Cássio Krüger de Freitas

Fall 2015_ Fundamentals of GIS

December 01, 2015
Lab_5

INTRODUCTION
The quality of food consumed by the population have a great impact in health and manners
of the individuals. Furthermore, the facility to obtain health food are related with the amount
acquired and consumed by people. Thinking in this way, to classify this zones, which has some
restrictions to acquire healthy food, was created the concept “Food Deserts”. In the United States
Department of Agriculture (USDA) words, Food deserts are defined as:
“Urban neighborhoods and rural towns without ready access to fresh, healthy, and
affordable food. Instead of supermarkets and grocery stores, these communities may have no food
access or are served only by fast food restaurants and convenience stores that offer few healthy,
affordable food options”.
The Food desert areas could be determined using different steps, parameters,
methodologies. The USDA indicate some parameters to locate these areas, but this analysis utilized
others.
METHODS
The analysis was conducted in the software ArcMap 10 and ArcCatalog 10, also it used a
large shapefile database showed in table 1.

Shape file Information Format Process

SEPTA_HspeedSt Location of subway stations of SEPTA lines Point B, C, U.
SEPTA_BusLn Bus routes of SEPTA lines Line B, C, U.
Philly_Parks Shape of available parks in Philadelphia Polygon U.
Philly_GrMk Location of Groceries Stores Point B, U.
PhillyTrac Shape of Philadelphia Tracts Polygon S&E, D, U.
PhillyBound Shape of Philadelphia County Polygon
Table 1. Database and processes used for the analysis. B = Buffer; C = Clip; D = Dissolve; U = Union; S&E = Selection
and export.

The first step of the analysis, as the coordination system of the shapefiles were different,
was to georeferenced the shapes in the same projected and coordinate system, using the “Define
projection” and “Projection” tools. This analysis used the “GCS_North_American_1983” as the
geographical coordinate system and the “NAD_1983_UTM_Zone_18N” as the projected
coordinate system.
After guarantying the same representation of the shapefiles, was utilized the following
parameters, which are based on the definition of Food deserts, to identify the Food deserts areas:
1. Not within a park;
 2. Not within one half mile of an existing supermarket;
3. Not within 500 meters of a SEPTA high speed station (subway);
4. Not within 200 meters of a bus line;
5. Within a census tract with over 100 residents AND in the lowest 80% for median household
income;
6. With an area of at least 100,000 square meters.

The way utilized to discover the areas utilizing the parameters above can be seen in table
1, which have a resume of the steps used for each image in Annex 1, which presents five shapes
generated during the process and the union of them all. Since some of the shapes have more
information then needed for the work (e.g. The “SEPTA_BusLn” had a lot of tracings outside the
Philadelphia County), they were cut using the “Clip” tool, which allow to extract a specific part of
a shape that are inside of a base shape, like a mold. For this analysis the “PhillyBound” was the
mold utilized as base map to cut all the “clipped” features.
The distance parameters (2, 3, and 4) required shapes representing the distance stipulated
from the specified targets; as a result, was applied in the “buffer” tool “SEPTA_HspeedSt”,
“SEPTA_BusLn” and “Philly_GrMk” to generate the new shapefiles “SEPTA_HspeedSt_B”,
“SEPTA_BusLn_B” and “Philly_GrMk_B” respectively. For each time this tool was used, with
each one of the features, it requested both the input shape and the distance to apply, which have a
variation of units (e.g. the distance applied for “SEPTA_BusLn” was 200m or 0.2km). Is worthy
to mention that for this work was needed just one block for each shape generated; thus, was
selected the “dissolve all” option to perform the “buffer”.
For discover the target census tracts of parameter 5 was “select by attribute” from
“PhillyTrac", utilizing the expression “TOTPOP > 100” and exporting the selected tracts as an
intermediary shape (S&E process). From the intermediary shape was “selected by attribute” the
tracts with median household income less than 49430 ("MEDHHINC" <= 49430); also, this
selection was exported, generating the new shapefile “PhillyTrac_Criteria”. Since this analysis
didn’t need each tract as a different features was applied the “dissolve” tool, which receive one
entry shape to generalize the features of this shape in one block (PhillyTrac_Crit_D).
All the output shapes (SEPTA_HspeedSt_B, SEPTA_BusLn_B, Philly_GrMk_B,
PhillyTrac_Crit_D) and the “Philly_Parks” was combined with the “union” tool. Inserting and
processing all these five files into the tool generated a shape, “Union” (can be seen in Annex 1),
showing a table of contents (Image 1) with codes that represent the interaction between the shapes
used to generate it. After that was selected from “Union” the feature with the values 0 for
“PhillyTrac_Crit_D”, -1 for the others, since the 0 code represents inside the specific field and -1
represents outside (the selected area can be seen as the white zone in the zoom frame of the Annex
1). Exporting this selected field was generated “FD_Gross”.
 Figure 1. Attribute table of "FD_Gross". The "0" codes inside the selected fields represents features inside the especific
polygon and the "-1" codes in these fields represent features outside the especific polygon. The selected row was the one
that include all the parameters of this analysis.

Furthermore, was necessary to divide the big block polygon in various features; therefore,
it was did using the “Multipart to singlepart” tool, which create a different feature for each
discontinuous feature in the layer generating a new shapefile “FD_GroMS”. After that adding a
double type field (AreaM) to the “FD_GroMS” and selecting this field to calculate the area with
the “calculate geometry” function utilizing the “square meters” option in the table of contents,
allowed to “select by attribute” the areas with more than 100,000 square meters ("AreaM" >=
100000). Finally, exporting the features selected as a new shape revealed the “Potential_FD”.
RESULTS
The result shapefile “Potential_FD” are showed in Annex 2 by the red polygons. It is clear
to see that the most areas with the more difficult to acquire health food are located in northeast
Philly and northwest Philly.
The big area in Kensington, Brides burg, Richmond and northeast Philadelphia coincide
with some of the lowest household income tracts of Philly. Also, the small areas in northeast Philly
are close to some of the higher household incomes, matching the suburbs areas. Since the people
who lives in the suburb have different ways to achieve transport and do not need to rely in
collective transportation, the suburbs areas probably are not considered a food desert, but these
analysis tracked them because it does not account others thinks (e.g. cars) in the method.
In addition, some fast manner to make easy to achieve healthy food in these areas could be
done by expanding the routes of bus lines; as well, encouraging by public politics the market of
local farmers.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion can be said that this method showed helpful to identify Food deserts areas,
but need some more parameters to do a better analysis. Furthermore, it showed that the most areas
are located in the norths Philadelphia.
ANNEX 1.

Annex 1. All the shapefiles united to compose the union (big chart) that was used to discover the Potential Food deserts. 1) Philly_Parks; 2) Philly_GrMk_B; 3) SEPTA_HspeedSt_B; 4)
SEPTA_BusLn_B; 5) PhillyTrac_Crit_D. The zoom of the union represented by the frame with red outline shown that the potential food deserts are the blank spots inside the hatched
area. It means that the Food deserts are inside the selected tracts and outside the other shapefiles.
ANNEX 2.

Annex 2. The Philly Regions presented in this map are based on the Greater Philadelphia GeoHistory network 1 classification.

1
Link to the Greater Philadelphia GeoHistory network: https://www.philageohistory.org/rdic-
images/common/help/PhilaRegions.cfm