All Dogs Go to Prince George’s County: Finding a Home for a Second Animal Services Facility

Abstract

As a continuation of the Fall 2017 PALS project, Spring 2018 semester students from the community planning and engineering programs used advanced computer mapping tools (geographic information system, or GIS) to provide Prince George’s County with potential sites to build a second animal shelter. The team attempted to find land that the county already owned, but none of the parcels met the requirements. The team found a solution to this problem by including distressed shopping centers in the site analysis. From these forty shopping centers, eleven were chosen for their location within the county’s Growth Policy Center. We used ArcGIS Online to understand how many potential adopters could reach these facilities within fifteen and thirty minutes. We then chose the five shopping centers closest to the most people and households. We present these to Prince George’s County as potential candidate sites. The link for the county to access the ArcGIS Online website to view the maps and site locations is: http://uofmd.maps.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=ea8cc7f3ca154064939db517e24b4606.