Week 12 - Geocoding and Network Analysis

This week I tackled my introduction to geocoding and network analysis. I have found a lot of topics interesting during this class but this one definitely intrigued me more than most. In my past experience as an intelligence analyst I wanted access to tools like the ones I tried out this week and more importantly, the knowledge of how to use and adapt them to my particular projects. I was able to use bits and pieces of this information previously but everything makes a lot more sense now. I almost want to to back and share this information with some of the folks I used to work with, I just don't want to have to go over the last ten weeks of this course with them as well.

The graphic this week depicts the EMS locations in Lake County, FL that I geocoded using a spreadsheet of addresses, an All Lines Tiger file from the U.S. Census Bureau, and an address locator in ArcMap. There were a couple of locations that had to be manually matched with an address and I used Google Earth to help me with those. The route depicted in the inset map was created using the Network Analyst Extension Tool in ArcMap. I picked the three locations and the computer found the quickest route between the three in the sequence I choose. This is similar to choosing a cross country route with the assistance of Google Maps only it can be applied to all types of undirected networks.

I also had my first experience with model building this week. It was really an exercise in model element identification and correction because I was provided with a partially complete model to start with. I followed the ESRI modeling building course and by the end I had a functioning model to work with in ArcMap. I did not create a graphic based off of the model outputs but i do have a screen shot of the model itself. One important thing I learned this week when it comes to sharing models is that the input and output locations for every tool must be corrected to your own particular file paths. Even if you have the same data and data structure as the original model, the file path names and drives have to be corrected or the model will not run the full process.