ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the study area of case studies and corresponding data sources. There are two major rivers in the East Baton Rouge Parish—the Mississippi River and Amite River—forming the natural borders of the study area. The Census for Transportation Planning Package (CTPP) data are usually provided at multiple levels of aggregations such as traffic analysis zones (TAZ), census tracts, states, and metropolitan statistical areas. Corresponding spatial datasets in geographic information systems including census tracts, TAZs, and road networks are extracted from the Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (TIGER) Products, 1994, 2000, and 2010 from the United States (US) Census Bureau. Three National Land Cover Database (NLCD) products—NLCD 1992, 2001, and 2011—are employed to match with the CTPP and TIGER data. The NLCD provides a uniform land cover classification across the entire US and is perhaps the most accessible and commonly used national land cover map.
