Urban Planning 206B

ADVANCED GIS METHODS

Tuesdays 5pm-9pm

 

Leo Estrada

Hagai Katz and Eric Lomeli

 

 

Class Objectives:

            The purpose of this course is to enable students who have taken the Introductory course to advance in their understanding and analytical capacities in the use of Geographic Information System tools. The class will be based almost entirely on ArcGIS 8.1. The typical class will begin with a discussion of some items that will aid students in transitioning from ArcView to ArcGIS. This will be followed by the presentation of a particular spatial analysis method. An in-class exercise will follow to illustrate the use of that method. Once the basics have been illustrated, students will be encouraged to pursue their own interests using the data provided or by obtaining relevant information from another source applicable to the method.

 

Class Requirements:

Several methods and techniques will be taught in class each week. Students are expected to experiment with each method and to select 6 of the nine methods to develop maps based on their own interest to be posted as evidence that each student has mastered that methodology. A final project is required that meets the requirements of the final project þ. Generally speaking, the final project will utilize a set of analytic methods to review a research question or analyze a policy issue.

 

Required Textbook:

Getting to Know ArcGIS. Students are expected to go through the tutorial chapters of Getting to Know ArcGIS on one’s own during the early stages of the course. Class discussions will not teach ArcGIS, rather enhance and add on what is taught in the book. Other readings will be distributed during the course related to analytic methods.

 

Final project requirements:

The final project is expected to be an analysis of a research question or a policy issue, using at least three of the advanced GIS skills discussed in the class (see list bellow). You are expected to pose a research question or a policy problem that interests you, describe it briefly, and answer that question using GIS. You will usually need at least 5 maps to do so in a satisfactory way.
Thus, the project has to be question driven, and not merely descriptive.

 

Skills list:

  • Grid analysis
  • Geocoding
  • Spatial analysis
  • Network analysis
  • Geo-statistics
  • Community/neighborhood indicators
  • Time series
  • Aerial Imagery/Topography/Hillshade
  • Spatial segregation indicators
  • Using archival data
  • Using elections data

 

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