Providing for residential growth, fostering economic development, and protecting natural resources requires a delicate balance between the built and nonbuilt environment. A variety of factors come into play, including land values, the abundance of natural resources, real estate market trends, demographics, local ordinances, and community character. Coastal communities need tools to help them analyze, visualize, and make decisions about growth and development along the coast. This need is the basic premise behind the development of "Alternatives for Coastal Development."
Featuring coastal Georgia as its example, this project illustrates results and provides information applicable to any coastal area. In Georgia, as in many areas, coastal resource managers are grappling with sprawl issues. In developing this project, the Center partnered with the Georgia Coastal Management Program, Georgia Conservancy, and the Georgia Department of Community Affairs. All three organizations provide planning-related educational and technical assistance to local communities, and each articulated a need for geographic information system (GIS)-based educational materials to help their constituent groups visualize and make informed choices about development alternatives.
The team worked to define the project conceptually and to select appropriate software to carry out the scenario comparisons envisioned. Based on consultation with experts from University of Wisconsin Sea Grant and the Land Information and Computer Graphics Facility, the project team selected the CommunityViz® ArcView® 3.x extension for indicator development, the SGWater module of the U.S. EPA's free Smart Growth Index software for estimating pollutant runoff, and Visual Nature Studio® for creating spatially referenced photorealistic 3-D scenes from each scenario. These software packages were used in addition to ArcView 3.x, ArcGIS®, and ERDAS Image® GIS and remote sensing software programs, which are in fairly common use in the coastal management community.
In coordination with project partners and via the state GIS clearinghouse, Center technical staff assembled base map data layers for the project area. These data sets included digital orthophotos and mapped natural resource layers such as soils, hydrography, national wetlands inventory data, and coastal hammocks. The developer provided site-specific layers including project boundary, regulatory lines, jurisdictional wetlands, and elevation contours. In addition, Center staff created a data layer identifying forest communities on the project site based on photointerpretation of the 1999 orthophotos.
Hard-copy base maps for the project site were provided at the workshop. Draft scenario designs were completed by subgroups at the workshop, Center technical staff scanned, georeferenced, and digitized each scenario for use in a GIS. Using the Spatial Adjustment tool in the ArcMap interface (ArcGIS 8.3), the images were then georeferenced.
Once the alternative designs were in a GIS format, CommunityViz software was used to formulate and analyze indicators. With this software, multiple formulas can be developed to measure the quantitative differences between scenarios. Research into appropriate variables and modification of formulas had to occur to ensure the formula inputs realistically represented the desired measure. It was also often necessary to add new attribute fields to the scenario shapefiles for the indicator calculations.
This project exploited only a portion of the CommunityViz functionality using it for static indicator development and analyses. Once the scenario designs were finalized by each of the subgroups, the projects indicators were calculated, producing results for each scenario (indicator table). The project indicators were evaluated using either the CommunityViz or SG Water Application. Once the scenarios were in digital format and final indicators selected, technical staff used Visual Nature Studio to develop a selection of 3-D views for each scenario. These 3-D scenes help to illustrate the look and feel intended for each design and to highlight differences among scenarios. The Center primarily used Visual Nature Studio software to create 3-D scenes and fly-thrus of the three scenarios. A broad array of GIS data were imported and used to accurately place objects and ecosystems within the landscape.
For this project, CommunityViz was used to illustrate the differences in the three scenarios from a bird's eye view, while the VNS application was used to create a streetscape view from the ground level.
Working in conjunction with Georgia Coastal Management Program, Georgia Conservancy, Georgia Department of Community Affairs, and the City of St. Marys, and with input from additional site and landscape design experts, this project developed and evaluated three hypothetical development alternatives using geography, resource, and economic information from coastal Georgia. Project results are shown on the Web site and intended for use in several ways. First, the site aims to provide specific examples of how alternative development options can impact environmental, economic, and social factors. Second, maps and 3-D graphics are intended to help users visualize how alternative design components might look.
Working in conjunction with Georgia Coastal Management Program, Georgia Conservancy, Georgia Department of Community Affairs, and the City of St. Marys, and with input from additional site and landscape design experts, this project developed and evaluated three hypothetical development alternatives using geography, resource, and economic information from coastal Georgia. Project results are shown on the Web site and intended for use in several ways. First, the site aims to provide specific examples of how alternative development options can impact environmental, economic, and social factors. Second, maps and 3-D graphics are intended to help users visualize how alternative design components might look.
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