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The Five Steps of a GIS project - Coggle Diagram
The Five Steps of a GIS project
Step 1:Frame the question
Determine a high level preliminary question to answer
Frame the question to help determine which GIS tools and methods to use for the analysis
Break down the main question into sub-questions that relate back to the original, and help with answering it.
Step 2: Explore and prepare data
Step 2a: Explore data
For each dataset, determine if it will be useful by examining the feature geography, attributes, and metadata.
Ask questions such as:
1) Does the feature geometry work for the analysis?
2) Does the data have the needed attributes?
3) How detailed is the data?
How will this data need to be prepared?
Step 2b: Prepare the data
Decide what data format to use.
Organize the data into a project folder. This helps simplify analysis tasks.
Check if the analysis tools that you intend to use accept the format
Extract the data to the same extent as the study area speeds up the processing time and enhances the data visualization in Arcmap.
To clip the data, create a selection layer of the area of interest. Export selected features and selection layers to their shapefile or geodatabase feature class when you plan to use the same study area for multiple analyses.
Step 3: Choose analysis methods and tools
Consider the questions framed in step 1, and choose the appropriate methods and tools that will answer each one.
The methods and tools can involve distribution of geographic features of interest, finding correlations within the data, and differentiating layers or differences in boundaries with various colors
Diagram the analysis to make is easier. It can be a simple step by step diagram, and can be as complex as necessary.
Step 5: Examine and refine results
Examine the results from the summary table
Sort the data to determine if there is an overlap between the various datasets.
The analysis can be refined by looking at the specific variables of interest in each dataset
At this point, the analysis can be extended by looking at where there is less overlap and further finding correlations between the datasets
Step 4: Perform the analysis
A visual analysis can combine the data into an easily readable map with symbols differentiated with color.
More information can be gained by doing a spacial join of various layers. This will output of a new layer that combines the features and attributes of the previous layers in one.
Follow the diagram created in step 3. For more complicated analyses, create a model in ModelBuilder to automate the process.
Summarize the result of the spatial join. This will output a table that contains all of the information.