Network Analysis of Tacoma Washington
Women, infants and children (WIC) is an assistance program that is federally funded through the US Department of Agriculture. It provides healthcare and nutrition to low-income pregnant women, women that are breastfeeding, and children under the age of five. WIC locations are local grocery stores that accept a WIC card.
The two maps above show the walk times to local WIC retailers. The map on the left covers all of Tacoma while the map on the right is zoomed in on part of Tacoma.
Below is a map showing a rout analysis for all of the WIC retailers.
The two maps above show the walk times to residential treatment centers within Tacoma. The map on the left covers all of Tacoma while the map on the right is zoomed in on part of Tacoma.
Map showing the response time for fire and emergency medical services (EMS).
Methods
To create a service area around the WIC locations in Tacoma and a route analysis between these locations, a few key features had to be set up. The first thing was to obtain a polygon of the City of Tacoma. This was done by using a map of Pierce County and using select by attributes to create a new layer of Tacoma’s boundary. The WIC locations were clipped to the Tacoma boundary. A layer of Tacoma’s streets was used to come up with walk times in minutes and drive time in minutes. To do this, three new fields were created. Distances in miles were calculated using the shape length field. Walk time in minutes was calculated using a 3 miles per hour walking speed. Drive time in minutes was calculated using the speed limits attribute in Tacoma streets data. A network dataset was created using the Tacoma streets layer. Elevation was taken into account and the distance was set to miles.
The service areas analysis of the WIC locations was conducted using the ‘Make Service Area Layer’ within the network analyst tool. The walk times were set to one minute, five minute, and ten minutes. The polygon generation was set to not overlapping.
The route analysis of the WIC locations was conducted using the ‘Make a Route Layer’ within the network analyst tool.