Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments (OKI) is the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for the Cincinnati Area. OKI identified the need to identify potential mitigation project areas based on locally available data through the environmental consultation process. By providing more detailed mapping capabilities, OKI found an opportunity to support regional mitigation efforts. OKI worked closely with greenspace and area mitigation experts to better understand the end-user’s criteria, including which geographic information systems (GIS) layers and analysis features should be included in the model. The new tool (we call the Environmental Mitigation Model) enables end-users to prioritize areas based on their unique requirements. The end-user would select the GIS layers, including environmental and Environmental Justice layers relevant to their specific analysis, weigh the importance of each layer, and view a map that calculated the priority areas for them. Besides supporting identifying potential mitigation projects, local conservation partners and local governments will use the new tool to prioritize locations for conservation efforts. Suitability analysis tools were used to develop the model and then published to ArcGIS Online so that the model could be made available as a free web application. This session will discuss the development of the tool, GIS layers included in the model, the development process, and a demonstration of the tool. We will provide guidance materials for other agencies looking to develop similar tools in their regions.
Link to the OKI Environmental Mitigation Portfolio with the story maps and the application:
https://oki.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/portfolio/index.html?appid=0a02b846e9d6486cbfd5f95a38f0aed4