Description
Description
The Burnaby amfm data set represents an area approximately two square kilometers. The focus of this area is the intersection of Lougheed Highway and Gaglardi Way. This data was created by the City of Burnaby's engineering department. These coverages were UTM projections and the datum is NAD27. There were twelve coverages in the original data set and I added three additional coverages. The coverages from the City of Burnaby are:
Coverage Name and Description
Blocks - Block line or road
Contours- Two meter contours with spot heights
Hydrant- Fire hydrants
Hydrog -Fresh Water (Streams and lakes)
Lighting -Street Lighting Mains
Lots- Legal Parcels
Parks- Park Boundaries
Row- Rights of Way
Sanitary- Sewer Mains
Streets- Street Names
Structures- Building Footprints
Zoning- Zoning Lines
I also created three additional coverages:
Coverage Name and Description
Structures Structures including recent additions not included in the already existing coverage
Streets Streets in the area
Census Tracts Census tracts in the area
All the information about the City of Burnaby
data can be found in the Meta-Data
Methodologies
This data set was given to me by Paul DeGrace. He asked me to fill in existing gaps in the existing data and create additional data. He also asked me to hot link photos of homes to the structures coverage. I decided to create three additional coverages: streets, structures and census tracts.
Structures Coverage
The structures coverage was where I did most of my work. This coverage contains information about all of the structures in the area; the structures ranged from large industrial sites to small garages. Additional structures needed to be added to fill in gaps. Homes built after this coverage was created were missing. I created a new structures coverage because I could not edit the existing coverage. When I attempted to add new polygons to the coverage they were added as graphics. To solve this problem I created a separate coverage containing all the structures I wanted to add. I approximated the structure size by comparing the size of surrounding homes and I also looked at an air photo of the area. I used the geo-processing extension and I preformed a union operation between the new coverage and the existing coverage. The end result was a coverage containing all the structures in the area. I do not know what caused this problem; it might have been in the original organization of the data.
Owner and Address Information
In the existing structures attribute table there were two fields which I had to add information: owner's name and address. The addresses were taken from the lots coverage. Most of the homes in this area are very large and they take up the entire lot. Only in a few cases were the lots divided in these situations. I had to track down the additional information. I did this by using the address list for the collection of home photos and the air photo. From those two pieces of information I managed to determine the proper house address. The owner's names were are not the real names they are fictional names that I made up. For privacy reasons this information is not made avaliable to the general public.
Hotlinks
As part of a directed reading assignment a student took photos of many of the homes in the study area. The photos were taken with a digital camera and they were edited in Adobe Photoshop. The result was 386 photos of the area. These photos were reduced down to small size to give the images better resolution. The images were converted into GIF files because this format gave the best image resolution at the a small enough file size. The photos were originally stored as JPG's but Arcview dose not recognize these files for hot-linking. The hotlinks were created by adding a new field in the structures. This field stores the information about the location of the photos; in this case all of the photos were in a file on the d-temp directory. To make the links work the entire database had to be saved as a project and the entire database folder has to be moved into the d-temp directory. Locations without photos were represented by a sample image. This photo was created by Paul Degrace using Photoshop, this photo is named -999.gif.
Sample Photo and Actual Home Photo
Housing Values
I approximated the housing values by comparing housing prices with the structure's area(meter squared). I obtained the approximate housing prices from the multiple listing service website. From this website I obtained housing prices for twenty-eight residents in the area. I divided the residents by their area into two groups; the first group contained homes in the 100-200 sq. meter range the second group contained all the homes above 200 sq. meters. For each group I assigned a housing value which best represented the group. For the first group I used 350,000$ and for the second group I used 950,000$. These prices belonged to actual homes in the data set, so there actual area was known. I then used a ratio between this value and all the other values in the group. For industrial structures I made an estimate.
This method is very simplistic and only gives an approximate value of homes in the area. I would have to create a different method if I wanted really accurate housing values. Basing housing values on the asking prices of people trying to sell their homes could create some error. The asking price is rarely what it is worth; the prices are most likely over inflated. Basing housing prices purely on area does not take into account other factors influencing a homes value.
List of Housing Prices used for Assigning Housing Value
Streets Coverage
The streets I digitized myself. I used the lots coverage as a frame of reference. There were areas in this coverage where a road would be, I digitized a line down the middle of this area
I calculated the length of each road and I also categorized the streets into three categories:
Primary- these are heavily used streets in the area and any highways in the area
Secondary- smaller streets
Tertiary- this includes small streets and cul-de-sac's
This is the same classification that the City of Burnaby uses to categorize their streets. I also indicated which streets have bus service and what buses run on these streets.
Census Tracts
There are five census tracts in this area: 235.02, 235.04, 234.00, 236.00, 243.05. It took these tracts from the lower mainland census tracts file on the s-drive. I cut out the census tracts for Burnaby and overlaid it with the area I was studying. I traced the areas which intersected my area and created a polygon coverage consisting of five polygons.