The document summarizes a student project analyzing the contents of the Ivany Report, which outlines Nova Scotia's declining economy, geographically using GIS. The project included 3D population analysis showing population changes, a wind energy suitability analysis to identify potential wind farm sites, an HTML image map of tourism attractions, an ArcGIS Online web map of current and potential trade partners, and a website to bring the components together. The goal was to represent topics from the report geographically to help others understand the economic issues.

1. From Report to Geographic
Study: Displaying the Contents
of “The Ivany Report”
Geographically
By: Naomie Robert
Advanced GIS Concentration

2. Presentation Outline
• Project Background
• Work Plan
• Now or Never: An Urgent Call to Action for Nova Scotians
• 3D Population Analysis
• Wind Energy Raster GRID Analysis
• Tourism HTML Image Map
• Trade Analysis ArcGIS Online Web Mapping Application
• Bringing It All Together
• Website Demo

3. Project Background
• Came across article “How the Maritimes became Canada’s incredible
shrinking region” (Globe and Mail)
• Discusses a report by the Nova Scotia Commission on Building Our
New Economy
• Summarizes the current and future state of the economy
• Decided to delve deeper into the actual report to determine project
ideas
• As GIS professionals, I believe it is important for us to find ways to
represent topics geographically when we can, especially when it could
help others to better understand an issue at hand

4. Work Plan
• Utilized the Smartsheet Project Planning Application
• Kept up to date, revising as needed
• Checked off items as they were completed
• Shared with Dave MacLean

5. Work Plan

6. Work Plan

7. Now or Never: An Urgent Call to Action for
Nova Scotians
• Written by the Nova Scotia Commission on Building Our New
Economy
• Chaired by Ray Ivany, President of Acadia University
• Often referred to as “The Ivany Report”
• Outlines current and future economic status, and how things could
change if certain steps were taken
• Key problem identified was declining, aging population
• Discusses the importance of creating jobs that will maintain and
attract a younger population

8. Now or Never: An Urgent Call to Action for
Nova Scotians
• Report suggests many areas to create employment
• This project focuses on:
• Renewable Energy
• Tourism
• Exports and World Trade

9. Population
• The declining (and aging) population is a main contributing factor to
the declining economy
• Completed a 3 dimensional analysis to show the change in population
• Retrieved province feature class from the COGS sde drive, and
dissolved the feature by county name
• Downloaded population data from Statistics Canada into a csv file
• Was able to get data from 2006 and 2011 census

10. Population
• Cleaned up csv to only include
necessary data and joined table to
feature class
• Duplicated feature class, and altered
attribute tables so that one only
showed increased percent changes
and another only showed decreased
percent changes
• Brought data into ArcScene and used
following equation to set extrusion
value: [PopPercentChange]*2000

11. Population

12. Population

13. Renewable Energy
• According to the Energy Nova Scotia Renewable Electricity Plan, it is
likely that most renewable energy will come from wind
• For this project, a raster GRID analysis was completed to determine
the most suitable locations for wind farms

14. • Research concluded that the following factors should be considered:
• Sites should have enough wind
• Sites should take advantage of hills (higher altitudes)
• Sites should consider nearby obstructions
• Sites should be at least 100 feet away from buildings
• Coastal sites are usually best
Renewable Energy

15. • To complete this analysis, data was extracted/downloaded from the
following locations:
• Nova Scotia coast, buildings and water features were extracted
from the COGS sde server
• Land coverage and DEM data were downloaded from Geogratis
• Wind data was downloaded from the NS Wind Atlas (Geonova)
Renewable Energy

16. • Field added to land cover data, and cover types broken down into
more general categories
• Determined that vegetation, shrubland, grassland, and agricultural
land would be most ideal land coverages for a wind farm (minimal
obstructions)
• New feature class extracted with just those land types
• Feature to raster tool used to convert water, buildings, coastal, and
land coverage data to a raster format
Renewable Energy

