The document discusses determining the optimal location for a new three-floor parking structure at the University at Buffalo. It analyzes four parking lots near main academic buildings based on distance to buildings, number of exits, temporal occupation, and cost. Google Earth and Sketchup are used to visualize integrating a parking structure model into each lot. Hochstetter lot is found to be optimal due to its shortest distance to buildings and having two exits. Building a parking structure here could help alleviate parking congestion by providing more 24-hour spaces close to classrooms. Limitations include lost data requiring redoing some analysis steps.

1. Devorn Cummings
Geo 479
5/16/2014
Professor Bian
Term paper
Introduction.
The University at buffalo is one of buffalo’s prominent establishments .Although it is a
university, UB is a promising source of income for any enterprise outside of the university. The
most recent estimates of UB's impact on the local and regional economies of Western New York
report approximately $1.7 billion are brought into the local economy from the presence of UB
.With an occupancy of 30,000 students the university at buffalo easily facilitates an operating
revenue of $680 million dollars per year. Providing to their students just enough where it is
unnecessary to venture outside of the university for anything because everything is provided for
you. The whole campus covers 1,192 acres with 146 buildings containing 6,715,492 square feet,
10 residence halls and 5 apartment complexes. Its immense size also necessitated the creation of
a shuttle system circling the academic sector and surrounding areas including the administrative
complex, located nearly a quarter mile from the central academic area. When originally built by
the state of New York, the North Campus was provided with two Interstate exits, from I-
290 and I-990, its own internal parkway, the John James Audubon Parkway, and two small lakes
created from Ellicott Creek. The University at buffalo as a whole is completely accommodative
but lacks one thing that would make university life and operations twice as efficient, a parking
garage. Everything that should be done has been done by the university at buffalo besides create
a parking structure that can accommodate the amount of people that are coming and going on a
day to day basis. It’s a surprising that such an idea hasn’t been implemented, a simple 3 floor

2. parking structure can accommodate three times as more vehicles that parking lots currently
provide for UB affiliates with a central focus on students.
Issue.
The majority of students at UB often have classes around the following academics
building on UB’s north campus around the following academic buildings Cooke, the Natural
Science Complex, Jacobs, Jarvis, and Capen. There are several parking lots surrounding these
buildings but often when students go to park in these lots they see signs that display faculty
parking only.
Objective.
With a consideration of factors taking into account 4 of the lots surrounding these
academic buildings I want to determine the best lot to build a 3 floor parking garage.
Literature Review.
The way I envisioned my project I wanted to start from scratch. Many articles that I
reviewed were only somewhat related to what I had in mind so I decided to break my literature
down in parts instead of giving it in its entirety to fully understand the process of planning and
implementation of this project. Similar works were done by determining optimal location,

3. stressing the importance of location because my focus is on a concentrated area finding the
optimal location in that area. For this project I decided to use two programs Google Earth and
Google Sketchup. Having a hands on experience with both software’s I decided these two
programs would be most beneficial in completing 99% of the task at hand. Google earth is an
interactive, virtual globe that enables you to find and explore just about any location on our
planet and beyond. You can trace and measure just about any place on the planet with the use of
many tools such as ruler, polygon, path, measurements, elevation profile and more .With Google
Earth’s virtual globe, you can label any location and create tours from your place marks, import a
variety of geographic data and integrate it into a 3D map. Google Earth also provides KMLs and
KMZs downloads from the Earth Gallery, view vector and raster data, import GPX tracks, and
also create tracks. The Google earth website provides this information and detailed videos in
handling each of Earths functions and capabilities.
(Functions Google earth provides)

4. Google Sketchup provides similar features with a 3D twist where in its 3D warehouse you can
integrate any 3D model on any landscape. You can use Sketchup to explore design ideas and
experiment with 3D. Sketchup can draw, modify, measure, rotate, scale, and move geometry.
You can draw your home or famous buildings, use it for projects at home or school, or create
many things. You can share your models with others via the 3D Warehouse. And if your model
has a location you can also view it in Google Earth. Combined with the function of realistic
three-dimensional modeling for buildings of Sketchup, and taking Southwest Jiaotong University
as an example, the realistic three-dimensional model of campus is built up based on the platform
of Google Earth, and the application of the modeling is analyzed. The way to build the model
can realize the accurate overlay between terrain data and three-dimensional models of buildings,
solve the problems of data acquisition and fusion, and provide solution schemes with reference
significance in the construction of virtual environment. (YU Bing, XU Zhu, LIU Guoxiang,2010)
Bing, Zhu, and Guo-xiang displays methods of three-dimensional modeling of a campus, based
on Google earth and its applications which makes my use of both programs more suitable for
determining an optimal location for a parking structure. Not only am I modeling and integrating
a 3D structure on the university’s north campus but also solving and creating solutions that may
be problematic for the university, also tackling problems that may occur in regards to regulation,
elevation and more because the actual lot can be simulated by introducing cars .people, and other
attributes that can be modeled. What I want to do is more than feasible ,considering optimal
location for any facility is not extremely difficult but can run into a few “deterministic
problems”( Owen, Hesse, and Daskin 1998) . Also noted by Owen, Hesse, and Daskin one
important way to measure the effectiveness of a facility location is by determining the average
distance traveled by those who visit it, which is why to a student, distance may become the most

