GIS for Economic Development by Marcus Arreguin

GIS plays a key role in economic development, which has as its task helping businesses and communities grow and create wealth and jobs. The role is to provide them with geographic information they need to be make good decisions and focus their efforts. In this presentation, Marcus will discuss what he does in his GIS work in economic development. Sometimes the output can be more visually oriented, while other times it tends to be more data and list oriented. The work can be very interesting because it often goes beyond routine mapping and gets into spatial analyses such as drive time, heat maps, and trade area creation. The end goals of the analyses for businesses can be visualizing current customer bases, finding potential customers, seeing where competition is, and choosing store locations. For communities, applications can include visualizing commuting patterns, seeing where businesses are concentrated, and creating custom demographic reports.

Transcript

1. Marcus Arreguin, B.S., M.I.S., EGc(GIS) Business Intelligence Research Analyst Innovation Center at Rogers State University Claremore, OK
2. Many economic development organizations don’t use GIS much. However, GIS is starting to be used more, in part due to the influence of Economic Gardening. GIS is a key part of our game plan at the Innovation Center at Rogers State University
3. Present what we do at the RSU Innovation Center and how it ties in to GIS Discuss GIS for economic development Talk about what I do and show some examples
5. Mission: foster economic growth in northeast Oklahoma and beyond We are an EDA University Center, as also is UALR. The EDA helps to fund us. Focus: • Businesses • Communities • Other economic development organizations (EDOs) Here is an example of GIS work for each.
6. Client wanted to know where to put donation collection boxes
7. Commuters to the Claremore Industrial Park – Drive Time Map
8. A report on the five counties adjacent to a local industrial park. Most of this report was not maps, but there was plenty of geographic data. See my poster for a synopsis of this.
9.  Strategy: • Grow your own local businesses • An alternative to the recruitment/retention model, which can be very expensive, and often does not create new jobs, but shifts existing ones around  Tactics: • Show local entrepreneurs how to operate a business • Emphasize selling to outside of the local area—this grows the local economy • Give growth companies key information they need to take their business to the next level, because these companies are adding many jobs. This process is called Economic Gardening, and it follows the National Center for Economic Gardening model.
10.  Economic Gardening is a key part of what we do here. Our Innovation Center staff members form an Economic Gardening Team, which serves businesses in the state of Oklahoma  Team Members • Team Leader: guides business engagements • Market Research Specialist: finds info on products, industries, patents, etc. • New Media Specialist: advises on web, SEO, social media • Geographic Information Systems Specialist (my role): creates lists, maps, analyses
11. Typical Economic Gardening work. Client was building a dealer network and wanted a map and list of farm equipment stores. The list contained sales and location info. The client used this to decide which stores to ask to be dealers for their products
12. Create Maps • Customers or Competitors • Illustrations for economic studies Do Spatial Analysis • Heat Maps • Trade areas Create demographic reports on a region Create marketing lists Look up traffic counts for locationing • Stores, billboards, etc.
13. Counseling Services Client: Wanted to market to households with specific incomes AND family sizes within the county Census Block Group Map symbolized by family size & income • Client may do a targeted mailout to desired block groups using purchased address lists based on block groups
14. A GIS person in economic development may need to be multi-talented. I also do: • Data analysis and number-crunching • Writing reports and ad copy • Graphic design & illustration • Photography & photo editing
15.  Helped a pharmacy chain owner find possible locations for new stores. Criteria: • Town with no pharmacy and a minimum population • Towns a minimum distance from existing pharmacies • Created a list of possible towns with demographic reports  Helped a person starting an indoor sports center • Planned a location based on local population and income, traffic patterns, and proximity to competitors • Secured bank funding for startup expenses including building expenses. The building is now being constructed.
16. Map from upcoming report on commuting patterns of industrial park employees.
17. Claremore’s Trade Area – based on Thiessen polygons created from neighboring centers of trade, natural boundaries, etc. Was requested by a business looking to open a branch there. We heard that they decided to go forward with it.
18. Employee Density Map • Created this using the InfoUSA business point shapefile database
19. GIS is not yet widespread in Economic Development, but it is gaining in popularity There are a wide range of applications of GIS which can be a vital part of business and community growth There are many opportunities to do interesting GIS analyses in this field