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Exercise: Mitigating violations via relationships

This exercise builds on the unrelated-facilities exercise from Module 6 and walks through resolving every remaining violation in a starter project using only relationship and barricading edits — no geometry changes, no explosive changes. It is the canonical demonstration that most early-stage violations are data-completeness issues, not real siting conflicts.

Learning objectives

By the end of this exercise you should be able to:

  • Mitigate a violation by assigning the correct relationship code or group
  • Mitigate a violation by adding a barricade where the criteria path allows
  • Recognize a violation that cannot be mitigated by relationship/barricading alone (a "real" siting conflict)

Prerequisites​

Setup​

[TODO: FILL IN — provide a starter project ID, GeoJSON, or shapefile that produces a representative mix of violations (artifact-resolvable and real-conflict). Until then, the walkthrough below assumes you have a project that already produces several violations after a default analysis.]

Walkthrough​

Step 1 — Triage the violations​

  1. Open the project results panel and run analysis

  2. Note the total violation count and the per-pair entries

  3. For each violation, walk the diagnostic flow from Violations:

    • What is the relationship code on the pair? Should it be different?
    • Is a barricade reduction available for this pair? Is the relationship sameline?
    • Is the layer flavor correct on both features?
    • Are attributes complete and accurate?

Step 2 — Apply relationship corrections​

  1. For pairs that should be sameline or related but are currently unrelated, set the relationship — per-facility for one-offs, via relationship groups for groups of facilities that share an operation
  2. Re-run analysis after each batch of corrections
  3. Note how many violations resolve at this step alone

In most projects, this single pass clears a large share of the violations.

Step 3 — Apply barricading where allowed​

For violations that remain on sameline pairs:

  1. Identify pairs where geometry permits an effective barricade between PES and ES

  2. Add the barricade feature with the correct attributes

  3. Re-run analysis and confirm the K18 → K9 reduction activated where expected

Step 4 — Identify real conflicts​

Violations that survive Steps 2 and 3 are either:

  • Genuine siting conflicts that need geometry, NEW reduction, or protective construction — escalate appropriately
  • Data issues elsewhere (wrong attributes, wrong type code, wrong layer) — diagnose with the analysis path

Do not mistake a remaining violation for a real conflict without confirming Step 4's other branches first.

Discussion​

Most siting projects start with more violations than they end with — and most of the early ones are data-completeness issues, not real conflicts. A disciplined order of operations is:

  1. Classify all relationships
  2. Add valid barricades on sameline pairs
  3. Confirm attributes and layer flavors
  4. Only then consider geometry changes

Skipping the first three steps inflates the perceived problem and makes layout decisions harder than they need to be. The discipline this exercise builds is the order itself.