The first file that we got for this mini project is the coastline data from natural earth. The second file is the National Records of Scotland-Settlements 2016 Centroids which includes the location of various towns, villages and cities in Scotland. This file only provides just the location and not even the names of those settlements. I joined this file with a layer of population data also from the national records of Scotland. However, National Records of Scotland- Estimated population of settlements by broad age groups,mid-2016 is not geocoded, and contains not only the population but also the names and it has a column in common corresponding to a certain settlement code. We joined Settlements2016_Centroids layer with the population layer by going to properties of the Settlements2016_Centroids layer, going down to joins and adding a new join which is the population table. I joined them based on their common columns which was the settlement code. I saved the joined layer as a new shape file and named it JoinedSettlementData. Then I added the layer including rail stations (Stops). Ten we created buffers with 3 KM distance from each station. We want to see what settlements have overlap with the buffer. Instead of manually do that, I created a new layer which shows all of the cases in which the buffer around the station overlaps with a settlement. The new Intersection layer shows only those stations that overlapped with the Buffer. So the Intersection layer shows the communities within the 3 KM of stations.
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