Wednesday, May 2, 2018

Update 5: Spatial Analysis & Weighted Overlay

Now that I have reclassified my rasters, I will assign each of them a weight based on how important I feel each category is for people who may suffer from asthma or may be at risk for not receiving treatment for their asthma.  I rated the distance to the hospital as the most important variable because if the condition is serious enough or life threatening, people are going to seek medical attention regardless of whether or not they have health insurance.  I weight I assigned to the hospitals was (0.35).  At a close second, I rated income as the second most important factor (0.3) because those who live below the poverty line may not be able to afford to seek medical help.  Rated third is ozone exceedance (0.25) because although ozone is an air pollutant that can aggravate asthma symptoms, I felt that income and hospitals have a greater impact on asthma at this time.  Lastly, is population density (0.1).  I chose to include population density because densely populated areas are more likely to have more hospitals, so although it is a piece of the puzzle, I did not feel that it was significant enough to give it a weight that more closely matched with the other three components.  After using the raster calculator to multiply the values,  I was able to produce a draft final output raster which I have attached below. 

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