Data_collection

In general, most of the data are obtained from both 355-Data and GIS Data folders under S:// drive.

1. Population Density

The first procedure is to collect data from 355-Data folder, under the subdivided folders as Data, gvrd, 1996, data, ct. There are many files, in which all data from census tracts, such as population, population and martial status, are stored in 15 tables. Table 1 is used as it is related to population density.

2. Income by Activity

The income data is extracted in the same format as Population Density but only one thing is different while the table 1 is changed to table 13. Income data can be obtained in the same way as getting data on population density. Table 13 is the one with income information.

3. Competitors

Although no large-scale casino is located in GVRD, small-scale casinos can be found in 19 different locations in Vancouver, Richmond, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Burnaby and Surrey. Competition is a major issue in my casino business. Moreover, the government may not permit the opening of a casino if it affects the revenues of existing small-scale casinos. Therefore, I find all the exact locations of these small-scale casinos from website at http://www2.mybc.com/home_page.html and then use their postal codes to restrict these areas for my casino location.

4. Hotels

Locating my casino in proximity to the major and high class hotels should bring a considerable amount of tourists to the casino. Also, casino analysts, who wrote a proposal for building a new casino in Vancouver, projected that at least 25000 tourists would visit the casino in a day so the casino might help to bring additional revenue to the hotels during the slow winter months. In light of this, I selected the 30 most famous hotels in GVRD, which most of them are more than three star classes, then I collect their addresses and postal codes from the website at http://www2.mybc.com/home_page.html . By applying their postal codes in ArcView program, the locations of hotels will pop up on the GVRD map, which is needed to convert these vector data to raster data later on.

5. Landuse

One important thing to be considered is the distances of the residential areas, school zones, parks and so on. In the GEOG 355 folder in the S:// drive, there is one folder called "gen". I click into "landuse" that displays all features such as residential single family, commerical, industrial and so on, in the IDRISI program.

6. Major Roads

Accessibility to major roads is one of the primarily considerations for opening a new business because being close to major roads offer several benefits to my casino business, such as increasd visibility and better transportation for gamblers. The data of the major roads stored in "gen" folder under "gvrd" folder is in raster format and can be opened in IDRISI.

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