Coming into this project I think I was a little naive, because I thought all the data would be easily accessible to me. Unfortunately this was not the case, as some of the data would be easily accessible to me. Unfortunately this was not the case, as some of the data I required was not accessible to me or came to late in the semester. Originally I had a different project in mind, but the data I has request from the Provincial Government didn't arrive in time to be useful for that project. Personally I thought I requested the early enough, obviously I did not. Nevertheless I learned a valuable lesson when dealing with the government ask as soon as possible. In addition I had problems early on in the project as the data didn't not match up (projection). I was able to overcome this by using a set projection, and by using the same number of rows and columns.
    I also had problems trying to use census data in my project. I spent my hours trying to get the the attribute tables to link with the EA shape file, but it was to no avail. Even Rob Fiedler, Geog 355 T.A., could solve my problem as he had never seen anything like. Rather then waste hours of time on this problem I decided to scrap this factor.

Methodological Problems

    Although the idea of locating a site for a rugby field seems pretty straightforward, its not. The process leading up to a final design are a quite daunting task to say the least. The factors I chose where just the tip of the ice-berg and a project such as this could have included many more. Some of the factors that I wanted to use but either couldn't access or get to work in IDRISI or ArcMAP include; soil conditions, land use value and census data. Regardless of these issues I enjoyed doing this project as it allowed me to see the pitfalls one might encounter when using GIS in the real world.

If you have any questions about this project please e-mail at cturking@sfu.ca

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