Geographic Information Systems in Geography Bangor High School

1
Geographic Information Systems in
GeographyBangor High School

• Spring 2008
• Margaret Chernosky, Geography Teacher
• In partnership with Stacy Doore, GK-12 Sensors!
  Fellow, UM Spatial Engineering

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What is geography?

• The study of how humans use space.
• Geographers ask two fundamental questions Where?
  Why there?
• Our students are trained in Geographic Inquiry.
• Maps are the primary tools. GIS/GPS

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Geographic Inquiry, Big 6 and GIS.
Geographic Inquiry Big 6 GIS Project example
Ask geographic questions Where? Why there? 1.Task definition What is the spatial relationship between obesity and greenspaces?
Acquire geographic resources 2.Information seeking strategies 3.Location and access US Census Maine Office of GIS Created data
Explore geographic data 4.Use of information Compiled maps of greenspaces, income and buffers.
Analyze geographic information 5.Synthesis 6.Evaluation Results and conclusions
Act on geographic knowledge 6.Evaluation Share findings with City of Bangor and local heath agencies.
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Obesity vs Opportunity In Residential Bangor,
Maine

• Conclusion
• Five gyms and sixteen parks are located in
  residential Bangor.
• Most green spaces and gyms were located downtown
  and the few that were not were far apart and
  small.
• The bus routes provided transportation to the
  green spaces/gyms or stops within walking
  distance. However, bus routes do not reach into
  the more rural areas making gyms inaccessible for
  those not living downtown.
• Most of downtown was covered with parks, so those
  that live there were found to be at lower risk of
  obesity than those living farther out because of
  better accessibility to physical activity spaces.
• There was not a clear relationship between low
  income areas and risk of obesity based on
  distance from accessible physical activity spaces.

• Motivation
• Over the last few years the percentage of obese
  Americans has increased at a staggering rate.
• The Centers for Disease Control estimated that
  34 of U.S. adults and 17 of U.S. children are
  obese.
• The CDC estimates that 22 of adult citizens in
  Maine are obese.
• Citizens of Bangor may not be aware of walking
  spaces and recreational facilities that are
  readily available.

• Approach
• The first step taken was collecting and importing
  the necessary datasets.This included e-911 roads,
  bus routes, an aerial photograph, and the DRG map
  of Bangor.
• Next, data was collected on all fitness
  facilities in Bangor. The data was geocoded and
  added to the GIS as a point file.
• Public green spaces (parks, ball fields, etc.)
  were created by digitizing polygons to show their
  boundaries in geographic space.
• It was determined that a quarter of a mile would
  be a reasonable distance to expect a person to
  walk to reach a park. Buffer zones of a quarter
  mile were created around the green spaces which
  would identify areas of higher risk and lower
  risk based on distance from public green spaces
  and fitness facilities.
• A polygon file containing median household income
  at the census block level from the US Census
  Bureau was added to locate low income areas (gt1
  SD below mean).
• A clip was made from the buffer file to better
  illustrate the areas of the city that represented
  both high and low risk zones for obesity based on
  proximity to exercise facilities, green spaces,
  and low income neighborhoods.
• The BAT bus routes were added for further
  analysis of accessibility to the gyms and green
  spaces based on accessibility of public
  transportation.
• The last step was to coordinate colors on the
  visualization and create a layout.

• Goals
• The goal of the project was to increase
  awareness of where citizens could go for physical
  activity and also make recommendations where
  improvements to city services and facilities
  could be made to decrease obesity risk.
• The project also intends to show how the general
  public could utilize local transportation to get
  to these places.
• Another question investigated was the
  relationship between availability of these spaces
  and low income neighborhoods.

