Project 1: Report

The GIS department has been tasked with locating a target population to see where state funds need to be allocated in order to help fund health care costs for the uninsured populations of the San Francisco Bay Area. The first area of analysis was to determine if there is a correlation between the uninsured and the minority populations. The three population targets that were analyzed were Hispanics, Blacks, and Single mothers. The analysis results showed the black population within Alameda County would best benefit from the available state funding. The next part of the analysis was to determine which counties had the highest hospital admittance of asthma related cases and then see how it relates to ozone and particulates matter. The results of the analysis showed that Alameda County had the highest rate of asthma related cases and was on the high end of the spectrum for both ozone and particulate matter levels. The third part of the analysis determined where the highest concentration of the target population resided within the county. Using this data it was then determined if other pollution factors contributed to the high number of asthma hospitalizations. Toxic Release Index location and roads were given buffers so that overlaps with clusters of high black populations and nearby hospital locations could be analyzed. The last part of the analysis proved to be difficult because I could not get the Toxic Release index raster layer loaded into the weighted overlay. Although I could not get this part of the analysis completed it was easy to see on the map where there were multiple factors that cold have contributed to the high hospitalization rates. This project, by far, was the most difficult and frustrating since the beginning of the certificate program. I managed to get through it though and hope the coming projects are not nearly as unclear to me