GIS FINAL PROJECT: WHERE TO LIVE IN OREGON AND MARYLANDBy Parker Johnson, Shawn Proctor, Jeremy Griffith, and Melanie Engle

BACKGROUND

� The first decision made in the process was determining what two states we wanted to look at specifically.

� Of the many options, Maryland and Oregon were the two chosen, for a number of reasons.

� To fully encapsulate the wide variety of cultures found in the United States, we chose locations on opposite sides of the map, states with generally temperate climates, and that had some level of access to the ocean.

� Portland has become a beacon of urban culture in the northwest, and Maryland is part of the Eastern megalopolis, which gives it the benefit of being heavily urban.

� Among the team members, the variety in culture, the presence of an urban environment, and the fact that the two states are generally in the better half of states on most attribute lists made them attractive choices

WHAT WE WILL USE TO MAKE OUR DECISION

We are using 4 indicators with different variables in order to determine the best place to live.

• Quality of Life

• Access to food, Air Quality, Vulnerability to sea level rise, Disposable Income

• Education Attainment

• Percentage of population with High School Diploma & Graduate Degrees

• Access to Nature

• Parks and Trails

• Individual Freedoms

• Crime Rate, Access to public transportation

SCOPE AND CHARACTERISTICS

� When applying the indicators to make a meaningful decision, it was essential to determine the numerical boundaries to the data sets and to be sure our indicators represented the data in a meaningful way.

� Some parameters like Education Attainment were relatively easy to find by zip code and set our variables. Other types of data however, took more work to collect and display in a manner that made sense.

� AQI (Air Quality Index) is a characteristic that is quite general in a spatial context, it does not follow boundaries very well, so we decided to rule out areas that reach hazardous levels of air pollution according to the EPA.

� Food security similarly has predefined parameters as established by the USDA, so our process used the presence the classification of a "food insecure community" as a factor that makes the location unsuitable, based on if it met certain criteria

HOW WILL WE DETERMINE In order to narrow down all of our data to one specific location, we had to make a hierarchy of our indicators by importance.

Access to Nature

Quality of Life Individual Freedoms

Education Attainment

ACCESS TO FOOD

Oregon Maryland

AIR QUALITY INDEX

Oregon

Maryland

VULNERABILITY TO SEA LEVEL RISE

Oregon Maryland

DISPOSABLE INCOME

Oregon Maryland

POPULATION WITH HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA

Oregon Maryland

POPULATION WITH GRADUATE DEGREES

Oregon Maryland

ACCESS TO NATURE – MARYLAND

ACCESS TO NATURE - OREGON

ACCESS TO PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION – MARYLAND

ACCESS TO PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION - OREGON

ACCESS TO PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION – OREGON

CRIME RATE

Oregon Maryland

FINAL MAP OREGON

FINAL MAP OREGON – PORTLAND - CRIME

FINAL MAP OREGON – PORTLAND - INCOME

FINAL MAP MARYLAND

FINAL MAP MARYLAND – INCOME - CRIME

FINAL MAP MARYLAND – BALTIMORE

FINAL DECISION MARYLAND – CHEVY CHASE

FINAL DECISION OREGON – LAKE OSWEGO

FINAL DECISION OREGON – LAKE OSWEGO