• Future Work
• The project itself provides possibilities of
  further investigation and shows what improvements
  can be made by the city.
• It also makes it clear where possible bus routes
  could go so that people would be able to reach
  these larger pastoral areas such as the Bangor
  City Forest.
• The visualization provides factual research which
  could be presented to the community so that they
  can become more knowledgeable of opportunities to
  get fit and live a healthier lifestyle
• Another study could be done relating the
  condition of city sidewalks to accessibility to
  parks or possible bike paths that could be added
  to road improvement plans.
• Bangor city planners might research what other
  cold weather cities have done to promote year
  round physical activity such as skating, cross
  country skiing and snow shoeing.

• Literature Review
• A recent study found that people are not willing
  to walk more than .25 miles to access a park.
• According to the CDC contributing factors to
  obesity are
• Eating too many calories not getting enough
  physical activity.
• Genes, metabolism, behavior, environment,
  culture, and socioeconomic status.
• Behavior and environment

• The CDC also recommends communities make effort
  to provide opportunities for physical activities
  for all age groups and abilities.

Katelyn Swanson Kim Stewart, Bangor High
School, June 2008
5
Predicting Maine Election Results Based on Voting
History from 1864 To 2008
Historical Trends A series of 35 simple
choropleth maps of county level election results
were created.and finished as layouts. These
visualizations were analyzed for historical
trends and spatial patterns both at the state and
the county levels.
Motivation The motivation behind the project is
driven by two factors. One of the motivating
factors was interest in politics generated by the
unusual presidential primary season. The other
factor was based upon interest in the predicting
election results using spatial analysis and
historical trend data .
Recent Election Results These two visualizations
(below) represent elections results in Maine
after 1990s as Maine has became a strong
Democrat state. The graph represents how Maine
voted by county over the past forty years.

The maps (left and right) were typical election
results in Maine before the 1900s because most of
the electorate were rural, white males.

• Goals/Questions
• There were several geographic questions and most
  were answered on completion of the project.
• Are there spatial patterns in Maines
  presidential election results and do these change
  over time?
• On a county level can you predict the outcome of
  an election by looking at past years voting and
  the spatial trends from those years?
• How have counties in Maine voted over the past
  150 years and based on this voting record?

In the 1992 Presidential Election, Bill Clinton
won as the Democratic candidate, however Ross
Perot had a good showing as the independent
candidate. Perot did well in Piscataquis,
Somerset and Waldo counties with the message
that he was trying to save Maine jobs. Perot was
the strongest independent candidate in U.S.
history.
In 1912, Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, won the
State of Maine and subsequently the United
States(left). He won because Teddy Roosevelt,
running as the Progressive candidate, took more
than half the Republican votes from William Taft.
Because of this split of the Republican vote,
Woodrow Wilson came out ahead.
The predictive map (right) shows Barrack Obama
(D) beating John McCain (R). This prediction is
based on recent election results by county. Most
Maine counties voted for John Kerry (D) in the
2004 election except for Piscataquis and
Washington counties. Barak Obama is a stronger
candidate than John Kerry so this study felt
Piscataquis would go to Barrack Obama but
Washington county would stick to its current
trend and remain with John McCain in 2008.
Literature Review The project used information
from many political coverage websites such as CNN
and Fox news. Information was also gathered from
the Census Bureau to provide any relevant
statistics on all the elections. Several articles
reviewed for this project provided a lot of
insight on how to polling organizations predict
election results. Finally, the State of Maine
website (www.maine.gov) was also consulted to
also give specific voting process information for
the state.
In 1936, during the Great Depression, Alf Landon,
a Republican, led in only two states, Maine and
Vermont. It is interesting to note that two
counties representing very different populations,
York and Washington, voting results bucked the
trend for the rest of the state.(left).
Approach ESRIs GIS software, ArcGis 9.2 was used
to create a geographic information system to
store and analyze data as well as visualize
results. Datasets for Maines presidential
election voting results were acquired through
several sources mentioned above and imported into
the gis. Shape files were imported to the gis
from Maine Office of GIS and joined to election
data to the pile of information.
Conclusion and Future Work It is difficult to
accurately predict an election by examining
previous spatial patterns of presidential
elections because the views of the people had
change over time such as how Maines voting has
changed to a predominantly Democrat state from a
historically Republican state . However more
research could be conducted at the voting
district level to provide greater detail in
voting trends at a smaller scale. This could
provide more detail needed to make better
predictions.
Maines total voting results to not show strong
spatial trends although York and Androscoggin
counties have voted for the Democratic
presidential candidate more consistently than the
rest of the state.
A. Nieuwenhuys and J. Klam, Bangor High School
6
Bangor Waterways
Are they in danger?

