Brooke Davis
GIS Assignment #6
Detailed Project Proposal
20 November 2013
Potential Sites for Eco-Machines:
Cape Cod and the Pleasant Bay Watershed
Goals:
The Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) and Buzzards Bay Coalition have filed suit
against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for not committing to their
responsibility under federal law to regulate the discharge of nitrogen flowing into the
bays of Cape Cod. The Cape Cod Commission is working diligently to find alternative
solutions and remedies to this issue. It has been found that the primary source of nitrogen
influx is from wastewater flowing from individual septic tanks. One remedial proposal to
nitrogen overloading is the “Eco-Machine,” which was recently invented by Dr. John
Todd as a natural greenhouse-type remedy to the issue. The goal of this project is to use
site suitability analysis with GIS to determine whether sites exist for Eco-Machine
implementation on Cape Cod.
Spatial Questions:
1. Which watersheds or water bodies have the highest nitrogen levels?
2. Are there densely populated areas near these nitrogen levels?
3. Are there suitable sites for Eco-Machines? Which are most suitable?
4. According to the suitability index, is there a suitable site in the Pleasant Bay
Watershed? Where are the top three suitable sites on Cape Cod generally?
Prior Research:
1. Gemitzi, A., Tsihrintzis, V.A., Christou, O., & Petalas, C. (2007, January). Use of
GIS in siting stabilization pond facilities for domestic wastewater treatment.
Retrieved from www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301479706000417
o This article has been useful because it examines site suitability for a
different wastewater treatment project, similar to the Eco-machines. Some
of the variables considered are similar to the ones that will be used in this
project, for instance land use and distance to residential areas. The authors
use GIS to site facilities use only exclusionary criteria, having found that
the use of exclusionary criteria results in stricter and safer conclusions.
The researchers created a map for each suitability criterion and a final map
produced by overlaying each of those, highlighting the areas that satisfy
all suitability criteria. The GIS system that used in this study has a
GridQuery function, which analyzes each cell according to the predefined
suitability criteria, accepting those that meet all and declining those that do
not.
2. Kallali, H., Anane, M., Jellali, S., & Tarhouni, J. (2007, September 5). GIS-based
multi-criteria analysis for potential wastewater aquifer recharge sites. Retrieved
from www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0011916407004018
o This article is relevant and helpful to the project I am presenting because
not only does it use a multi-criteria analysis but it uses criteria that are
considered constraints, which I am interested in using in my project. Areas
that were excluded in this paper were coded as 0 and those potentially
useful were coded as 1. The authors also used the intersect tool in order to
determine which sites met all the criteria. This article also discusses how
suitability criteria vary because they are chosen based on the goals and
scopes of the project. The authors chose three sets of criteria necessary to
their project: technical, environmental and economic. Again, the various
data were coded and suitable areas were obtained.
3. Makropoulos, C.K., Argyrou, E., Memon, F.A., & Butler, D. (2007). A suitability
evaluation tool for siting wastewater treatment facilities in new urban
developments. Retrieved from
www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15730620701336729#.Uo-l03d34ng
o This article uses a suitability index to propose specific locations after
developing multiple suitability maps. This article is meant to be a model
that can be adapted to different “spatial decision environments.” I
appreciated the way the authors presented their research; they defined the
problem, identified their decision process, described each system and
module used and the purpose of its use, and outlines steps to take if the
reader plans to mimic such a project. A case study is then presented to
show how to use the procedure in an applicable way. The result of the
procedure is a final output map that distinguishes between the acceptable
and unacceptable areas.
4. Sumathi, V.R., Natesan, U., & Sarkar, C. (2008, November). GIS-based approach
for optimized siting of municipal solid waste landfill. Retrieved from
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0956053X07003297
o This article is very clear about its site selection criteria, bulleting the
factors necessary for site identification of disposal sites. Buffer maps are used to
protect water zones and critical habitats. The authors use a more specific and
mathematical way of generating the ranking and rating system of each criterion
based on an algorithm. However, their flow diagram (on page 2157) makes it
incredibly clear as to how they performed their analysis by identifying their key
criteria for the siting as well as showing their development of the GIS database
and their analysis method for optimized landfill site selection. Different from the
above articles, the results include a table that shows all the possible sites for the
landfill (labeled with a site number and a rank), including a description of the site
and the area.
Data Layers:
The following data layers are not necessarily included in the data analysis (yet) but all
appear to be important in this project description, so in case of any future adjustments,
the data layers below may be used.
