The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) produces Flood Insurance Rate maps and identifies Special Flood Hazard Areas as part of the National Flood Insurance Program's floodplain management. Special Flood Hazard Areas have regulations that include the mandatory purchase of flood insurance for holders of federally regulated mortgages. In addition, this layer can help planners and firms avoid areas of flood risk and also avoid additional cost to carry insurance for certain planned activities. Dataset SummaryPhenomenon Mapped: Flood Hazard AreasGeographic Extent: Contiguous United States, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, US Virgin Islands, Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa.Projection: Web Mercator Auxiliary SphereData Coordinate System: USA Contiguous Albers Equal Area Conic USGS version (contiguous US, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands), WGS 1984 Albers (Alaska), Hawaii Albers Equal Area Conic (Hawaii), Western Pacific Albers Equal Area Conic (Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa)Cell Sizes: 10 meters (default), 30 meters, and 90 metersUnits: NoneSource Type: ThematicPixel Type: Unsigned integerSource: Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)Update Frequency: AnnualPublication Date: May 7, 2025 This layer is derived from the May 7, 2025 version Flood Insurance Rate Map feature class S_FLD_HAZ_AR. The vector data were then flagged with an index of 94 classes, representing a unique combination of values displayed by three renderers. (In three resolutions the three renderers make nine processing templates.) Repair Geometry was run on the set of features, then the features were rasterized using the 94 class index at a resolutions of 10, 30, and 90 meters, using the Polygon to Raster tool and the "MAXIMUM_COMBINED_AREA" option. Not every part of the United States is covered by flood rate maps. This layer compiles all the flood insurance maps available at the time of publication. To make analysis easier, areas that were NOT mapped by FEMA for flood insurance rates no longer are served as NODATA but are filled in with a value of 250, representing any unmapped areas which appear in the US Census boundary of the USA states and territories. The attribute table corresponding to value 250 will indicate that the area was not mapped.What can you do with this layer?This layer is suitable for both visualization and analysis across the ArcGIS system. This layer can be combined with your data and other layers from the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World in ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Pro to create powerful web maps that can be used alone or in a story map or other application. Because this layer is part of the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World it is easy to add to your map:In ArcGIS Online, you can add this layer to a map by selecting Add then Browse Living Atlas Layers. A window will open. Type "flood hazard areas" in the search box and browse to the layer. Select the layer then click Add to Map.In ArcGIS Pro, open a map and select Add Data from the Map Tab. Select Data at the top of the drop down menu. The Add Data dialog box will open on the left side of the box, expand Portal if necessary, then select Living Atlas. Type "flood hazard areas" in the search box, browse to the layer then click OK. In ArcGIS Pro you can use the built-in raster functions to create custom extracts of the data. Imagery layers provide fast, powerful inputs to geoprocessing tools, models, or Python scripts in Pro. The ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World provides an easy way to explore many other beautiful and authoritative maps on hundreds of topics like this one. Processing TemplatesCartographic Renderer - The default. These are meaningful classes grouped by FEMA which group its own Flood Zone Type and Subtype fields. This renderer uses FEMA's own cartographic interpretations of its flood zone and zone subtype fields to help you identify and assess risk. Flood Zone Type Renderer - Specifically renders FEMA FLD_ZONE (flood zone) attribute, which distinguishes the original, broadest categories of flood zones. This