Motivation
Methods
Nathan Henigan, Bangor High School, June 2008
Environmentalists and big chain box stores
compete for control of open, green areas.
Understanding the needs a of both groups and the
protection of sensitive areas is critical for the
economic growth and environmental health of
Bangor. Penjajawoc Marsh and Birch Stream were
mapped using hillslope and land use data to help
predict areas at risk of pollution from
development.

• This project required the design of a geographic
  information system to analyze and present a
  variety of data sets about these areas of
  concern.
• Jpeg's of Birch Stream were georeferenced and
  turned into shape files
• Shape files were created for different landuse
  areas, such as high and low density, commercial,
  industrial, open space, institutional, and rural.
  
• Hillslope files were created from the converted
  shapefile conveyed a major theme of this project.
  The views of the hillslopes illustrate the scale
  of elevation changes along the stream showing in
  particular the highest areas or  areas that
  present the highest risk for pollutant runoff.
• With the information from the resulting
  visualizations and the knowledge of Birch Stream,
  a prediction can be made about the impact of
  development in the Penjajawoc Marsh area.

Approach and Results
Bangor Land Use and Development While this study
highlights streams at risk of pollution, the
water quality of Bangor waterways have improved
greatly over the past 20 years . Bangor citizens
have become more aware of the importance of
healthy waterways and have taken control of their
surroundings. Rules and regulations have been
established to guarantee a healthy Bangor
Comparison of Birch Stream and Penjajawoc
Marsh The two waterways differ greatly in slope
and land use. Birch Stream has a greater slope
risk, while Penjajawoc Marsh is more level and
therefore at less risk to runoff. However, they
both are surrounded by commercial areas and high
human activity. High Risk Areas Overall, the
stream running through Penjajawoc Marsh is not
high risk because the slope of its banks are not
steep, however there are surrounding areas within
the marsh at a greater risk. In the land use map,
most of the area is slated for commercial use,
creating a higher risk for those waterways and
tributaries within those zones. The small
tributary in the southwest corner of the map
crosses a high density use zone and meets a
commercial zone. Another tributary in the north
eastern hillslope map, while mostly located in a
rural zone, begins at the edge of a commercial
zone and its slope becomes increasingly steep as
it flows into an industrial zone.
Goals/Questions

• The goal for this research is to gain further
  knowledge of urban streams and the stresses put
  on them by human activity. Predictions might be
  made for future areas of concern in the
  Penjajawoc Marsh.
• Research Questions include
• How are the landscapes of Birch Stream and
  Penjajawoc Marsh similar and how do they differ?
• What are the greatest risk areas in terms of
  heavy development to the health of Penjajawoc
  Marsh?

Conclusion
With increased attention, these sensitive
environments will be able to be maintained at
healthy levels. Maine markets its
pristine environment as its greatest resource and
it should continue to uphold that goal through
research and protection despite the promise of
economical returns from large scale retail or
industrial development
Literature Review
Major contributions to the project were the
articles written by John Peckenham, assistant
director of the Mitchell Water Research Institute
at the University of Maine. The study concluded
that the health of the Birch stream was extremely
compromised by artificial sources. The airport
was a major contributor along with the
construction of the airport mall, which
subsequently was built right over the stream.

