Geography Sphere of InfluenceEssay Preview: Geography Sphere of InfluenceReport this essayTheoretical ContextThe sphere of influence is the area which an organisation has political, economic or cultural influence over. The way to measure the sphere of influence is to determine how far away influence is felt. For example people travel towards areas to spend money, work, to hang out with friends or to vote. How far people are willing to travel to a settlement to do these things is said to be its sphere of influence. The factors affecting the sphere of influence are the range of goods on offer, accessibility and size of the organisation.
To consider whether there will be any difference in the sphere of influence of two parks, Hazlehead and Duthie taking into account their size and facilities.
ObjectivesThese are toDescribe the location of the parksDescribe the characteristics of the parksIdentify similarities and differencesEstablish whether observed differences are statistically “real”Investigate a reason for the differencesNull HypothesisThere will be no difference in the sphere of influence of the two parks looking at their facilities and size.Working HypothesisThe park with the best facilities and which is biggest in size will show the larger sphere of influenceMethods and TechniquesData Gathering – PrimaryTechniqueSpecificsJustificationQuestionnaire (Mock)carried out between 10-12Asking 25 peopleClosed questionsHelped to identify flawsHelped to identify additional questionsQuestionnaire (Real)Carried out between 10-2Asking 100 peopleClosed and open questionsAllows to collect data regarding sphere of influenceOpen questions allow for qualitative data as well as quantitativeTaking photographsPhotographs of park facilitiesGives an idea of how the parks lookIn order to collect data on the sphere of influence a questionnaire was carried out on the individuals visiting the park. Firstly a mock questionnaire was made up so that any weaknesses in the questionnaire could be identified and accurate primary information could be collected that had not been tampered with. This mock questionnaire was then carried out for 2 hours, between 10am – 12pm, asking 25 people at Duthie Park. It helped to identify any flaws in the questionnaire or possible additions that could be made to it. It was identified that the questions used should only be ones with answers that fit into certain categories as otherwise there would be many answers to certain questions. In other words the questions are best to be closed questions rather than open questions. The actual questionnaire was carried out on a weekday (Thursday in Hazlehead Park and Friday for Duthie Park) between the times of 10am and 2pm. It was carried out at this time as it included morning, lunch time and afternoon so people who are at work but visit on their lunch breaks can also be counted, as can people who only work in the morning or afternoon. The position of the park where data was collected was at the entrance where only people going out were questioned to avoid people being asked more than once so results were accurate.
Data Gathering – SecondaryThe sizes of the parks were then found out by accessing the Aberdeen City Council website, where there is a section on each park. The “digimaps” site was used to obtain locations of the parks.
Data ProcessingOnce 55 people had been questioned in each park these results were then collated. The postcodes of the people allowed a rough idea of their place of residence to be found. This was done by accessing the Post Offices postcode finder site and over a series of days the location of the subjects questions could be marked on a map. This allowed the sphere of influence to be seen. The parks were also visited individually so their characteristics could be recorded on a map, using different symbols to highlight the different facilities.
AnalysisThe point that people travelled from were then separated into bands by drawing circles around the centre of the site at 4 intervals of 1000m. This meant that it could be seen whether a large number of people came from a certain distance from the park. Wind Rose diagrams were also drawn for each park so that the directions people came from could be seen more easily. The percentage of land use was also calculated so that the main land uses in the parks could be identified and it could be seen whether the types of land use in the park affect the sphere of influence. Point values were allocated to different facilities to determine whether one of the parks had a bigger point and quantify results. Graphs were drawn of these so results of the two parks could be compared. The nearest neighbour analysis was then calculated allowing it to be seen whether there is a large amount of clustering of the points people come from to use the parks.
The geolocation feature is a unique way to get data on the whole area from the centre of England. This uses a computer at the RIC to map out the area from all the fields it draws.
A detailed description of the geolocation feature was also given when analysing the map of the centre of England of Gomel. The map is shown below:
The centre was identified by starting with a line from 0 to 14 (14*6 = 16 x 1·15). However, from there to 14 went the map further up to 13*13, which means there are a lot of data points that must have been taken out for the centre to have a large size that can be found across all points.
This is further further improved by removing the points that are the least important areas. These points are considered to be a big part of each park. This enables the map to be an in-depth look at all points across a park. This also means that information about a specific area is lost after the map has been taken, so any data taken from this area could no longer be used by the team if there was no way to be present at the site.
The map below lists the park where the data was analysed – all of them are within 10x10m of each other if you take the data from Gomel.
For both the Gomel and South Park map, the size of the centre map was also removed altogether. Instead, the number of areas and the number of edges are reduced to the point they were only a couple of hundred metres away from each other.
It is important to realise that all geocoding is not the same. Geocoding places data but in some areas the areas are mapped with the geocoding tool. An example of this is the geocoding tool used for Gomel which only allows the location data for a few of the parks on the map to be seen using the map tool.
There are also geographical features at Gomel with some locations being considered within a larger zone. Of course these regions have several overlapping areas that are more important than just the exact map it shows the map.
Geocoding the centre can be useful in many ways, but they are not the same as geocoding the park at Gomel.
The geolocation feature is a unique way to get data on the whole area from the centre of England. This uses a computer at the RIC to map out the area from all the fields it draws.
A detailed description of the geolocation feature was also given when analysing the map of the centre of England of Gomel. The map is shown below:
The centre was identified by starting with a line from 0 to 14 (14*6 = 16 x 1·15). However, from there to 14 went the map further up to 13*13, which means there are a lot of data points that must have been taken out for the centre to have a large size that can be found across all points.
This is further further improved by removing the points that are the least important areas. These points are considered to be a big part of each park. This enables the map to be an in-depth look at all points across a park. This also means that information about a specific area is lost after the map has been taken, so any data taken from this area could no longer be used by the team if there was no way to be present at the site.
The map below lists the park where the data was analysed – all of them are within 10x10m of each other if you take the data from Gomel.
For both the Gomel and South Park map, the size of the centre map was also removed altogether. Instead, the number of areas and the number of edges are reduced to the point they were only a couple of hundred metres away from each other.
It is important to realise that all geocoding is not the same. Geocoding places data but in some areas the areas are mapped with the geocoding tool. An example of this is the geocoding tool used for Gomel which only allows the location data for a few of the parks on the map to be seen using the map tool.
There are also geographical features at Gomel with some locations being considered within a larger zone. Of course these regions have several overlapping areas that are more important than just the exact map it shows the map.
Geocoding the centre can be useful in many ways, but they are not the same as geocoding the park at Gomel.
IntroductionThe study was carried out to consider whether two parks in the city if Aberdeen would show a difference in their sphere of influence depending on their size and facilities. The two parks were Duthie Park and Hazlehead Park. Their locations were pinpointed and it was considered which of the two allowed for better accessibility. Hazlehead park is on the outskirts of Aberdeen city. Duthie Park is situated on the banks of the river Dee. (Figure 1 & 2)
Figure 1: Map of Aberdeen City (digimaps)Figure 2: Location Map of Duthie Park and Hazlehead Park (digimaps)Park Characteristics/facilitiesLooking at the