Problem:
The goal of this project is to geospatially represent customers for a commercial establishment in Wake County, NC. This will allow the interested business to evaluate the best ways to reach their customers. Additionally, it will allow the business to determine areas that are currently underrepresented by their customers and reach out to those areas accordingly. This will be done by using the information provided to the business by its current customers. The information includes but not limited to street addresses and ZIP codes.
Analysis Procedures:
In order to best address the businesses needs, ArcGIS Pro was used to evaluate the geospatial locations of customers based on ZIP code and Streets. Tools used include create address locator and geocode addresses in that order using data obtained from the Wake County Government website. Layers used include Wake County ZIP codes, Wake County boundary and Wake County streets. Additionally, customer data was provided by the business in the form of an excel spreadsheet which was imported in ArcGIS Pro to use for the analysis.
Two methods were used to geocode addresses for the customers and provided the business with two representations of the customers distributions throughout Wake County. The first method included creating an address locator by ZIP Code. The reference style for this locator was US Address – ZIP 5-Digit style and used the Wake County zip codes as the reference data. After the locator was created the geocode addresses tool was used to associate the customer data with the reference data. Many of the customers were matched with a ZIP code, some had incomplete data and others had to be manually updated from unmatched to matched. The second method followed the same procedure only this time the US Address – Dual Ranges and Wake County Streets were used for the reference style and reference data respectively. The analysis included adding a field to the customer data so that street number and street name were in the same field and could be corresponded to the reference data. Several unmatched customers were also matched using the Rematch Addresses tool. Bar graphs were created for each analysis to show the proportion of matched, tied and unmatched addresses for customers. Additionally, a map was created for each analysis that show the spatial distribution of customers in Wake County by ZIP code and street name respectively.
Results:
Application and Reflection:
Upon completing this assignment, I have learned how to geocode tabular addresses and represent data spatially. This will be helpful as I pursue my master’s thesis. My project includes evaluating the erodibility of stream banks across the Piedmont Region of North Carolina. Upon completion of the approximately 40 sites, we would like to geospatially represent the erodibility parameters of these sites. This data is acquired through my data collection (using a GPS for spatial reference) and can first be organized in an excel spreadsheet. The reference data needed would be zip codes for the state of North Carolina. This file then can be clipped to the Piedmont Region using the Piedmont Regions shapefile provided to me by my sponsor. First an address locator should be created using the reference data. Next the geocode addresses tool can be used to associate the sites with the reference data. This analysis will provide great insight on where different erodibility parameters are located spatially across the NCPR.
Spatial Problem Solving Portfolio 