Data Collection and Projections

Data was collected from various sources. The data used in this project include:

  1. Municipal Boundaries
    Boundary shapefiles for each municipality were downloaded from the Metro Vancouver Open Data Catalogue.
  2. Roads 
    Road polylines, including major highways, local roads and trails, were downloaded from the Abacus Dataverse Network. This data was originally published by DMTI Spatial Inc.
  3. Water Features
    Water feature shapefiles, such as lakes and the Strait of Georgia, were downloaded from Abacus. This data was originally published by DMTI Spatial Inc.
  4. Car2Go Parking Locations
    Parking spots for Car2Go were digitally created as a point layer in ArcMap. Geographical locations of each parking area were located using the map within the car2go website.
  5. EVO Parking Locations
    Parking spots for EVO were digitally created as a point layer in ArcMap. Geographical locations of each parking spot were located using their “Find A Car” map.
  6. Zipcar Parking Locations
    Parking spots for Zipcar were digitally created as a point layer in ArcMap. Geographical locations of each parking spot were located using their website map.
  7. Modo Parking Locations
    Parking spots for Modo were sent by email to our group, courtesy of Kathrin Kilburn. The data was initially in JSON format.
  8. Transit Stops
    Transit locations (such as Canada Line, Skytrain, West Coast Express and Seabus stations) were downloaded from the Geography G drive. Bus loops and the Skytrain extension of the Evergreen Line was digitized manually on ArcMap. Google Maps and transit maps from Translink were used to geographically locate stations.
  9. Points of Interest
    Activities and attractions point data were downloaded from Data BC. This dataset lists companies that are registered with the HelloBC Listings Program.
  10. Healthcare/Hospital Locations
    Healthcare clinic data was downloaded from the Geography G drive, as a part of their points of interest layer.
  11. Land Use
    Land use data was downloaded from Metro Vancouver Open Data Catalogue.
  12. Census Information
    The census data used in our project (Population dwelling counts and number of renters) were downloaded from CHASS (Canadian Census Analyser) at the Dissemination Area (DA) scale. The data is from the 2011 Survey.

All layers were projected to match the coordinate system suitable for the scale of Metro Vancouver. Layers such as Roads and National Water features were projected to NAD 1983 UTM Zone 10N.