Geographic Information Systems

Catalog description

This course describes and explains the principles of GIScience (Geographic Information Science) and GIS (Geographic Information Systems). Building on the overall introduction in the prerequisite courses on the special characteristics of spatial data and how our earth is measured and mapped, Geography 363 focuses on how to use data to develop solutions for geographic representation and analysis tasks using GIS software and programming. This course provides students a basic knowledge of GIS with the following aspects: 1) introducing basic principles of programming and state-of-the-art computational tools for GIS; 2) presenting a comprehensive overview of the main methodologies available to GIScience, as well as their intuition as to how and when they can be applied; and 3) focusing on real world applications of these techniques in a geographical and applied context. By the end of the course, students will be able to: 1) develop a working knowledge of the application of GIScience techniques; 2) visualize geographic information through producing appropriate maps to high cartographic standards; 3) carry out spatial data management tasks; 4) interpret data and apply relevant spatial analyses to answer a variety of spatial problems; 5) explain and evaluate common issues with geographic data such as representation and uncertainty; 6) apply and critique (spatial) statistical analysis techniques to infer relationships between spatial phenomena; and 7) experience the diversity of the global spatial data landscape and evaluate the relative drawbacks and merits of different spatial datasets.