Waste Transfer Station Project

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Waste Transfer Station Project

• Geographic Modeling and Problem Solving

2/23/2009
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Problem Statement

• The New York City DEP is interested in measuring
  the environmental equity (vis a vi economic
  class) of the siting of waste transfer stations
  in New York City.
• Is one particular income classe bearing the
  greatest burden of the impact of waste transfer
  stations?

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Modeling steps

• Statement of the Objectives and Problems
• Conditions and Assumptions
• Methodology
• Data sets
• Spatial operations
• Non-spatial operations
• Implementation
• Evaluation / Calibration, adjust and iterate
  again from step 2.
• http//www.geography.hunter.cuny.edu/7Eyllik/gis2
  /lectures/lecture3/lecture3.html

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Sample methodology
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Exploratory analysis

• Income
• distribution

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Exploratory analysis

• Distribution
• of Households

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Sensitivity analysis

• What is the relative importance of
• Buffer size
• Including/removing open spaces
• How buffer intersections are handled
• Whether the effects of proximity are cumulative
• Whether households are counted multiple times
• Census tracts versus block groups
• Income class breaks what is high- versus
  middle- versus low-income?
• How the affects of different kinds of waste are
  weighted

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Sensitivity analysis

• Other issues
• Make buffer size depend on transfer station size?
• How about directional effects of prevailing
  winds?
• How is fairness defined?
• What are spatial distributions of income classes
  city-wide versus close to transfer stations?
• What would income distribution be if transfer
  stations were randomly distributed?

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Example 1 buffer overlap

• Areas within buffer of 8 or more transfer
  stations

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Example 1 buffer overlap

• Number of overlapping buffers compared to
  difference between income group percentage within
  buffer and within all of Brooklyn

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Example 2 random locations

• Compare actual to monte-carlo spatial
  distributions

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Example 2 random locations
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Existing research

• For example
• Maantay, J. Asthma and air pollution in the
  Bronx Methodological and data considerations in
  using GIS for environmental justice and health
  research. Health Place, Volume 13, Issue 1,
  March 2007, Pages 32-56.
• http//www.lehman.cuny.edu/deannss/geography/tri_f
  acilities.htm
• http//www.lehman.cuny.edu/deannss/geography/race_
  and_waste_adjusted.htm