Analysis of GIS Data by Simple Examination - Introducing Geographic Information Systems with ArcGIS - page 386

15. Reverse the questions posed previously. That is, determine how many polygons of HPSA_
PrimaryCare_Albers (target layer) relate to the MUAs_Albers polygons:

Intersect ________________

Completely contain ________________

Are completely within ________________

Are identical to ________________

Contain ________________

Close ArcMap.

Exercise 6-4 (Major Project)

Important note on running this exercise: The initial stages of this exercise ask you to download data. If
you have access to the Internet, you may be able obtain census data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census.
This process sometimes succeeds and sometimes fails— perhaps because of a firewall at your institution
or changes in the website at the Census Bureau. However these early steps can be quite useful to those
of you who plan to use ArcGIS to work with census data. If you don't have the access or tools to do
some of these steps (or lack the inclination to do them), you can still do the bulk of the exercise. I have
indicated where you can skip over some steps, using the data I supply.

Combining Demographic and Geographic Data

Suppose that we have decided to open a day-care center on Galbraith School Road in Knox County,
Tennessee. We have a banker who tells us that a loan can be obtained if we can show that 25,000
people reside within 3 miles of the road on which we plan to build the center. We make a plan as to how
to proceed: We will combine data obtained over the Internet, firstly from the U.S. Bureau of the Census
and secondly from Esri. The census dataset is in the form of a spreadsheet that contains information
about the population in census blocks in our area of interest. It is strictly tabular data, with no geographic
component.

The data we will get from Esri consists of a modified TIGER street file and a modified TIGER census
block file. (Actually, this information came originally from the Bureau of the Census but has been
converted by Esri to shapefile format for geographic display and analysis.) The project will involve
combining these data sets so that we can determine how many people reside within 3 miles of Galbraith
School Road.

This project has several stages. The initial ones (which are optional) require access to the Internet,
figuring out how to get data from the www.census.gov website and saving a table in Microsoft Excel
spreadsheet format. Then you will get Tiger-based data from the Esri website, www.esri.com . There are
a lot of steps, but the whole process is instructive and can be useful, given that a lot of spatial data is
available from the Bureau of the Census and Esri. Here are the steps:

Download data from the Bureau of the Census (optional for the exercise).

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Manipulate the Census data (or data I supply) in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

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