renderer displays high level categories of flood zones, and is less nuanced than the Cartographic Renderer. For example, a fld_zone value of X can either have moderate or low risk depending on location. This renderer will simply render fld_zone X as its own color without identifying "500 year" flood zones within that category.Flood Insurance Requirement Renderer - Shows Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA) true-false status. This may be helpful if you want to show just the places where flood insurance is required. A value of True means flood insurance is mandatory in a majority of the area covered by each 10m pixel. Each of these three renderers have templates at three different raster resolutions depending on your analysis needs. To include the layer in web maps to serve maps and queries, the 10 meter renderers are the preferred option. These are served with overviews and render at all resolutions. However, when doing analysis of larger areas, we now offer two coarser resolutions of 30 and 90 meters in processing templates for added convenience and time savings.Data DictionaryMaking a copy of your area of interest using copyraster in arcgis pro will copy the layer's attribute table to your network alongside the local output raster. The raster attribute table in the copied raster will contain the flood zone, zone subtype, and special flood hazard area true/false flag which corresponds to each value in the layer for your area of interest. For your convienence, we also included a table in CSV format in the box below as a data dictionary you can use as an index to every value in the layer. Value,FLD_ZONE,ZONE_SUBTY,SFHA_TF 2,A,, 3,A,,F 4,A,,T 5,A,,T 6,A,,T 7,A,1 PCT ANNUAL CHANCE FLOOD HAZARD CONTAINED IN CHANNEL,T 8,A,1 PCT ANNUAL CHANCE FLOOD HAZARD CONTAINED IN STRUCTURE,T 9,A,ADMINISTRATIVE FLOODWAY,T 10,A,COASTAL FLOODPLAIN,T 11,A,FLOWAGE EASEMENT AREA,T 12,A99,,T 13,A99,AREA WITH REDUCED FLOOD RISK DUE TO LEVEE,T 14,AE,,F 15,AE,,T 16,AE,,T 17,AE,,T 18,AE,1 PCT ANNUAL CHANCE FLOOD HAZARD CONTAINED IN CHANNEL,T 19,AE,1 PCT ANNUAL CHANCE FLOOD HAZARD CONTAINED IN STRUCTURE,T 20,AE,"1 PCT CONTAINED IN STRUCTURE, COMMUNITY ENCROACHMENT",T 21,AE,"1 PCT CONTAINED IN STRUCTURE, FLOODWAY",T 22,AE,ADMINISTRATIVE FLOODWAY,T 23,AE,AREA OF SPECIAL CONSIDERATION,T 24,AE,COASTAL FLOODPLAIN,T 25,AE,COLORADO RIVER FLOODWAY,T 26,AE,COMBINED RIVERINE AND COASTAL FLOODPLAIN,T 27,AE,COMMUNITY ENCROACHMENT,T 28,AE,COMMUNITY ENCROACHMENT AREA,T 29,AE,DENSITY FRINGE AREA,T 30,AE,FLOODWAY,T 31,AE,FLOODWAY CONTAINED IN CHANNEL,T 32,AE,FLOODWAY CONTAINED IN STRUCTURE,T 33,AE,FLOWAGE EASEMENT AREA,T 34,AE,RIVERINE FLOODWAY IN COMBINED RIVERINE AND COASTAL ZONE,T 35,AE,RIVERINE FLOODWAY SHOWN IN COASTAL ZONE,T 36,AE,STATE ENCROACHMENT AREA,T 37,AH,,T 38,AH,,T 39,AH,FLOODWAY,T 40,AO,,T 41,AO,COASTAL FLOODPLAIN,T 42,AO,FLOODWAY,T 43,AREA NOT INCLUDED,,F 44,AREA NOT INCLUDED,,T 45,AREA NOT INCLUDED,,U 46,D,,F 47,D,,T 48,D,AREA WITH FLOOD RISK DUE TO LEVEE,F 49,OPEN WATER,,F 50,OPEN WATER,,T 51,OPEN WATER,,U 52,V,,T 53,V,COASTAL FLOODPLAIN,T 54,VE,,T 55,VE,,T 56,VE,COASTAL FLOODPLAIN,T 57,VE,RIVERINE FLOODWAY SHOWN IN COASTAL ZONE,T 58,X,,F 59,X,0.2 PCT ANNUAL CHANCE FLOOD HAZARD,F 60,X,0.2 PCT ANNUAL CHANCE FLOOD HAZARD,T 61,X,0.2 PCT ANNUAL CHANCE FLOOD HAZARD,U 62,X,0.2 PCT ANNUAL CHANCE FLOOD HAZARD CONTAINED IN CHANNEL,F 63,X,0.2 PCT ANNUAL CHANCE FLOOD HAZARD CONTAINED IN STRUCTURE,F 64,X,0.2 PCT ANNUAL CHANCE FLOOD HAZARD IN COASTAL ZONE,F 65,X,0.2 PCT ANNUAL CHANCE FLOOD HAZARD IN COMBINED RIVERINE AND COASTAL ZONE,F 66,X,"1 PCT CONTAINED IN STRUCTURE, COMMUNITY ENCROACHMENT",F 67,X,"1 PCT CONTAINED IN STRUCTURE, FLOODWAY",F 68,X,1 PCT DEPTH LESS THAN 1 FOOT,F 69,X,1 PCT DRAINAGE AREA LESS THAN 1 SQUARE MILE,F 70,X,1 PCT FUTURE CONDITIONS,F 71,X,1 PCT FUTURE CONDITIONS CONTAINED IN STRUCTURE,F 72,X,"1 PCT FUTURE CONDITIONS, COMMUNITY ENCROACHMENT",F 73,X,"1 PCT FUTURE CONDITIONS, FLOODWAY",F 74,X,"1 PCT FUTURE IN STRUCTURE, COMMUNITY ENCROACHMENT",F 75,X,"1 PCT FUTURE IN STRUCTURE, FLOODWAY",F 76,X,AREA OF MINIMAL FLOOD HAZARD, 77,X,AREA OF MINIMAL FLOOD HAZARD,F 78,X,AREA OF MINIMAL FLOOD HAZARD,T 79,X,AREA OF MINIMAL FLOOD HAZARD,U 80,X,AREA OF SPECIAL CONSIDERATION,F 81,X,AREA WITH