Tan Hoang GEOG 362 – Final Project Automated Population Density Calculations within Specific Neighborhoods Tan Hoang GEOG 362 – Final Project

Purpose and Goals Automatically calculate population density Use U.S. Census block data Based on City of Sacramento neighborhood boundaries Other possibilities: Any boundaries Any features Provides important data for planning decisions

Geoprocessing Tools Select Feature by Attribute Queries specific feature attributes Select Feature by Location Intersect grabs all spatially connected features Copy Features (writes new shapefile outputs) Calculate Fields Feature to Point (provides non-cluttered view of final data)

Hide Unnecessary Fields Census block GIS data contains many fields Population is only relevant field Parameter within the MakeFeatureLayer tool Not much help in ArcGIS Resource Center Ultimately recreated task in ModelBuilder, exported python script, and modified it

Very Important: Exists and Delete Used multiple times…

Calculate Areas and Add Fields Calculate Areas_stats tool saves the step of having to create a new field and for the area and field calculate (in sq ft)

Delete Unnecessary GIS Files Created During Process Code written after final process, cleans up file folder, leaves behind only original data files and final output

Successful Python Script

Conclusion Automatically calculate area and population density Reduces as much extra steps as possible through use of built-in calculations area calculation, acreage expression Pseudo-code helpful in planning script Delete unnecessary GIS files Process helps provide useful population data for important planning purposes