For this , the report week of the landscape design section, we had first to calculate the energy savings produced from planting trees in our study area. This was more a mathematical than a GIS exercise (once we had the proportion of Marin City, or several Marin City neighborhoods) that was covered by trees. For the second part, we had to determine how many trees would be needed to offset the anticipated energy demands of a new Marin City Center (its area outlined in yellow on the map). This was based on a combination of a) the area covered (calculated with GIS), b) the average monthly electricity usage of a commercial building (from a Department of Energy table), c) the annual energy savings produced by one tree (from another table) and d) the previously-calculated (maximum) number of trees that could be put on the site. It is interesting to see how GIS can intersect with this type of work, and also interesting to see how much of the input is tentative, or at least hypothetical - we don't know whether the average tree's energy savings will be the same as our Marin City average tree, for instance. Still, interesting to do.
No comments:
Post a Comment