REDUCED FLOOD RISK DUE TO LEVEE,F 82,X,AREA WITH REDUCED FLOOD RISK DUE TO LEVEE,T 83,X,FLOWAGE EASEMENT AREA,F 84,X,1 PCT FUTURE CONDITIONS,T 85,AH,COASTAL FLOODPLAIN,T 86,AE,,U 87,AE,FLOODWAY,F 88,X,AREA WITH REDUCED FLOOD HAZARD DUE TO ACCREDITED LEVEE SYSTEM,F 89,X,530,F 90,VE,100,T 91,AE,100,T 92,A99,AREA WITH REDUCED FLOOD HAZARD DUE TO LEVEE SYSTEM,T 93,A99,AREA WITH REDUCED FLOOD HAZARD DUE TO NON-ACCREDITED LEVEE SYSTEM,T 94,A,COMBINED RIVERINE AND COASTAL FLOODPLAIN,T 250,AREA NOT INCLUDED,Not Mapped by FEMA, Questions?Please leave a comment below if you have a question about this layer, and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

Please note that this dataset is not an official City of Toronto land use dataset. It was created for personal and academic use using City of Toronto Land Use Maps (2019) found on the City of Toronto Official Plan website at https://www.toronto.ca/city-government/planning-development/official-plan-guidelines/official-plan/official-plan-maps-copy, along with the City of Toronto parcel fabric (Property Boundaries) found at https://open.toronto.ca/dataset/property-boundaries/ and Statistics Canada Census Dissemination Blocks level boundary files (2016). The property boundaries used were dated November 11, 2021. Further detail about the City of Toronto's Official Plan, consolidation of the information presented in its online form, and considerations for its interpretation can be found at https://www.toronto.ca/city-government/planning-development/official-plan-guidelines/official-plan/ Data Creation Documentation and Procedures Software Used The spatial vector data were created using ArcGIS Pro 2.9.0 in December 2021. PDF File Conversions Using Adobe Acrobat Pro DC software, the following downloaded PDF map images were converted to TIF format. 9028-cp-official-plan-Map-14_LandUse_AODA.pdf 9042-cp-official-plan-Map-22_LandUse_AODA.pdf 9070-cp-official-plan-Map-20_LandUse_AODA.pdf 908a-cp-official-plan-Map-13_LandUse_AODA.pdf 978e-cp-official-plan-Map-17_LandUse_AODA.pdf 97cc-cp-official-plan-Map-15_LandUse_AODA.pdf 97d4-cp-official-plan-Map-23_LandUse_AODA.pdf 97f2-cp-official-plan-Map-19_LandUse_AODA.pdf 97fe-cp-official-plan-Map-18_LandUse_AODA.pdf 9811-cp-official-plan-Map-16_LandUse_AODA.pdf 982d-cp-official-plan-Map-21_LandUse_AODA.pdf Georeferencing and Reprojecting Data Files The original projection of the PDF maps is unknown but were most likely published using MTM Zone 10 EPSG 2019 as per many of the City of Toronto's many datasets. They could also have possibly been published in UTM Zone 17 EPSG 26917 The TIF images were georeferenced in ArcGIS Pro using this projection with very good results. The images were matched against the City of Toronto's Centreline dataset found here The resulting TIF files and their supporting spatial files include: TOLandUseMap13.tfwx TOLandUseMap13.tif TOLandUseMap13.tif.aux.xml TOLandUseMap13.tif.ovr TOLandUseMap14.tfwx TOLandUseMap14.tif TOLandUseMap14.tif.aux.xml TOLandUseMap14.tif.ovr TOLandUseMap15.tfwx TOLandUseMap15.tif TOLandUseMap15.tif.aux.xml TOLandUseMap15.tif.ovr TOLandUseMap16.tfwx TOLandUseMap16.tif TOLandUseMap16.tif.aux.xml TOLandUseMap16.tif.ovr TOLandUseMap17.tfwx TOLandUseMap17.tif TOLandUseMap17.tif.aux.xml TOLandUseMap17.tif.ovr TOLandUseMap18.tfwx TOLandUseMap18.tif TOLandUseMap18.tif.aux.xml TOLandUseMap18.tif.ovr TOLandUseMap19.tif TOLandUseMap19.tif.aux.xml TOLandUseMap19.tif.ovr TOLandUseMap20.tfwx TOLandUseMap20.tif TOLandUseMap20.tif.aux.xml TOLandUseMap20.tif.ovr TOLandUseMap21.tfwx TOLandUseMap21.tif TOLandUseMap21.tif.aux.xml TOLandUseMap21.tif.ovr TOLandUseMap22.tfwx TOLandUseMap22.tif TOLandUseMap22.tif.aux.xml TOLandUseMap22.tif.ovr TOLandUseMap23.tfwx TOLandUseMap23.tif TOLandUseMap23.tif.aux.xml TOLandUseMap23.tif.ov Ground control points were saved for all georeferenced images. The files are the following: map13.txt map14.txt map15.txt map16.txt map17.txt map18.txt map19.txt map21.txt map22.txt map23.txt The City of Toronto's Property Boundaries shapefile, "property_bnds_gcc_wgs84.zip" were unzipped and also reprojected to EPSG 26917 (UTM Zone 17) into a new shapefile, "Property_Boundaries_UTM.shp" Mosaicing Images Once georeferenced, all images were then