GIS 1 Lab 5: Ideal Building/ Living Location in Dunn County

  What would be the most ideal location to build or to buy property in Dunn County Wisconsin? Dunn county may be indistinguishable to some people in Wisconsin and to the majority of people in the nation. To me, I see the two major lakes that are centered in Dunn county, the timber an the agriculture that would make for good duck and deer hunting. Though the ideal location I selected would be more for a ideal family settlement. In order to determine the ideal spot to live, I linked data from GIS servers. I got data regarding highways, parks, schools, and cities. For this lab my targeted audience is people who are looking to move to Dunn county, or people who are looking to buy a house in Dunn County.

  The data sets I selected started with the United States Census and Dunn County Data. Next I added major highways and cities to the county data. Before I added any other data I clipped the data so it took out all the data that was not in the county. Then I created buffers around the cities and highways. For convenience purposes I made just a two mile buffer around the highways, so that commute time would be cut down. Then I made a five mile buffer around the cities, that way shopping and other groceries and necessities would be available for easy access. Then I intersected the data sets to give a rough idea of a decent location, though this is not ideal yet, it gives me an idea. Below is the five mile buffer around the cities and the highways were just added to show what cities were also near highways.

  The next step was to bring in the schools data. At first there was a unrealistic amount of schools in Dunn county. After pulling up the attribute table I saw that schools that were no longer there were including. I then selected by attributes to narrow the schools down to only current schools. Then I added a five mile buffer around the schools. Next I intersected the schools data with the new data set that was the highways and cities intersected layer.
  The data flow model below showed my steps as I went throughout the lab. I enjoyed this lab because it gave me the opportunity to use whatever data sets that I wanted. I chose Dunn county because it is a county that I really like.

  What I concluded from the map below was that my ideal living locations were all within ten miles of Menominee. All of the orange areas highlighted below met all of the criteria from the data flow model above. I made sure that the house would be no longer than two miles off of the highway, while being within ten miles of parks. The other major criteria I had was that the house location would be no further than five miles from a city, and no further than five miles from a school.