5. important factor determining optimal location for a parking structure. Owen, Hesse, and Daskin
claim the problem in using distance, demand, and travel time as a determining factor is, all inputs
are taken as known quantities and outputs are specified as one-time decision values. While those
problems can provide planners with insight about general location selection, they are not able to
adequately model the uncertainties inherent in making real-world strategic decisions. Which I
agree in the sense because the goal is if you have a parking structure the choice of parking there
over any lot will always be a student’s decision, regardless if it may be further in proximity or
closer it saves time, which in regards to real world decisions is a real world decision for
university at buffalo students . Tucker Reddingtons not being able to park and having to hike on
a broken leg from the student union to alumni hall in result of not having efficient parking is a
real world decision .(john kobler, 1999). Which is in the developing of my solution there are no
deterministic problems.
Study area.
My concentration is the four lots that surround the main academic buildings Cooke, The
Natural Science Complex, Jacobs, Jarvis and Capen, the lots surrounding these buildings are the
Hochstetter lots which are located directly in front of Capen which out of the four are the largest.
Following Hochstetter there is the Cooke lot which is located directly outside of Cooke hall but
opposed to Hochstteter, Cooke is a single ample sized lot which can accommodate a generous
amount of vehicles. The other two lots are Jacobs located to the right of Capen if entering from
the flint entrance to the university and the Jarvis lots which is the furthest lot which can be seen
from the third floor of Capen. My data for implementing my project I obtained from 3 locations
the images of the 4 lots I got from Google Earth and the model or parking structure I got from

6. Google sketch up and the faculty, Staff ,and student information I got from the university at
buffalos parking and transportation services.
I decided to consider four factors two which are empirical factors that I thought would be most
influential in having the best results determining an optimal location for the new parking
structure and two logistical factors which are as follows, first I considered the first logistical
factor that being the Distance to Academic buildings measuring from the center how far each lot
is from the center of the main academic buildings. Second, the second factor being the Ideal lot
in terms of exits for emergencies because most lots only have one exit where vehicles enter and
exit simultaneously, which in event of a disaster can become a major issue. The remaining two
factors were my empirical factors, the third factor being money, not in a sense of how much
money will be spent to build this or these garages if the idea gets picked up these garages but
how much money can be saved because they are lots that can be paid daily, by the semester,
yearly and there are also paid meter parking throughout the campus. My last factor I considered
which I find to be the most important factor is temporal (lot occupation) because most lots
specifically faculty/staff lots are only to be used by faculty and staff from 7a.m to 3p.m which
can become problematic because they are 30,000 students at the university at buffalo and the

7. majority has class between these hours. Which will become a dissolved issue because the
parking structure that would be created would be 24 hours.
Methodology.
Since I’m determining an optimal location for a new University at buffalo parking
structure there’s was a certain way I wanted to go about implanting my project but very simple
obtaining images, so I can see the areas from an aerial perspective, finding a model that is
feasible in being built with a maximum of 3 floors and will now inconvenience the university’s
infrastructure and bring the models and images of lots to display a potential outlook of the
garage.
Preprocess.
i. Obtain images of the four lots from Google earth.
ii. Import images into Google Sketchup.
iii. Locate and modify parking structure (model).
iv. Integrate models on each lot
v. Measure distance from center of lots to center of main academic buildings
vi. Locate all exits

8. (Obtained images from Google).
Process.
To obtain the images from Google earth there were two ways that this could have
been implemented, to begin this part of this process I searched the University At Buffalo
in Google Earth and specified each area I wanted to look at, for example to obtain the
image of Hochstetter I would specify Capen hall to get a full aerial view of the area. The
remaining lots Cooke, Jacobs, and Jarvis, by simply using the navigation tool in Google
earth, I was able to capture those aerial views and save each location by placing a place
mark on each location. From this point you can use the snipping tool located in the
accessories folder of any windows 7 computer and crop the image or the method I decide
to use which is already provided as an option in Google earth. In the file menu you
navigate to save, select save image, and save it to a directory until I am ready to use the
image. Then this step is repeated for each lot and at this point I have images of each
potential lot I want to work with in determining an optimal location for a new university
parking structure.

9. (save image function)
The following step was importing the images into Google Sketchup which can be done
by two functions of Google Skecthup from the drop file down menu you can either add
the images obtained from Google earth by the import feature or by navigating to the geo-
location feature and select add a location I decided to use both import features for my
project the output is identical. The image will be loaded onto a 3D plane as a 2D image.

