Lance DuncanGEOG 385, fall 2014Prof. Jennings16 December 2014

Final Project: California High Speed Rail and Non-Profit HospitalsSummaryIn deciding what to do for this project I had a desire to make something related to what I was doing at work. I have been involved in creating maps and collecting data about the High Speed Rail and so decided to create web application related to it. I ended up creating an application which could select all the nonprofit hospitals within a specific search distance of a HSR station.

To create the web application I uploaded data concerning the HSR and based on that data created a model. In this model the specific HSR station and a search distance were set as parameters. I attempted to allow the model to have the type of hospital to be selected as another parameter, but ultimately abandoned that idea.

This project in the end taught me what is necessary in the creation of a web application. I learned to keep the geoprocessing model as simple as possible and to pay attention to small details when publishing a web service. I also learned how easy it is to let data go outa=dated and that keeping data updated can be a task in and of itself.PurposeI work at an internship at the Governor's Office of Planning and Research and one of the projects I am involved in is the High Speed Rail. So in trying to come up with a project for this class, I almost immediately considered doing something with the High Speed Rail. One of the maps I worked on at OPR showed Non Profit Medical Facilities in California with the High Speed rail. I figured I could incorporate that into a web application somehow and decided to create a web service related to the HSR that can select all the medical facilities within a specified distance of a selected HSR station. Initially I wanted the end user to be able to select a specific HSR station and also the type of medical facility to be selected and a search distance which would return a result of selected medical facilities.

MethodsThe first thing which I accomplished was to download the data and upload it the

computer in the classroom. This shows the HSR route and stations along with the hospitals.

I had two different feature classes which showed the HSR route, the one labeled ‘HST_Projected_Align’ is the newer and more updated data. Below is a screenshot showing the old data as a thin red line just to show the difference between the two datasets.

I then began to work on a model whereby the medical facilities would be selected, I ran into some issues here which will be explained later on.

This is how the GUI for the model appeared once completed.

Once the model was complete I published it. Through some trial and error I discovered that I needed to check the box next to ‘view results with map service’ for the application to use the premade red symbology for selected hospitals.

I made a widget for the published model, so it would work in the application.

This is what the application looks like with the widget open to default parameters.

When different options were placed as the parameters the model ran and zoomed into the selection set.

IssuesThe creation of this web application was fairly straightforward and I only encountered a

couple of problem areas. The biggest problem came in building the model to my original idea. I wanted to be able to not only select what HSR station to center on, but also which types of medical facilities to select. Upon uploading my data, I found that despite there being a plethora of name types, such as medical care center, hospital, etc. they were not classified as different types of hospitals. So I resorted to using license type of each hospital, of which there were only two, acute psychiatric hospital, and general acute care hospital. In order to select the license type I had a select by attributes tool applied to the hospital layer and set as a precondition. So the model was as pictured above but with selection process for hospitals happening in parallel with the HSR station selection before both selection were used in the select by location tool. When I ran the model with this setup, it would select the hospitals by station and search distance, but the type of hospital selected never altered the end result. It acted as if the hospital selection by license weren’t even happening. After some trials with different methods and talking to Geoff I decided to abandon the idea of selecting the type of hospital. We decided the model failed to work most likely because I had two separate preconditions. A big factor in abandoning this was not only that the model wasn’t working, but also there were only two types of hospitals to choose from and there were less than 10 psychiatric hospitals anyway.

Another issue I ran into was the selection of feature in the actual web application. When I first published the model and created a widget, it would run and the features would be selected, but they would appear as a gray/black circle around the original symbols. After reading help documents and attempting a few different things, including making the selection and operational

layer, I discovered that I needed to check the box in the properties of the model service so that it would use the symbology I had prepared for the selection set.

ConclusionsThis exercise helped me to learn the intricacies that can be involved when creating a web application. My problems with making the model work just right showed me how important it is to have as simple of a model as possible. Also making the selection appear as desired taught me to pay attention to little details when publishing web services. And another thing that has arisen from this project is the need to use updated data. By the time this project was done, all the data I was using both routes and stations and my hospital data were outdated. I have been working with a new dataset at work for each of the items involved in this project. So now it is not of much practical use to me, but it did give me experience for creating web applications with the same idea in the future.