This chapter discusses the project conclusion in section 7.1. Then, section 7.2 proposes some concepts to improve this project and some other ideas for improving the efforts of the Feeding America Riverside | San Bernardino (FARSB) in order to eliminate hunger in the Inland Empire.
7.1 Project Conclusion
This project satisfied the goals and requirements that were agreed upon by the client, the advisor, and the MS GIS Program faculty at the University of Redlands. Three essential questions were successfully analyzed and addressed in this project:
• Where is the optimal site to establish a second warehouse?
• Where are the areas of greatest need and potential donors?
• Where are the agencies of the FARSB located?
This project addressed the first question and identified the optimal location for a supplemental food distribution center, based on the determined requirements and analysis. Consequently, the client planned to establish a second warehouse where the project indicated to expand food distribution. The second question was addressed, and a story map was created. The client was provided with a web application to display particular information about the Inland Empire in order to help increase the success of fundraising. The third question was addressed by the creation of another web application in order to display the agencies’ locations and information. The client wanted people in need to be able to locate the organization’s agencies within their neighborhood in order to be given food and assistance. All three questions were addressed to achieve the most significant goals of the FARSB; to eliminate hunger in the Inland Empire and to give everyone there access to healthy and affordable food.
7.2 Future Work
The geodatabase that was created in this project could be improved by using several concepts to achieve the maximum benefit for the FARSB. If the FARSB decided to expand and establish a third warehouse, it would be advantageous to identify the best location from among the eight candidates already determined by using the geodatabase that was created in this project. Subsequently, the geodatabase could be helpful toward creating a fleet management system in order to find the best routes for food delivery from each of the warehouses to the agencies. Another concept is to analyze the coverage of each agency to decide whether there is a need for new agencies to serve more people. The agencies web application could be improved by including a volunteered geographic information (VGI) functionality. This would help any new agency by adding its location and information to the application; also, that would allow the agencies to edit and update their information, if needed, in order to keep the application up to date for the people in need.
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