mosaiced into one image file, "LandUseMosaic20211220v01", within the project-generated Geodatabase, "Landuse.gdb" and exported TIF, "LandUseMosaic20211220.tif" Reclassifying Images Because the original images were of low quality and the conversion to TIF made the image colours even more inconsistent, a method was required to reclassify the images so that different land use classes could be identified. Using Deep learning Objects, the images were re-classified into useful consistent colours. Deep Learning Objects and Training The resulting mosaic was then prepared for reclassification using the Label Objects for Deep Learning tool in ArcGIS Pro. A training sample, "LandUseTrainingSamples20211220", was created in the geodatabase for all land use types as follows: Neighbourhoods Insitutional Natural Areas Core Employment Areas Mixed Use Areas Apartment Neighbourhoods Parks Roads Utility Corridors Other Open Spaces General Employment Areas Regeneration Areas Lettering (not a land use type, but an image colour (black), used to label streets). By identifying the letters, it then made the reclassification and vectorization results easier to clean up of unnecessary clutter caused by the labels of streets. Reclassification Once the training samples were created and saved, the raster was then reclassified using the Image Classification Wizard tool in ArcGIS Pro, using the Support...

Reason for Selection Protected natural areas in urban environments provide urban residents a nearby place to connect with nature and offer refugia for some species. They help foster a conservation ethic by providing opportunities for people to connect with nature, and also support ecosystem services like offsetting heat island effects (Greene and Millward 2017, Simpson 1998), water filtration, stormwater retention, and more (Hoover and Hopton 2019). In addition, parks, greenspace, and greenways can help improve physical and psychological health in communities (Gies 2006). Urban park size complements the equitable access to potential parks indicator by capturing the value of existing parks.Input DataSoutheast Blueprint 2024 extentFWS National Realty Tracts, accessed 12-13-2023Protected Areas Database of the United States(PAD-US):PAD-US 3.0 national geodatabase -Combined Proclamation Marine Fee Designation Easement, accessed 12-6-20232020 Census Urban Areas from the Census Bureau’s urban-rural classification; download the data, read more about how urban areas were redefined following the 2020 censusOpenStreetMap data “multipolygons” layer, accessed 12-5-2023A polygon from this dataset is considered a beach if the value in the “natural” tag attribute is “beach”. Data for coastal states (VA, NC, SC, GA, FL, AL, MS, LA, TX) were downloaded in .pbf format and translated to an ESRI shapefile using R code. OpenStreetMap® is open data, licensed under theOpen Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL) by theOpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF). Additional credit to OSM contributors. Read more onthe OSM copyright page.2021 National Land Cover Database (NLCD): Percentdevelopedimperviousness2023NOAA coastal relief model: volumes 2 (Southeast Atlantic), 3 (Florida and East Gulf of America), 4 (Central Gulf of America), and 5 (Western Gulf of America), accessed 3-27-2024Mapping StepsCreate a seamless vector layer to constrain the extent of the urban park size indicator to inland and nearshore marine areas <10 m in depth. The deep offshore areas of marine parks do not meet the intent of this indicator to capture nearby opportunities for urban residents to connect with nature. Shallow areas are more accessible for recreational activities like snorkeling, which typically has a maximum recommended depth of 12-15 meters. This step mirrors the approach taken in the Caribbean version of this indicator.Merge all coastal relief model rasters (.nc format) together using QGIS “create virtual raster”.Save merged raster to .tif and import into ArcPro.Reclassify the NOAA coastal relief model data to assign areas with an elevation of land to -10 m a value of 1. Assign all other areas (deep marine) a value of 0.Convert the raster produced above to vector using the “RasterToPolygon” tool.Clip to 2024 