file to clip other datasets such as lakes, rivers, roads, contours to make sure all coverage files are within Smithers city boundary. Geographic features in Smithers, British Columbia
3. Build the polygon topology for lakes, rivers; line topology for roads and contours etc that generated form clipping operation. 4. Eliminate delectwithoutreplace features from rivers by selecting attribute table. 5. Create a TIN through the clipped contour by spatial analysis-convert-feature to raster, select Elevation to field. Elevation in Smithers
Spatial Analysis Methods This study will apply raster analysis GIS technique to suitable second home real estate development areas. 1. Deriving the following datasets from exist ones. Slope from TIN: Since Smithers is a mountain area; I need to find relatively flat land to build houses. Click spatial analyst ->surface analysis and choose slopes, a slopes raster is generated. Distance from lakes and rives: Scenic view is important for second home, so the distance to lakes and rivers is important to the sites selection. Spatial analyst-> Distance->straight line, set lakes and rivers respectively. Distance from roads: accessible is another important factors to real estate development. Spatial analysis->distance->straight line, get the distance to road raster dataset. 2. Reclassifying datasets Click the Spatial Analyst-> Reclassify, give slope for input raster and give 10 value for the classes. Reclassify the value from flatest to steepest the values 10 to1. Same method apply to raster of distance to road, distance to lakes and distance to rivers. The value from 10-1 are closest to farest distance to lakes, rivers and roads respectively.
3. Since there is no soil type available in Smithers Area, I assume they have the same soil type. 4. Weighting datasets. Datasets Weight Reclass of Distance to lakes ( dis_lakes_r_ dis_lakes_r) 0.3 (30%) Reclass of Distance to rivers ( dis_riv_r_dis_riv_r) 0.3 (30%) Reclass of Distance to roads ( dis_rod_r_dis_rod_r) 0.275 (27.5%) Reclass of slope ( slope_r1_slope_r1) 0.125 (12.5%) 5. Combining the datasets Apply raster calculator by click spatial analyst->raster Calculator Build up following expression Suitability = [dis_lakes_r_ dis_lakes_r]*0.3 + [dis_riv_r_dis_riv_r]* 0.3 + [dis_rod_r_dis_rod_r]* 0.275 + [slope_r1_slope_r1]*0.125 Start Evaluate Analysis Results The output raster result show the best place for second home development should be: area with red, light read and brown colors; and the areas with white, pink and purple colors are the least likely for real estate development.
Conclusions The suitable ares of second homes will be areas closing to lakes, rivers and existed roads and also on relative flat land. This result will help second home buyers find existing second home in real estate market in Smithers, British Columbia. It will also help real estate developers to find the potential development sites for furhter second home development.
Future Developments / works This project is an analysis the geographic suitability for second home development in Smithers, British Colombia. We still need to combine the suitability result with city land use and zoning regulation to find which areas is geographic suitable and also allowed to develop residential buildings under the municipal regulation. Also further work can be classified by individual 's prefer on weighting factors that influence the location of second home sites. References http://www.town.smithers.bc.ca/home/sitehome.htm Town of Smithers, British Columbia http://srmwww.gov.bc.ca/soils/ Soils (BC) TOP