17. • Water bodies were not
considered for the analysis,
so a mask was created from
the coastal data, and the
Nova Scotia water data
using the Con(IsNull) and
SetNull functions in the
Raster Calculator
• Applied in ArcMap’s
environment settings, along
with a cell size of 100 Mask used for analysis
Renewable Energy

18. • Con(IsNull) function was used to convert buildings and coastal rasters
to boolean values
• Expand function was used to create buffers around the buildings and
coast (100m for buildings, 500m for coastal areas)
• Remap tables were created for each raster:
Renewable Energy

19. • ReclassByASCIIFile function was used to reclassify each raster, and the
Con(IsNull) function was used to remove any null values
• Research deducted which factors were most important for
determining wind farm suitability
• Findings resulted in this weighted mean equation to determine the
best suitability model:
(( 3 * "%wind_suit2.img%") + ( 3 * "%build_suit.img%") + ( 2 *
"%lcover_suit2.img%") + ( 2 * "%elev_suit2.img%") + ( 1 *
"%coast_suit2.img%" ) ) / 11
Renewable Energy

20. Renewable Energy

21. Tourism
• Tourism industry is currently one of Nova Scotia’s top sources of
employment and income, particularly in rural areas
• Expanding this industry further would generate more jobs
• Decided to create an HTML image map website to highlight some of
the current major tourist attractions currently exist
• Used the Nova Scotia Top 25 Attractions website to determine which
tourism types to include, and conducted research to find out what
the main companies are for each type

22. Tourism
• A csv was created that included the sites, lat and long (derived from
Google Earth), and the website for the company
• The csv was then used to generate a points feature class in ArcMap

23. Tourism
• Adjusted symbology based on type of attraction
• Images were exported of different areas of the province where
clusters of attractions were
• Microsoft paint was used to determine x and y pixel values for each
point in each image
• HTML code was written to link each point to the company’s website

24. Tourism

25. Tourism

26. Trade Analysis
• Ivany Report states that an increase in world trade would be another
potential generator of increased employment
• An ArcGIS Online Web Mapping Application was created to display
current and potential world trade
• Focused on food and beverage exports
• According to “Global Opportunities for Nova Scotia’s Food Industries”
published by the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council, the province
saw a great deal of growth in the production of many food and
beverage products including apples, corn, seafood, and wine

27. Trade Analysis
• Research was completed to determine the current top importers of
Nova Scotian products, and to determine the current top importers of
apples, corn, seafood, and wine in general (not just from Nova Scotia)
• Data was compiled into a csv that was joined to a country feature
class that had been extracted from the COGS sde database
• Two separate mxd’s were created, one showing current importers,
and the second showing potential
• Mxd’s were then shared as feature services with ArcGIS Online

28. Trade Analysis
• A separate ArcGIS Online map was made with each feature service,
and appropriate symbology was set as well
• The two maps were then used to create a “slider” web mapping
application that effectively shows the differences between current
and potential Nova Scotian trade

29. Bringing It All Together
• Needed to find a way to bring together all of the “mini-projects”
completed
• Decided to create a project website
• Used skills learned in HTML
• Hosted with Google Drive

30. Website Demo
bit.ly/IvanyProject

31. Questions?

32. References
Energy Nova Scotia Renewable Electricity Plan retrieved from:
http://energy.novascotia.ca/sites/default/files/renewable-electricity-plan.pdf
Global Opportunities for Nova Scotia’s Food Industries retrieved from: https://apec-
econ.ca/publications/?search-form.year=&search-form.publication-type.id=&search-
form.keywords=Global+Opportunities&site.page.id=2000&do-search=1
How the Maritimes became Canada’s incredible shrinking region retrieved from:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/how-the-maritimes-became-canadas-
incredible-shrinking-region/article23554298/
Ivany Report retrieved from:
http://onens.ca/report/
Peggy’s Cove background retrieved from:
http://hdw.eweb4.com/out/99861.html
Wind Farm background retrieved from:
https://www.mitchelltech.edu/programs/on-campus/energy-production-
transmission/wind-turbine-technology