subregions using “Pairwise Clip” tool.Break apart multipart polygons using “Multipart to single parts” tool.Hand-edit to remove deep marine polygon.Dissolve the resulting data layer.This produces a seamless polygon defining land and shallow marine areas.Clip the Census urban area layer to the bounding box of NoData surrounding the extent of Southeast Blueprint 2024.Clip PAD-US 3.0 to the bounding box of NoData surrounding the extent of Southeast Blueprint 2024.Remove the following areas from PAD-US 3.0, which are outside the scope of this indicator to represent parks:All School Trust Lands in Oklahoma and Mississippi (Loc Des = “School Lands” or “School Trust Lands”). These extensive lands are leased out and are not open to the public.All tribal and military lands (“Des_Tp” = "TRIBL" or “Des_Tp” = "MIL"). Generally, these lands are not intended for public recreational use.All BOEM marine lease blocks (“Own_Name” = "BOEM"). These Outer Continental Shelf lease blocks do not represent actively protected marine parks, but serve as the “legal definition for BOEM offshore boundary coordinates...for leasing and administrative purposes” (BOEM).All lands designated as “proclamation” (“Des_Tp” = "PROC"). These typically represent the approved boundary of public lands, within which land protection is authorized to occur, but not all lands within the proclamation boundary are necessarily currently in a conserved status.Retain only selected attribute fields from PAD-US to get rid of irrelevant attributes.Merged the filtered PAD-US layer produced above with the OSM beaches and FWS National Realty Tracts to produce a combined protected areas dataset.The resulting merged data layer contains overlapping polygons. To remove overlapping polygons, use the Dissolve function.Clip the resulting data layer to the inland and nearshore extent.Process all multipart polygons (e.g., separate parcels within a National Wildlife Refuge) to single parts (referred to in Arc software as an “explode”).Select all polygons that intersect the Census urban extent within 0.5 miles. We chose 0.5 miles to represent a reasonable walking distance based on input and feedback from park access experts. Assuming a moderate intensity walking pace of 3 miles per hour, as defined by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s physical activity guidelines, the 0.5 mi distance also corresponds to the 10-minute walk threshold used in the equitable access to potential parks indicator.Dissolve all the park polygons that were selected in the previous step.Process all multipart polygons to single parts (“explode”) again.Add a unique ID to the selected parks. This value will be used in a later step to join the parks to their buffers.Create a 0.5 mi (805 m) buffer ring around each park using the multiring plugin in QGIS. Ensure that “dissolve buffers” is disabled so that a single 0.5 mi buffer is created for each park.Assess the amount of overlap between the buffered park and the Census urban area using “overlap analysis”. This step is necessary to identify parks that do not intersect the urban area, but which lie within an urban matrix (e.g., Umstead Park in Raleigh, NC and Davidson-Arabia Mountain Nature Preserve in Atlanta, GA). This step creates a table that is joined back to the park polygons using the UniqueID.Remove parks that had ≤10% overlap with the urban areas when buffered. This excludes mostly non-urban parks that do not meet the intent of this indicator to capture parks that provide nearby access for urban residents. Note: The 10% threshold is a judgement call based on testing which known urban parks and urban National Wildlife Refuges are captured at different overlap cutoffs and is intended to be as inclusive as possible.Calculate the GIS acres of each remaining park unit using the Add Geometry Attributes function.Buffer the selected parks by 15 m. Buffering prevents very small and narrow parks from being left out of the indicator when the polygons are converted to raster.Reclassify the parks based on their area into the 7 classes seen in the final indicator values below. These thresholds were informed by park classification guidelines from the National Recreation and Park Association, which classify neighborhood