Future Work
Future work should be considered on Birch Stream
and Penjajawoc Marsh. High School students should
go to these waterways, taking samples and
surveying the water and water quality of the
Bangor Area.
7
Roads and Animal Habitats Collide While Trying to
Boost Maines Economy East-West Toll Road
Proposal and Impacts

• Conclusion
• The study focused on two main areas of risk.
• Concerns in Area I
• large amounts of moose
• and deer collisions
• damage to State of Maine conservation areas
• Concerns in Area II
• deer wintering areas
• (i.e. collisions)
• eagle habitats
• water pollution from
• runoff
• Ways to minimize negative
• impacts in both Area I II
• build underground tunnels for animals to go
  across the road safely
• dont use salt
• channel the runoff to a sewage area.
• After observing the possible impact, it is clear
  that the new road expansion would harm the
  environment in these areas. The question is, are
  the potential economic benefits worth the
  potential negative impact on the environment.

Motivation The project is a study of Maines
proposed four lane East-West Toll Road and its
possible effects on the habitats along the route.
Protecting habitats and the state of Maines
natural beauty was our motivation for this
project. Another motivation for the project was
the controversy caused by the reactions to the
proposed route.
N. Frost and D.Bullard, Bangor High School, June
2008
Approach and Results
Inside the study area possible risks and impacts
were observed. These were labeled by red lines
to show areas of concern. After creating one map
of the study area, the areas were divided into
two separate maps. This made it easier to
identify problems in the study areas.
The research was started by loading large amounts
of data into ESRIs ArcMap to create a geographic
information systems. The next step was to create
a line file that would follow the proposed route.
After this data files of habitats and
environments were chosen specific to the selected
study area.
Proposed Route for East-West Highway

• Goals/Questions
• How would the expansion of the existing road into
  a four lane highway impact or potentially harm
  sensitive wildlife areas?
• What can be done to make the proposed route
  design more responsive to the environment and
  minimize the impact to identified sensitive
  wildlife areas?

The area chosen for in-depth study is located in
Western Maine. This area was chosen because of
the residents concerns about the environment.
The study area consisted of the stretch of road
between Stratton and Corburn Gore.
Literature Review Several articles used for
background research on this project discussed the
problems caused by air pollution emitted from
cars or provided information about how a
population increase that is often the result of
road expansion presents new strains on the
environment.
Sources Dept. of Transportation Beginning With
Habitat MEOGIS
Future Work Possible future work can be done on
other sections of the road such as a section in
Eastern Maine.
8
Services Along the Bangor Harbor Boat Dock Area
S. Comstock S. Robertson, Bangor High School,
June 2008
Approach To begin this project, a
number of files had to be located and imported.
Vector files containing information on boat
launches in the State of Maine, regional streams,
Bangor and Brewer e-911 road files were all
obtained from Maine Office of GIS. An Excel
spread-sheet was created containing information
on restaurants, entertainment venues, places of
interest, and relevant businesses in Bangor and
Brewer that are located within 3/4 of a mile of
the waterfront along with their street address,
business category, telephone number, and type.
Once the Excel file was completed, it was
converted into a .dbf file and imported into the
GIS. The features of this file
were geocoded to create a new file containing
point locations for each business service along
the waterfront. Finally, a series of concentric
buffers were added at .25 increments to show how
far business and services are located from the
Bangor dock facilities.
Motivation The purpose of this project was to
gather information on nearby facilities and
convenience services along the Bangor Waterfront.
The geographic information system (GIS) created
for this project will be used to create maps and
layouts for the City of Bangor Harbor Committee
in order to attract recreational sailors and
tourists to the Bangor Harbor. At the present
time, there is no central source of information
for planning to sail up the Penobscot River and
dock their boat at the Bangor Waterfront. The
project synthesizes this information so the
public can easily locate services they need while
in town. It also highlights how accessible the
Bangor Waterfront is to visiting boaters, and
how it offers as many interesting features and
advantages as other more well known Maine
harbors.
Future Work This project is still in its
preliminary stage and the City of Bangor Harbor
Committee could greatly benefit from this work if
they can provide more information on specifically
on what is needed to attract more recreational
sailing tourists.
9
Residential Burglary Analysis Bangor, ME
2003-2006 Z.Zoroya A.Sullivan, Bangor High
School, June 2008
Motivation This project hopes to help the
community and the Bangor Police Department keep
burglaries to a minimum. The city of Bangor is
growing into a better place to live and a
decrease in crime would help more people to
locate their businesses and homes here. This
research could also help people living in areas
of high risk for burglaries to be more informed
and put it better security measures to stop
their house from being robbed.

