Query Based Analysis

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 Query Based Analysis
Case-Joe is relocating his consulting firm to Florida. He wants to be in a county with less
than a million people (more suburban than urban), with a large number of people in his
target customer age range (roughly 3545). The city or town he selects should be close to a
university because he has had success employing college students.
In this exercise, you will work with county demographic data, as well as city and university
data. You will create a series of attribute and location queries to find places in Florida that
meet Joe's criteria.
In this exercise, you will:
Use Select By Attributes to create query expressions and refine the selection.
Use Select By Location to select features based on different types of spatial relationships.

Step 1: Open a map document

If necessary, start ArcMap.
From your folder, open Florida_Relocation.mxd.
If prompted to save changes to an open map document, click No.
You see a map of Florida counties.

Step 2: Find counties based on population

In this step, you will find countries with less than a million people. You will open the
attribute table for the counties layer and examine the fields before building a query.
Open the attribute table for the Florida County Demographics layer.
Scroll through the fields.
You see fields containing population, age, and race demographics. You will base your first
query on the TOTAL_POP field.

From the Selection menu, choose Select By Attributes.

For Layer, choose Florida County Demographics.
Verify that the Method is set to create a new selection.
Click "TOTAL_POP," then click Get Unique Values.

Build this query: "TOTAL POP" < 1000000. Type the value directly in the expression box and
be sure you have six zeros. Apply the query.
Move the dialog box aside to see the map.
The query eliminated the three most populous (and popular) counties in Florida.
Open the attribute table for the Florida County Demographics layer.

Do not clear the selection. You need the selected counties for the next query.

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Step 3: Refine your selection by age
Now that you have eliminated counties with the highest population, you will refine the
selection with another query based on age to find countries with large numbers of people
age 35-44.

In the Select By Attributes dialog box, click Clear to clear the expression box.
Change the Method to Select from current selection.
Scroll down in the list of attribute fields until you find "AGE_35_44", then select it.
Click Get Unique Values and scroll down to see the range of values.
Build this query: "AGE_35_44" >100000 (Make sure you have five zeros.) Click OK.

From the Selection menu, choose Zoom To Selected Features to see the selected counties.
Open the attribute table for the Florida County Demographics layer.
Click the Show selected records button
Close the attribute table.

Do not clear the selection. You need the selected counties for the next query.

Step 4: Find cities within selected countries

Next, you want to determine which cities are inside the selected counties and view a list of
them.

Turn on Florida_Cities.
From the Selection menu, open the Select By Location dialog box.
Create this query: "I want to select features from Florida_Cities that are completely within
the features in Florida County Demographics. Use selected features."
Click Apply, then move the dialog box aside.

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Cities inside the selected counties are now selected.
Open the attribute table for the Florida_Cities layer and click the Show selected records
button

Step 5: Find cities near colleges and universities

Now that you have the complete list of cities for the selected counties, you want to narrow
the list to just those cities that are close to a college or university.
Turn on Colleges & Universities.

In the Select By Location dialog box, create a query that reads:

"I want to select from currently selected features in Florida_Cities that are within a distance
of the features in Colleges & Universities. Apply a buffer of 10 miles." Click OK.
Open the attribute table for the Florida_Cities layer.

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Do not clear the selection. You will use these selected cities to create a new layer.

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Step 6: Create a layer from selected features
So that you do not have to repeat these queries or write down a list of cities. You are going
to save these cities as a new layer in your map document.
In the table of contents, right-click the Florida_Cities layer and choose Selection > Create
Layer from Selected Features.
A new layer named Florida_Cities selection displays in the table of contents.

Fundamentals of GIS Page 6 of 6

Prepared by NIIT GIS Limited (esri India) - 2014