- Geography 5222 -
Project 3: Analyzing Spatial Data in a GIS
Locating Tornado Relief Sites

Objective:
perform fundamental spatial analysis using a geographic information system

The image above shows buffers around tornado paths in Oklahoma. Black dots indicate
candidate relief sites based on certain criteria (type of building, etc.). The attributes are shown below.

The limitation of this analysis is that we are using data for population density per county which assumes a constant distribution of people.  In reality this may not be the case.  It could be possible that the emergency relief zone would be located in a space in which there are no people.  In that case, people who are affected by a tornado may not have any relief site available to them.  The data layers I would use to augment the current data would be population per square mile.  This would show more accurate locations of populations of people on a smaller scale.  One could also use census tract data which are also much smaller units showing population in comparison to counties.  These layers would improve the results by locating a more precise relief site in an area where a fairly large population of people are located.