• Conclusion
• This preliminary study has shown
• The number of burglaries has decreased since 2004
  and the Westside of Bangor has more burglaries
  than the Eastside.
• Burglaries appear to be more dense occurring in
  areas of low income.
• In 2003, the robberies were in small dense areas
  only about a block in size. This means there were
  many robberies the same areas on the Eastside of
  the city that year.

Goal of Research The goal of this research study
was to find which side of down-town Bangor had
more burglaries, the Eastside or Westside. Next,
the study examined the data for all available
years (2003-2006) separately to find if burglary
crime is increasing or if burglary trends are
constant through-out the years. Finally, this
study identified areas of high risk for burglary
crime and compared that median household income
data.
Approach The project started by creating a GIS
for the study and importing a e911 road file
representing a road map of Bangor from the Maine
Office of GIS. Two polygon shape files were then
digitized to divide Eastside and Westside of
downtown Bangor. This area boundary is an
informal division of the city that often serves
as a basis for school assignments, voting
districts and youth sports teams. Next, a file
obtained from the Bangor Police Department with
the addresses of all the burglaries in Bangor
during the years 2003-2006 was added into the GIS
and geocoded. This dataset contained information
regarding what type of burglaries occurred,
either residential or business. The file was
separated into two separate point files based on
residential or business burglaries. An
intersection of the burglary point files and east
and west sections of the city was created to
determine number of burglaries by type in each of
the areas of research. An intersection allows for
only the points inside the created polygons to be
displayed. Kernel density layers were created and
added to the GIS for both East and West sides by
burglary type (residential or business). A Kernel
density analysis is a smoothing function that
gives the viewer a sense of the intensity of the
number of occurrences in a single geographic
location. This is necessary because the points by
themselves mean nothing because there can be many
points layered directly on top of one another.
The resulting maps showed that overall the
Westside had more burglaries then the
Eastside. Then a time series analysis was
conducted for each year of study for both
residential or business burglaries (East and West
sides). Kernel density layers were made for every
year. A polygon file showing census block level
median household income data from the U.S. census
Bureau (Census 2000) was added to see if there
were connections between levels of income and the
density of the burglaries in that census block
area. The areas with the lowest income in the
central part of Bangor were located in the middle
of downtown near the river. A spatial pattern was
found illustrating a possible connection between
areas of high occurrence of burglaries and low
income areas as shown by the visualizations.
Future Work This research could be continued and
expanded in many different ways. For example, it
would be interesting to see if these trends
continue in 2007 and 2008. It also might be
helpful to add in other factors that could
increase motivation for people to steal.
Information on incidence of drug use arrests,
known drug dealing locations, and how drugs move
around the city might also benefit this study and
help provide new information on the connections
between drug use and burglaries in Bangor
Literature Review According to one of the
articles used for research even groups of small
police departments are pooling their money with
surrounding small towns to purchase a GIS
technology. They are creating GIS management
sections in their precincts to help find
geospatial and geotemporal patterns for crimes
such as burglaries. GIS software programs, such
as the kind that make these maps, have led to
dramatic decreases in the amount of crime in some
areas up to 60. It also allows law enforcement
administrators to provide their officers with
detailed reports on specific spatial and temporal
trends.
10
The Effects of Sea Level Rise in the Penobscot
Bay Area
MOTIVATION
LITERATURE REVIEW
One of the major reasons why someone would
decide to study the potential sea level rise is
in Penobscot Bay is to warn the public about what
could happen in the future. Not many maps have
been made on sea level rise in the state of Maine
because it is not seen as a major concern or that
the environmental impact would be small. Another
motivation for this research is to get people in
the region to think about how much they
contribute to global warming. If humans dont
decrease the amount of greenhouse gases they are
putting into the atmosphere, eventually the
results will be disastrous. If this research can
inform Maines public and get them thinking about
their ecological footprint- that would be a
success.
For this particular project, minimal research on
data was needed for background information. The
only information that needed to be located was
the data on how sea level will change when
specific glacial formations melt. Two main
sources were used in this project, Maine Coast
Could Be Devastated by Global Warming, and Sea
Level and Climate. The first source, Sea Level
and Climate (Poore, 2000), discussed how sea
levels have risen in the past and how it could
rise in the future. It also discussed glacial and
inter glacial cycles and potential sea level
changes giving the reader specific measurements
on how high sea level would rise if certain
glacial formations melted. The source entitled,
Maine Coast Could Be Devastated by Global Warming
(2008), written by the National Resource Councils
of Maine provided information on how nature would
be affected by a small sea level rise. These
sources emphasize the impact of sea level rise
and how it would effect the populations and the
environment around the globe. They also discuss
historical changes in sea level rise which allows
predictions of realistic changes that could
happen in the future. An additional source,
Maines History of Sea-Level Changes (Kelley,
Dickson Belknap, 2005) provided predictions of
future sea-level change that are often based on
historical sea level changes. This article states
that depending on the rate of input of carbon
dioxide, global climate models predicted a sea
level change in the range from a low of 0.5 m
(1.6 ft) to a high of 3.5 m (11.5 ft) above
present by the year 2100. Most scientists now
accept the lower to middle-lower range
predictions, but this is still more than double
the historic trend shown by tide gauges which
are showing far more rapid rate of sea level rise
than those of the past 1000-2000 years.
GOAL/QUESTIONS

