Information and Knowledge Management using ArcGIS ModelBuilder

João Agrela et al.
Faced with the massive amount of information currently at our disposition, a planner finds that it is
crucial to analyze and filter it, in a way after which only the significant information remains, i.e., the
one that suits the most to the project goal and available technology, applying the adequate treatment
and analysis methods, regarding its advantages and disadvantages and the degree of influence on
the project.
In this process, where the georeferencing distinguishes the spatial data from the statistical data, GIS
tools acquire a crucial part through its capability of managing, producing and analyzing spatial data,
providing different solutions according to the different scenarios, existing or foreseen to the future.
After the announcement of this data manipulation capabilities in the 1970’s (MATOS, 2008) with the
surge of quantitative geography (since the 1990’s), GIS (Geographic Information Systems) enabled
the evolution of that data manipulation to the current level of geographic modeling.
After collecting, editing and validating data, spatial analysis allows the assessment of relations, and
patterns between them, and of those with the surrounding space, giving the information an
operational value in geographic modeling to support decision making. Being in reality a generalization
tool, a model always starts from a hypothesis, which is not unresponsive to the project purpose, or to
the influence of the human factor which defines the inputs and the operations that generate the
outputs of each model. Therefore, considering an evaluation one wants multivariate, modeling allies
spatial and temporal analysis of the territory, in an effort to assist the creation and/or adequacy of
planning policies, supporting the decision making process.
In the Emmanuel Kant perspective (English empirical perspective from the late 18 th century, in
MATOS, 2008, p.14), everything that happens in a certain time and space is a phenomenon passable
of experimentation and interpretation. Henceforth, the first problem that arises almost immediately is
the multitude of phenomena that a geographer or planner may be confronted to when solving a
certain problem. Also with the ever-growing information society the amount of relations established
between phenomena has also grown accordingly.
Technology has provided Humankind with tools to analyze and interpret such relations, namely GIS.
These tools have firstly appeared in part because of the growth in information amount and availability
(allied with the advances in hardware of the past century).Soon the responsible agents with the
difficult task of planning the territory saw the possibility of providing for the need of a greater analysis
capability of the phenomena that occurred in the territory.
Modeling these phenomena became possible, allowing the establishment of relations until then
invisible to the planners. This fact provided better interpretations of the territory and better solutions
for problems that go from finding simple optimal rotes to nuclear power plants location.
However, the fact that modeling is possible does not mean that models in themselves are not fallible.
Models are just as fallible as their designers assuming that these are unable to identify the variables
in play in the phenomena that occur in the territory, the nature of the information available and do not
have a good array of ethical values and laws that should be visible throughout the models.
The technology available to solve problems based in geographical information is nowadays so
advanced that the user’s ability to interpret the problems has been put under the microscope. The
method per se for using the ArcGis Model Builder (the chosen tool for this paper) is easy and
repetitive; mostly it is a sequence of operations done on preexisting geographical information that
creates new information and so on in sequence. But the choices of operations and the sequence of
the operations done by the users reflect human concerns and they are usually done in light of a legal
frame. Also the inputs of information that allow the models to run have to be treated accordingly to the
nature of the phenomena being observed, and this treatment is exclusively done accordingly with the
sensibility of the user to the complexity of the phenomena. Space may flow, crumble or simply be
static, but it must be treated accordingly and if not the model will return incorrect solutions.
Another matter that must be pointed out is the limitations of visualization of the geographical
information, namely vector and raster (based upon the nature of the data recollection method). This
limitation implies that the user has to choose which type of data and visualization is better for each
variable of the phenomenon.
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