parks as 5-10 acres, community parks as 30-50 acres, and large urban parks as optimally 75+ acres (Mertes and Hall 1995).Assess the impervious surface composition of each park using the NLCD 2021 impervious layer and the Zonal Statistics “MEAN” function. Retain only the mean percent impervious value for each park.Extract only parks with a mean impervious pixel value <80%. This step excludes parks that do not meet the intent of the indicator to capture opportunities to connect with nature and offer refugia for species (e.g., the Superdome in New Orleans, LA, the Astrodome in Houston, TX, and City Plaza in Raleigh, NC).Extract again to the inland and nearshore extent.Export the final vector file to a shapefile and import to ArcGIS Pro.Convert the resulting polygons to raster using the ArcPy Feature to Raster function and the area class field.Assign a value of 0 to all other pixels in the Southeast Blueprint 2024 extent not already identified as an urban park in the mapping steps above. Zero values are intended to help users better understand the extent of this indicator and make it perform better in online tools.Use the land and shallow marine layer and “extract by mask” tool to save the final version of this indicator.Add color and legend to raster attribute table.As a final step, clip to the spatial extent of Southeast Blueprint 2024.Note: For more details on the mapping steps, code used to create this layer is available in theSoutheast Blueprint Data Downloadunder > 6_Code. Final indicator valuesIndicator values are assigned as follows:6= 75+ acre urban park5= 50 to <75 acre urban park4= 30 to <50 acre urban park3= 10 to <30 acre urban park2=5 to <10acreurbanpark1 = <5 acre urban park0 = Not identified as an urban parkKnown IssuesThis indicator does not include park amenities that influence how well the park serves people and should not be the only tool used for parks and recreation planning. Park standards should be determined at a local level to account for various community issues, values, needs, and available resources.This indicator includes some protected areas that are not open to the public and not typically thought of as “parks”, like mitigation lands, private easements, and private golf courses. While we experimented with excluding them using the public access attribute in PAD, due to numerous inaccuracies, this inadvertently removed protected lands that are known to be publicly accessible. As a result, we erred on the side of including the non-publicly accessible lands.The NLCD percent impervious layer contains classification inaccuracies. As a result, this indicator may exclude parks that are mostly natural because they are misclassified as mostly impervious. Conversely, this indicator may include parks that are mostly impervious because they are misclassified as mostly

Reason for SelectionProtected natural areas in urban environments provide urban residents a nearby place to connect with nature and offer refugia for some species. Because beaches in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are open to the public, beaches also provide important outdoor recreation opportunities for urban residents, so we include beaches as parks in this indicator.Input DataSoutheast Blueprint 2023 subregions: CaribbeanSoutheast Blueprint 2023 extentNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) Coastal Relief Model, accessed 11-22-2022Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US) 3.0: VI, PR, and Marine Combined Fee EasementPuerto Rico Protected Natural Areas 2018 (December 2018 update): Terrestrial and marine protected areas (PACAT2018_areas_protegidasPR_TERRESTRES_07052019.shp, PACAT2018_areas_protegidasPR_MARINAS_07052019.shp) 2020 Census Urban Areas from the Census Bureau’s urban-rural classification; download the data, read more about how urban areas were redefined following the 2020 censusOpenStreetMap data “multipolygons” layer, accessed 3-14-2023A polygon from this dataset is considered a park if the “leisure” tag attribute is either “park” or “nature_reserve”, and considered a beach if the value in the “natural” tag attribute is “beach”. OpenStreetMap describes leisure areas as “places people go in their spare time” and natural areas as “a wide