Street Finder/Feature Finder

1. By Blake Harvey Street Finder/Feature Finder

2. Street Finder • Searches for and selects streets in Alachua County based on name and type • Lets the user choose between streets of the same name by providing a list of available address ranges • Zooms to multiple and individual street selections

3. Feature Finder • “Features” are anything defined by the State of Florida DOR code for land use. They can be anything from homes, to farms, to factories, entertainment, etc. • Selects features of the user’s choosing within a user-defined distance of the selected street • Zooms to groups and individual features • Reports to user number of selected features within given distance of street

4. Data • Street layer is a TIGER/line file, which is used by the US Census Bureau. Obtained from Florida Geographic Data Library (www.fgdl.org) • Features layer was obtained from Dr. Grant Thrall, a professor in the Dept. of Geography

5. Use of Program/Methodology This button opens the userform via a UIControl This is where the initial street information is entered: Direction (NW, SW, etc), name, and type (ST, PL, AVE, etc) Drop down menus are populated with an IDataStatistics object that includes only unique values

6. Use of Program/Methodology Upon clicking “Find Street” a list of address ranges for matching streets is displayed in descending order • Uses a QueryFilter to only include address ranges for streets with matching criteria • Uses an ITableSort object to sort the lower end of the address ranges in descending order • Uses a Do While Loop to populate list • Uses an IEnvelope object to zoom in on selected streets – also does this with individual streets and features later on

7. Use of Program/Methodology How does the program know exactly which street the user chooses from the list? I assigned FID values to each item in a Dictionary object in the do while loop that populates the above list. Each item in the list and each Dictionary object have the same index number, so I can retrieve the identity of any street (based on this list) elsewhere in the program.

8. Use of Program/Methodology When the exact street is selected, this list is populated with feature categories. The user can choose one and enter a maximum distance from the street to choose features from. The program then selects those features. • Uses an IGeometry object and an ITopologicalOperator to create the buffer • Uses an ISpatialFilter to include only features intersecting the buffer and included in the chosen category

9. Use of Program/Methodology • Reset clears all features, list boxes, and input boxes • Hide Form replaces the large form with a much smaller one: • Quit clears all features and closes the program

10. Discussion • Limitations: The data is terrible! Most of the streets don’t have address ranges, and many of them don’t match up spatially with the parcel data. The parcel data doesn’t include accurate addresses • Future expansions: Make the street finder into a geocoding application. This would probably require better data, though.