How can this map be explored?

After accessing the webpage, the side panel can be collapsed for a better viewing of the map.

The map itself can be moved by holding the left mouse button and dragging. To control the zoom level, the viewer can either choose to use the scroll wheel or the provided buttons on the map.

Finally, by holding the right mouse button and dragging in any direction, the map can be rotated on multiple axes to facilitate viewing at angles for improved visualization.

By pressing the "compass" button on the upper right corner of the screen, the viewer can reorient themselves to the initial map view.

What are The Contested Countryside?

The contested countryside are the lands between urban boundaries as of June 30, 2022 and the Greenbelt.

Many of these lands are being proposed for increased urbanization by 2051.

How were the three approaches defined?

The three approaches represent two of the extreme case scenarios in term of development, which can help the viewer form a perspective of the impact.

Which is where the Balanced approach can be effectively displayed as the middle-ground of the two.

What is a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis?

The Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) is a spatial analysis technique which considers various criteria with their ratings and assigned weights to create resultant layers.

For this project, several criteria such as the distance to road, water, the landuse type and population density were used.

Why are there some blank spots on the map?

Having performed the MCDA, the team chose to only extract those areas which were seemingly most suitable in terms of the analyses results.

Thus, the blank spots and regions appearing on the map are the areas which were not selected to be displayed out of the whole resultant layer.

Why do some regions show up to be already within the Contested Countryside?

The team has used 2016 soil complex data from CanVec to create the shapefile to visualize the Contested Countryside.

Which interacts with the 2021 European Space Agency Landcover classification data used for analyses.

Thus, the areas and communities which were not built-up during 2016, would appear as already inside the Contested Countryside. This effectively works to display how much sprawl has already occured in the span of 5 years since 2016.

Can I focus on a single location and compare it while switching the layers??

Unfortunately, due to the nature of the code and software, that can't be done.

Each time the layer is switched, it will load from the focus being on a default location specified in the code.

Please explore around the environment as you navigate back to your preferred area of interest.

Are the analyses results predictions for the urban development plans?

No, the analyses results do not predict any such thing.

It is a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis performed to highlight the areas which would be the most suitable for development (Or at most risk of sprawl).

The results are meant to be only be guides in visualizing these areas for our client and the viewers. The Team does not claim any responsibility in predicting future growth.