• The main goal of this project is to make a
  powerful geographic information system capable of
  creating maps that are informative to the public
  about possible future sea level rise in the
  Penobscot Bay area.
• The primary geographic questions for this
  research are
• What is the present coastline elevation in the
  Penobscot Bay area?
• How would a potential 40ft and 240ft sea level
  rise effect the current coastline boundaries?

APPROACH
The following files needed to be collected for
this project medoqs, contours, e911rds, and
index24. Using the index24 file, the area that
was studied was determined. Articles were found
and read through to find important sea level rise
data for the analysis. All of the data was
downloaded off the internet from the Maine Office
of GIS database. To get the proper coastlines for
the elevated sea level coastlines, the
appropriate contour lines had to be selected and
made into a new layer file. The details or insets
were chosen because they are areas of interest
due to the size of the population that would be
impacted, and the scarcity of habitable that
would be left after a 240ft sea level rise. When
looking at the 40ft sea level rise (second map,
bottom row), the change in the coastline is not
catastrophic, but it is certainly noticeable. A
few peninsulas in the Searsport region were
turned into islands, but in general not that many
people would be affected. In Castine, some of the
beaches would be under water and two new islands
would be created. In the greater Bangor area, a
lot of the downtown area would be submerged, and
it would be difficult to cross the bridges into
Brewer. A 240ft rise (third map, bottom row)
would leave Verona Island and the greater Bangor
area mostly under water. Only islands would be
left in Bangor-Brewer area after a 240ft rise,
one near the airport, and one near the Bangor
High School.
CONCLUSION

• In conclusion, this research predicts what would
  happen in the Penobscot Bay region if sea level
  rose (40ft and 240ft) as a result of global
  warming.
• A 40ft sea level rise wouldnt be catastrophic to
  the region, but it would still substantially
  impact some lowland coastal areas in the opening
  of the bay.
• A 240ft sea level rise would create tremendous
  devastation across the globe, but especially in
  the Penobscot Bay region. Verona Island and the
  greater Bangor area would be mostly under water.
  Only two small islands would be left of the
  Bangor-Brewer area, one near the airport, and the
  other near Bangor High School.
• This research shows the huge consequences of this
  potential disaster if glacial ice continues to
  melt across the world.