10. (Add a location feature)
The following steps three and four has to be implemented following the first step before the other
2D images of the lots are imported. After the first step, the following step would be to locate and
modify the parking structure (model). The parking structure I found in Google Sketchups 3D
warehouse where all the models are located, in the search I typed in parking structures and I
found a 3 floor model much like one I had envisioned, and the model is downloadable and can be
loaded directly into your Sketchup workspace. When the model is loaded into Sketchup, it’s
relatively small and has to be modified to cover the same amount of space that the lot occupies.
Underneath the file menu there are tools that are provided for modification of the Sketchup
model using the functions such as rotate, move, and offset in preparation for step four integrating
the model.
(Sketchup tools)

11. The final step is to integrate the parking structure model with the lot by placing the 3D structure
onto the 2D image of the obtained lot images. After implementing each of the four steps the
output will look like the image below which is of Hochstetter.
For the following 3 lots steps one through four would be repeated to get a complete visual how
all four areas would look if a 3 floor parking structure was to replace the lot. Which results in the
following images.

12. For step five Google earth provides a distance tool similar to measuring features of Arc G.I.S.
The ruler tool measures the distances between points, so by finding the midpoint of each lot I
placed a place mark marking the center of each lot and naming each place mark center. By using
the add a point feature function , I created a point to point buffer zone and with the ruler function
found the midpoint by using the end points of the buffer zone finding the center of the main
academic buildings. When all centroids were found I measured the distance from each lots center

13. to the center of the main academic buildings finding out each lots proximity to the academic
buildings.
(Implementation of measuring tool in Google Earth)
(Lots centersand lot distancesto the main academic buildings)
For step six locating each exit of the four lots was very straight forward, on each lots exit I
created an elevated polygon adding a fire style place mark, denoting these are your exits in case
of fires or hazards.

14. (ElevatedfeaturesdisplayedinGoogle earth showingall available exitsin eventofhazards)
After finding each exit I saved my Google earth workspace as a jpeg and loaded it into Arc G.I.S
since the image was obtained from Google earth the coordinate system was sustained, so in the
following sub step when I added a point feature I selected the same system and added a point
feature to each exit .Using the drawing tool I created little circle graphics around the point
features and named each graphic exit .Using the feature class to shapefile operation I made my
image and the point features into a shapefile. Using the selection feature I first used the select by
graphics operation followed by the select by location feature to select all exits.

15. Results and Discussion.
Lot Name Distance from the
centerof lot to center
Of the main academic
buildings(feet)
Name oflot Distance
from leastto greatest
Numeratedlot distance Numberof Exits
from leastto greatest
(1-4)
Hochstetter 943 Jarvis 1 2
Cooke 1428 Hochstetter 2 1
Jarvis 854 Jacobs 3 2
Jacobs 1122 Cooke 4 1
My results in terms of exits were dead even two of the four lots having two exits and the
remainder having one exit which eliminates both Cooke and Jacobs considering in event of a
hazard said lots wouldn’t be an optimal location for building a parking structure . Which leaves
lots Hochstetter and Jarvis both lots having 2 exits, which leaves the factor of distance.
Hochstetter having the shortest distance in feet to the main academic buildings. With having the

16. shortest distance and optimal number of exits, Hochstetter would be the best location for
building a three floor parking structure.
Observations.
I assumed hochstetter would be the best location to create a University at buffalo parking
structure because it’s the lot directly in front of Capen hall, often times people mistakes its name
Hochstetter lot for Capen lot. In the morning between the hours of 7 a.m. and 3 p.m. Hochstetter
has a high volume of traffic, nonstop students and faculty going in and out spending over a half
hour circling round and around looking for a parking space for a 50 minute class. Hochstetter a
huge has carrying capacity for vehicles but when multiplied by 3 it’s a swift route for clearing up
early morning congestion in results of no available parking. Students will no longer have to
worry about leaving their homes at a much earlier time, nor wait until after 3 p.m. to utilize
faculty lots with the lot being 24hrs.
Conclusion and limitations.
A few aspects I would have liked to be in my favor was recovering the amount of lost
data having to start steps five and six of my methodology over from scratch implementing my
factors from a different angle because the allotted time frame wouldn’t allow me to regain my
data. For future work I would want to redo my distance and lot exit factors with my original data
or better data. Even when trying to obtain my original data its difficult because you can’t get data
for the lots and specifics points so it’s a lot of tedious self-modification that has to be
implemented in this project. Not having a significant source of literature was also a limitation
because I was forced to break my project down into 4 parts of different literature which when
piece together captures my project in its entirety. However the issue of this project was due to the

17. insufficient use of lot space that couldn’t be used by students, limited student’s flexibility in
regards to their time. So the objective was to take 4 lots surrounding the main academic
buildings and out of the four choose the best lot to build a 3 floor structure to better
accommodate the general body of the university. Using determining factors such as distance, the
shortest distance being most optimal and the most exits being most optimal in regards to safety,
money the university having enough of it and temporal lot occupation, UB can consider building
a Hochstetter garage to sustain a better campus experience.

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