variety of physical geography, geological and landcover features”. Data were downloaded in .pbf format and translated ton an ESRI shapefile using R code. OpenStreetMap® is open data, licensed under the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL) by the OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF). Additional credit to OSM contributors. Read more on the OSM copyright page. TNC Lands - Public Layer, accessed 3-8-2023U.S. Virgin Islands beaches layer (separate vector layers for St. Croix, St. Thomas, and St. John) provided by Joe Dwyer with Lynker/the NOAA Caribbean Climate Adaptation Program on 3-3-2023 (contact jdwyer@lynker.com for more information)Mapping StepsMost mapping steps were completed using QGIS (v 3.22) Graphical Modeler.Fix geometry errors in the PAD-US PR data using Fix Geometry. This must be done before any analysis is possible.Merge the terrestrial PR and VI PAD-US layers.Use the NOAA coastal relief model to restrict marine parks (marine polygons from PAD-US and Puerto Rico Protected Natural Areas) to areas shallower than 10 m in depth. The deep offshore areas of marine parks do not meet the intent of this indicator to capture nearby opportunities for urban residents to connect with nature.Merge into one layer the resulting shallow marine parks from marine PAD-US and the Puerto Rico Protected Natural Areas along with the combined terrestrial PAD-US parks, OpenStreetMap, TNC Lands, and USVI beaches. Omit from the Puerto Rico Protected Areas layer the “Zona de Conservación del Carso”, which has some policy protections and conservation incentives but is not formally protected.Fix geometry errors in the resulting merged layer using Fix Geometry.Intersect the resulting fixed file with the Caribbean Blueprint subregion.Process all multipart polygons to single parts (referred to in Arc software as an “explode”). This helps the indicator capture, as much as possible, the discrete units of a protected area that serve urban residents.Clip the Census urban area to the Caribbean Blueprint subregion.Select all polygons that intersect the Census urban extent within 1.2 miles (1,931 m). The 1.2 mi threshold is consistent with the average walking trip on a summer day (U.S. DOT 2002) used to define the walking distance threshold used in the greenways and trails indicator. Note: this is further than the 0.5 mi distance used in the continental version of the indicator. We extended it to capture East Bay and Point Udall based on feedback from the local conservation community about the importance of the park for outdoor recreation.Dissolve all the park polygons that were selected in the previous step.Process all multipart polygons to single parts (“explode”) again.Add a unique ID to the selected parks. This value will be used to join the parks to their buffers.Create a 1.2 mi (1,931 m) buffer ring around each park using the multiring buffer plugin in QGIS. Ensure that “dissolve buffers” is disabled so that a single 1.2 mi buffer is created for each park.Assess the amount of overlap between the buffered park and the Census urban area using overlap analysis. This step is necessary to identify parks that do not intersect the urban area, but which lie within an urban matrix. This step creates a table that is joined back to the park polygons using the UniqueID.Remove parks that had ≤2% overlap with the urban areas when buffered. This excludes mostly non-urban parks that do not meet the intent of this indicator to capture parks that provide nearby access for urban residents. Note: In the continental version of this indicator, we used a threshold of 10%. In the Caribbean version, we lowered this to 2% in order to capture small parks that dropped out of the indicator when we extended the buffer distance to 1.2 miles.Calculate the GIS acres of each remaining park unit using the Add Geometry Attributes function.Join the buffer attribute table to the previously selected parks, retaining only the parks that exceeded the 2% urban area overlap threshold while buffered. Buffer the selected parks by 15 m. Buffering prevents very small parks and narrow beaches from being left out of the indicator when the polygons are converted to raster.Reclassify the polygons into 7 classes, seen