Many of the files were aquired from the San Diego Regional Planning Agency, and were projected or defined in ArcToolbox as well. A couple of these, inlcuding the land use image were in raster GRID format with the rest in vector ESRI interchange format. The original DEM from this site was imported into IDRISI in an ASCII format after being converted in ArcGIS. City, County, and Climate vector maps were imported from ESRI interchange format (.e00) and were projected in ArcGIS using Arc Toolbox. They were then imported into IDRISI using FME.
Another important source of data was the Geography 354 data folders provided by ESRI and SFU. This included California census data, census tract, road, and railway data. All data was imported into IDRISI to be analysed and further manipulated.
All data was standardized in terms of porojection and reference units. The projected coordinate system used throughout the project is the State Plane System for California VI using the North American Datum of 1983 for zone 406 in U.S. survey feet. As the DEM is 30m, one reference unit equals 100 feet. All data is relativley recent.
Data was reclassed and assigned into Boolean images and integrated with data from other sources of the same class.
Fire perimeters were copied from the GEOMAC wildland fire support ArcIMS map server, viewable at http://geomac2.cr.usgs.gov/#, and georeferenced to a county map. The perimeters were then geocoded to create a raster shape file that could then be imported tinto IDRISI.
Another excellent source of information was the California Dept. of Forestry and Fire Protection. The Fire and Resource Assessment Program made a great deal of GIS available free to the public online. This is where the land use file originated from.