After the spatial analysis was finished, the comparison was able to be made by simply visually inspecting the images, with the first image having the most area-coverage-per-single route. The numerical comparison also could be made by comparing the cost-value of each route. The first route had the maximum value of 2404.29 while the second had 2658.31, the third had 2612.31, and the fourth had 2585.48. Therefore, the first route was selected to be the optimal route for picking up garbage in the area.
At this point, I would assume safe to say that the project originally was supposed to cover the entire Coquitlam area. However, that plan was very quickly frustrated when I realized that the computer would take up to 10 minutes (and it actually did) to just to display the image. So, the plan was re-directed into evaluating a detailed analysis of single area from that point on.
The project, as it progressed, illuminated for me some of the basic and the fundamental problems surrounding the GIS and the IDRISI and the data conversion in particular. The most telling aspect of this was the initial problem of converting the data from the AUTOCAD format to the IDRISI-compatible format. I tried to conduct the "PATHWAY" evaluation to find the independent route but the IDRISI failed me in creating the point-raster image. As simple as that sounds, it proved the most puzzling part of the project, since neither I nor several other students who tried to do this simple task failed over and over. Many ingenious experiments were employed but to no avail. Also, the size of the file was the biggest barrier for some of the procedures, such as when I wanted to convert the data directly into the IDRISI format and many of times resulted in crashing the computer or taking excessive amount of time. As such, I had to go around this problem by importing the layer individually from the ArcView. The "COST" function served well in terms of finding out the cost-distance. It is admissible that while the "WEIGHT" function was being constructed, the biases could have built into the evaluation, which in the end could have affected the entire MCE analysis, but I DID weigh them several times to both reflect the assumed importance of the each layer.
The last thing that should deserve mentioning is the weighted-linear comparion of the Multi Criteria Evaluation method, which proved to be invaluble assistance when it showed me that it could analyse several images at once with the consideration of the weighted differences.
Again, I'd like to express my gratitude to Mr. Henri Wong and Ms. Sharon Choo from the City of Coquitlam for giving me the tips and the data.
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