Information and Knowledge Management using ArcGIS ModelBuilder

João Agrela et al.
This is a fairly user friendly tool but a user needs to have a few GIS notions and data types
management experience, for some operations are only used on certain types of data.
3. The case study: Practice and experimentation
Figure 2: Amadora location
This case study is based on a problem that is relatively common in most municipalities, namely where
to place a waste water treatment plant. The municipality used for the case study is Amadora,
immediately to the west of Lisbon, Portugal. The authors found that this is also a good example of a
problem which also brings into play ethical values and because of that it is not a matter that should or
can be approached without adding human concerns into the model.
It is also an objective that the model is easily understood by any subsequent user (not directly
involved in its creation), because the model might eventually be used for other municipalities, if the
legal parameters with geographical implications are adjusted. Geographical information usually exist
in thematic layers, so in what concerns this paper every variable is a layer of geographical
information, independent from the others from the start.
The first step was the identification of the geographical variables that are in play in the municipality. It
will not be pointed out every variable, but some may be used as examples, as follows:
Physical/natural variables:
Hydrographical network, Portuguese National Ecological Reserve, Portuguese National
agricultural reserve, terrain.
Human variables:
Sewage network, railways, road network, social services (hospitals, schools, etc.).
It is easy to understand that a sewage treatment plant is a needed structure but it has the mark of the
not in my back yard (NIMBY) logic. We need it but the citizens don’t want it anywhere near them. For
a planner and/or political decision maker this is a highly sensitive subject.
The second step was to adjust the formats of the information in a way that it could be easily related
and operated on. Most of this information did not have the same coordinate system associated so the
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