Back to the home page Context of the study An estimate of the potential for growth in Charlestown

 

 

This section of the site discusses prioritizing land for openspace acquisition in Charlestown Rhode Island.

Background information on openspace acquisition and GIS begins this section with contextual information for this portion of the study..

Setting Priorities - Public Input

The first step in evaluating parcels is to determine what is most important to protect. A project to gather public input in this process was conducted in Charlestown at the same time as this project. Information on this portion of the study, which was conducted by Justin Huxol, is available at Charlestown Openspace Prioritization Project.

Using GIS to Create a Ranking System for Openspace Acquisition

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can be used to create a system to prioritize openspace for acquisition. Using the priorities gathered using public input, and input from the Charlestown Planning and Conservation Commissions, it was possible to create a scoring system that mirrors these values and ranks parcels for acquisition. The end product is a scoring system that ranks every undeveloped parcel of land to identify parcels that should be protected first.

This portion of the site explains how GIS was used to score parcels for acquisition and gives the results of this analysis.

Analyzing the Potential Impact of Openspace Acquisition

Combining the buildout analysis, and the openspace scoring system, it is possible to analyze the potential impacts of different openspace plans. Ultimately, this analysis can help inform the creation of openspace policies by describing some of their potential impacts.

This portion of the site discusses the methods used for modeling the impacts of different openspace plans, and the results of applying these models.
6.01 Matthew Amengual