Problems

 

There were several problems that were encountered in this project that provided some difficulty for analylitical purposes. The main problem was regarding the use of the rivers layer that was used. In developing a model that limited and created surface friction based on rivers, the lack of varying friction on the river according to rivers properties at that location was a problem. According to the model created costs less to cross the Fraser River at the most narrow point in the Fraser Canyon where the water is moving the fastest and is the most dangerous to anyone swimming across. Unfortunately, the scope of this project did not allow for individual frictions to be established for sections of the river. Another river related problem is the inability for IDRISI Kilimanjaro to create a least cost pathway using diagonals instead of moving in only the cardinal directions. Another rather large problem is the jumping of the river based routes out of the river to cross over land where the cost of land was insignificant, even when the land was many thousand times more costly. It is obvious that someone with a large boat would not portage over land but this may indicate that smaller boats may have used trails to move smaller vessels over land. This assumes that the river travellers would use the least cost route, which is an overall issue with a logical logarithm meets the often cultural motivated behaviour of humans. Another useful tool would be to establish a computed cost for the various routes but at the time of publishing, there was no known means to establish there numbers. With the use of some basic statistics, the variability and the relative differences between the two transportation methods could be computed. These avenues maybe be explored at a later date.

 

A least cost pathway transitioning from the river to land and then back to the river.

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