Data Set Name
Variable
Description
Data Source
Agency
LANDUSE2005_POLY
Land Use
(2005)
Land cover and land use have
been coded to show the various
categories of uses and cover
that are present in a certain
area.
MassGIS
NWI_POLY
National
Wetlands
Inventory
Provides information about the
extent, approximate location
and type of wetlands and
deepwater habitats in the
Commonwealth of
Massachusetts.
SUFGEO24K_SD_POLY
Surficial
Geology
MWRASERVICE_POLY
MWRA
Water/Sewer
Service Areas
This layer shows areas of
stratified deposits, categorized
as coarse or fine.
Shows water and sewer service
as provided by Massachusetts
Water Resources Authority.
MassGIS
National Wetlands
Inventory (NWI)
project
US Fish and
Wildlife Service
(USFWS)
MassGIS
US Geological
Survey (USGS)
MassGIS
ZONING_POLY
Zoning
Represents boundaries of
municipal zoning districts using
generalize codes
MassGIS
HYDRO25K_POLY
MassDEP
Hydrogrophy
MassGIS
TOWNS_POLY
Community
Boundaries
(Towns)
Represents hydrographic
features, including surface
water, wetlands, bogs, rivers,
streams, etc.
Political boundary datalayer at
a 1:25,000 scale contains 351
communities.
Clusters of blocks (of which the
size varies in different parts of
the state)
MassGIS
CENSUS2010BLOCKGROUPS_POLY Block Groups
from 2010
Census
MassGIS
URL?
www.fws.gov/wetlan
NWI/index.html
Pleasant Bay Watershed (MassGIS)
TBD Will either be delineated
manually, or retrieved from Friends of
Pleasant Bay staff.
IMG_IMPERVIOUSSURFACE
Impervious
Surfaces
Includes buildings, roads,
parking lots, brick, asphalt,
concrete, man-made compacted
soil, and unpaved parking lots.
ACECS_POLY
Areas of
Environmental
Concern
These areas have been
designated by the Secretary of
Energy and Environmental
Affairs (EEA) because of the
uniqueness and significance of
their natural and cultural
resources.
MassGIS
Project Road Map:
Potential Locations: An Eco-Machine would require developable impervious surface of
at least 200 square feet, within 100 feet of a residential area and ideally near wetlands
and far from any existing municipal sewer system.
1. Create basemap: A Cape Cod basemap with all of the layers (listed above) will be
created.
2. Remove roads buildings and <200 ft impervious surfaces: Using land use data and
zoning codes from MassGIS, all roads and buildings will be set to "no data" with
a hollow symbol and all remaining impervious surfaces less than 200 square feet
will be erased.
3. Create impervious raster dataset: An impervious surface raster dataset will be
created so that it can be combined with the land use data set.
4. Map remaining impervious surfaces: The resulting layer will show impervious
surfaces on Cape Cod that are not roads or buildings and are greater than 200
square feet.
5. Re-classify fields: The raster data will then be re-classified so that “very high
density” residential zones will be rated best (5), while less dense areas (“high”=4,
“medium”=3, “low”=2) and “no data” (1) will be rated accordingly. A new layer
will be created.
6. Remove sites already serviced by municipal sewer system: Using the “intersect”
tool, I will determine which parcels currently have municipal sewer systems and
erase these parcels from the zoning layer.
7. Calculate distance to residences: the Euclidean distance calculator will be run on
the residential data layer in order to reclassify the surfaces that are within 100 feet
of residential areas; the closest distance (<100 feet=5; 200 feet=4; 400 feet=3; 800
feet=2; 1320 feet or ¼ mile=1).
8. Calculate distance to wetlands: the same process, used in step 7, will be used for
the wetlands data layer, so that the sites closest to wetlands will receive the higher
scores.
9. Combine layers using raster calculator: the reclassified residential and wetlands
layers will then be combined using the raster calculator which will result in a
“suitable locations” dataset.
10. Overlay maps with various criteria and rankings: Using “overlay” tools the maps
will be combined in order to create the “Suitable Locations” map that will show
scores (highest number being 15) and the top three sites will be identified.
Final Product:
I plan to submit a final poster that includes an introduction discussing the purpose and
importance of the data presented. Various maps will be shown on the poster at different
scales: the largest map will be the final suitability map that highlights the top three site
opportunities for Eco-Machine installations; smaller maps will include land use,
impervious surface, and all suitable locations. A title, conclusion, references and satellite
images of most suitable sites will be included. I also plan to have a table (similar to the
one in the last article discussed above) that outlines the sites, with a description and their
ranking.