in the final indicator values below. These thresholds were informed by park classification guidelines from the National Recreation and Park Association, which classify neighborhood parks as 5-10 acres, community parks as 30-50 acres, and large urban parks as optimally 75+ acres (Mertes and Hall 1995).Export the final vector file to a shapefile and import to ArcGIS Pro.Convert the resulting polygons to raster using the ArcPy Polygon to Raster function. Assign values to the pixels in the resulting raster based on the polygon class sizes of the contiguous park areas.Clip to the Caribbean Blueprint 2023 subregion.As a final step, clip to the spatial extent of Southeast Blueprint 2023. Note: For more details on the mapping steps, code used to create this layer is available in the Southeast Blueprint Data Download under > 6_Code. Final indicator valuesIndicator values are assigned as follows:6 = 75+ acre urban park5 = >50 to <75 acre urban park4 = 30 to <50 acre urban park3 = 10 to <30 acre urban park2 = 5 to <10 acre urban park1 = <5 acre urban park0 = Not identified as an urban parkKnown IssuesThis indicator does not include park amenities that influence how well the park serves people and should not be the only tool used for parks and recreation planning. Park standards should be determined at a local level to account for various community issues, values, needs, and available resources. This indicator includes some protected areas that are not open to the public and not typically thought of as “parks”, like mitigation lands, private easements, and private golf courses. While we experimented with excluding them using the public access attribute in PAD, due to numerous inaccuracies, this inadvertently removed protected lands that are known to be publicly accessible. As a result, we erred on the side of including the non-publicly accessible lands.This indicator includes parks and beaches from OpenStreetMap, which is a crowdsourced dataset. While members of the OpenStreetMap community often verify map features to check for accuracy and completeness, there is the potential for spatial errors (e.g., misrepresenting the boundary of a park) or incorrect tags (e.g., labelling an area as a park that is not actually a park). However, using a crowdsourced dataset gives on-the-ground experts, Blueprint users, and community members the power to fix errors and add new parks to improve the accuracy and coverage of this indicator in the future.Other Things to Keep in MindThis indicator calculates the area of each park using the park polygons from the source data. However, simply converting those park polygons to raster results in some small parks and narrow beaches being left out of the indicator. To capture those areas, we buffered parks and beaches by 15 m and applied the original area calculation to the larger buffered polygon, so as not to inflate the area by including the buffer. As a result, when the buffered polygons are rasterized, the final indicator has some areas of adjacent pixels that receive different scores. While these pixels may appear to be part of one contiguous park or suite of parks, they are scored differently because the park polygons themselves are not actually contiguous. The Caribbean version of this indicator uses a slightly different methodology than the continental Southeast version. It includes parks within a 1.2 mi distance from the Census urban area, compared to 0.5 mi in the continental Southeast. We extended it to capture East Bay and Point Udall based on feedback from the local conservation community about the importance of the park for outdoor recreation. Similarly, this indicator uses a 2% threshold of overlap between buffered parks and the Census urban areas, compared to a 10% threshold in the continental Southeast. This helped capture small parks that dropped out of the indicator when we extended the buffer distance to 1.2 miles. Finally, the Caribbean version does not use the impervious surface cutoff applied in the continental Southeast because the landcover data available in the Caribbean does not assess percent impervious in a comparable way.Disclaimer: Comparing with Older Indicator VersionsThere are numerous problems with using Southeast Blueprint