The two main problems with this project concern the data and the analysis program. While the data that I did obtain was of excellent quality, I would have liked to have used more specific themes, such as forest type, hydro electric lines, additional settlements, and specific classified roads. As can be seen on the vector road network, the Alaska Highway appears to be the same as rural gravel roads. I wish that I had had towns and settlements so that I could have run FUZZY on distances from them, much like I did for water. As I did not have this, and used only Fort St. John, the result was quite an exercise in NIMBYism.
Further, I would have liked to have been able to establish that the proposed location of the OSB plant is, indeed, a poor one. I had imagined I could do this with prevailing wind data to show the destination of particulates, chemicals, and water vapour from the plant. I did not end up obtaining prevailing wind data anyway, but the analysis would have been weak without data on human and environmental health impacts such as water contamination, particulate levels and respiratory ailments, and logging truck traffic analysis. I felt that it was beyond my capabilities to obtain, process, and analyse this data, and so my whole project was developed on the assumption that a better location for the plant was needed.
While the project criteria were somewhat arbitrary, I am still happy with my own analysis of the data, however fictional this analysis may be. Several of the operations fell under Multi-Criteria Analysis, and were interesting to perform. I learned to use the program with reasonable ease, but not without a few extreme frustrations and program crashes. If I had an opportunity to do this project again, I probably would not use Idrisi. My data was specifically in Arc/Info format and I believe that much time could have been saved by simply using the data in the program for which it was intended. I felt that my analyses were somewhat weak, given the tremendous amount of time I spent importing, rasterizing, etc. and the small amount of time I had left for using the prepared data.
1.
Spatial
Question
2.
Data Collection
3.
Methodology
4.
Spatial
Analysis
5.
Methodological
and Operational Problems