Spatial Zoning of School Location-Allocation in Greater Auckland,New Zealand
تحديد النطاقات المكانية للمدارس في مدينة أوكلند الكبرى بنيوزيلندة
Issa El-Shair, Department of Geography, Faculty of Arts, Yarmouk University, Irbid, Jordan
Abstract
This paper focuses on the use of network analysis to allocate the location of secondary schools in North Shore City of Greater Auckland in New Zealand. For simplicity, eight state and three private secondary schools in the North Shore City were only examined. One of the main issues of the study was finding the travel distance and the travel time of the existing schools zones. Another issue was using an established database to show that a suitable zone is one which have a travel distance within 1500/2000/3000 meters and travel time within 30/40/60 minutes from a given school. Three procedures were implemented. These were: copying certain coverages to a needed workspace, displaying and correcting the location of existing secondary schools, and using Allocate command in GIS to define the school zones according to the previous criterion. By using the allocate function, the study came up with three different patterns of school zones. Two new schools were also allocated based on distance between adjacent zones. These suggested schools were due to the long distances/time that students living in some areas have to pass while traveling to their schools. It was concluded that GIS capabilities proved to be effective in examining school zones in North Shore City as well as other locations in different countries.