By Alexander Addison Cyr, Bangor High School,
June 2008
11
Child Care Accessibility for Low Income Bangor,
Maine
Is there more that can be done?
Sara Edwards Hilary Reeder, Bangor High
School, June 2008
Motivation
Approach
Facilities
For those who live in poverty, life is no cake
walk. Many working parents of children work hours
on end to support their families. In Maine, a
single parent working at a minimum wage job might
earn an annual salary of 19,533 and would be
living below the poverty level. Subsidized
daycare can help for those who need care for
their children. This study looks at the number
and locations of MDHHS licensed daycare
facilities in Bangor. While this project does not
consider the quality of daycare facilities in the
Bangor area, it does address the accessibility of
MDHHS licensed daycare facilities for low income
families.
A geographic information system (GIS) was built
to store and analyze the data for this project.
First, the areas of poverty were identified and
mapped out, using income files from the US Census
Bureau (Census 2000). Next, all the licensed
daycare facilities in Bangor were collected from
an online database on the Maine Department of
Human Health and Services website. The new file
created contained information on the name of the
facilities, the address, the license type, and
the number of children served. This file was used
to geocode the locations of the facilities
creating a new point file which was then imported
into the GIS. Finally, the BAT bus routes were
imported and added as a line file.
There were 69 MDHHS licensed facilities listed on
the website.
Most of the facilities (16) were licensed to care
for 6-50 children. The largest facilities in
Bangor are the Bangor YMCA/YWCA daycare and the
Little Angels Daycare programs serving between
100-250 children.
Little Angels Daycare
Bangor YWCA
Conclusions

• This study found that in Bangor
• The majority of daycare facilities are not
  located within the low income areas but instead
  are predominantly located within middle or high
  income areas of the city.
• Many existing bus routes reach a wide variety of
  daycare facilities in Bangor. However, more can
  be done with restructuring the bus routes to make
  it easier on the parents having to travel outside
  of the central downtown area with small children.

Goals/Questions

• How many licensed daycare facilities are there in
  the Bangor area and where are they located?
• Are there enough licensed daycare facilities
  located in low income areas to provide adequate
  choices and service options to low income
  families?
• Are there licensed daycare facilities located
  along routes of public transportation so that
  families without personal transportation can
  access them?

When all of the data collection was complete, it
was apparent that there were several areas in the
downtown section of Bangor and one area near the
airport that fell into the low income group and a
number of others throughout Bangor that fell
within the low to middle income group. Very few
existing daycare facilities fell within low
income areas but a large number of the facilities
were located within the low to middle income
areas. Existing bus routes were not running as
close to many daycare facilities as might be
helpful to working parents without personal
transportation. This problem could be addressed
with the simple change of a few bus routes.
Graph of Bangor Median Household Income
Distribution by Census Block shows a normal
distribution of income in the city Mean
32,000 Range 11,000-85,000
Data Sources
Future Work
Regular use of GIS technology and simple spatial
analysis techniques can to help city leaders and
social service agencies better assist those in
need. Spatial patterns are not always obvious,
maps can help ask better questions and find
better solutions.
Median Household Income (Census 2000) MDHHS
Licensed Childcare Facilities Bangor Area
Transportation (BAT) routes
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Time to show off!
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Next year? Where? Why there?

• Teen motorcycle crashes, Dept of Transportation
  (community partner)
• Bangor Historic Waterfront, Harbour Committee
• School bus routes, Bangor City Schools
• Maine Votes, Election 2008
• Latin American Demography, Maine Geographic
  Alliance, Bangor Daily News
• Your requests

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• Thank you for your faithful support of
  geographic literacy.