Background

North Carolina has recently gone through the painfully slow process of determining potential sites for the construction of a low level radioactive waste disposal facility. The method used for determining potential sites was to exclude all areas that did not meet selected criteria (for example, protected park area would automatically be excluded) and to choose a site from the remaining area. While this methodology did produce a set of potential sites, many people felt that the narrowed sites were in "poorer" parts of the state. By incorporating GIS into the selection procedure it is possible to develop a list that is more flexible as constraints change and more scientific.

Project Goals

• Use GIS to develop a set of potential sites for the disposal facility
• Compare the selected sites to those determined manually
• Experiment with selection criteria

Method for Conducting Project

• Research the North Carolina criteria for selecting potential sites
• Obtain coverage data that corresponds to the NC criteria (such as soil types)
• Use ArcInfo/ArcView to create a series of layouts that select potential sites by a process of elimination