Potential Location Assessment of Current and Estuarine Surveys (PLACES) for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

Caitlin Guerin, Nick Hanson, and Austin Hackett, UW Professional and Continuing Education

Ocean and river current surveys have been conducted since the mid 1800s. How the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) decides where to conduct these surveys is what our GIS tool will accomplish. The most recent method of prioritization, the "Potential Location Assessment of Current and Estuarine Surveys'' (PLACES) is from 2014. This method utilized a combination of spatial analysis software, R, and fuzzy logic to produce an ordered list of locations. We are creating a new GIS based tool to improve this method. We will take the average value of each parameter per polygon, rasterize the data, reclassify, and use a weighted overlay. We will conduct this process in model builder in order to easily change the weight of certain parameters to see its effects on the ranking of locations and to easily share the process with NOAA. It is important to furnish NOAA with the best, most up to date metadata information that is used to choose the best locations to provide commercial shipping, fisherman, and recreational users with the most accurate and up to date current predictions that NOAA can provide. Overall, this tool will benefit NOAA and its stakeholders, create a quicker process for determining locations in need of currents analyses and maximize the resources that NOAA has to offer.