1 GISC 6387 GIS Workshop Dr. Ronald Briggs UT-Dallas

2 Goal of the GIS Workshop Each student independently designs and conducts a GIS-based project –develops and demonstrates his/her competence in using GIS techniques in a substantive application area Project plan –Due within the first two weeks of the semester Midterm progress report –and comments/suggestions on other student’s projects in your session Final in-class project presentation, together with web- enabled final report –and evaluation of all other student’s projects

3 Project Plan should explain: the scope and objective of the project the data to be used, and its source(s) the processing, programming, and/or analysis to be applied to the data in order to meet the objective; and the results and conclusions you expect I need this by within two weeks!

4 Midterm Presentations should: explain your project and its objectives summarize key relevant literature and/or describe similar projects already conducted describes the data and methodology that you are using to meet your objectives detail progress and successes to date discuss problems encountered and how they have been or will be overcome provide preliminary results/outputs, if available. overview work still needed to complete the project.

5 The final in-class presentation Should be modeled as a report to your project sponsor (the person footing the bill!) which: explains the project and its objectives summarizes relevant literature and/or similar existing projects describes the data and analysis used to meet these objectives discusses problems encountered and how they were overcome presents and summarizes results and outputs draws final conclusions based on project objectives

6 The final deliverables must include: a report documenting the project –as a Word document with all graphics and supporting materials internal to that document –or, as a WWW site with all file references relative to the internal file structure of the CD, any GIS data sets, computer programs, ArcGIS scripts or databases resulting from the project. Students with superior projects will be urged to make a presentation at the South Central Arc Users Group conference (usually in February). All projects will be placed on the UTD GIS web site unless there are proprietary issues.

7 Evaulation of Presentations You must also submit, via to me comments and suggestions on all student’s midterm presentations –Identification information will be removed and the comments distributed to all class members an evaluation of final student presentations. –identify and rank order the five strongest reports (1=strongest) and briefly justify their selection and –identify and rank order the five weakest reports (1=weakest) and briefly justify their selection. (In other words, identify the people you would, and would not, hire to do your GIS project!) Multiple presentation sessions will likely be scheduled. You are required to attend at least two. Ranks should combine presentations in both sessions.

8 Project Types GIS data set generation –Often conducted for some organization (city, etc.) for the purpose of representing and describing features of the real world which are relevant to that organization’s mission –For the GIS Workshop must go beyond repetitive ‘grunt’ work to include some innovative element involves unique challenges and thus not commonly collected data collection automation analysis of resulting data GIS technology exploration and/or tool development –In depth exploration of an existing technology, including implementation what it does, how it works, how and when you use it –Developing a better technology Automation or software tool development Spatial Analysis –Describing spatial patterns and understanding the underlying processes –Normally approached by advancing hypotheses derived from the literature of existing research, designing a project to test them, which is mindful of the “pitfalls of spatial analysis” (see spatanal.ppt from GISC 6382)spatanal.ppt

9 All requirements set out here are based on The Components of An Analysis as discussed in GISC 6382 and 6384 Objective, which explains the purpose of the analysis and explains why it is significant, possibly including –Hypotheses, which are potential explanations which you intend to test Literature Review, which identifies the key pieces of existing research relevant to the project and the hypotheses you have advanced Data Sources, which identify and explain the data used. Analysis and Methodology, which explains the methodology applied to the data. Results and Discussion, which describes your main research findings, whether or not your hypotheses were upheld, and any potential problems with your interpretation of the results Conclusions, which discusses the implications of your finding relative to your initial project objective. References, which provides standard format citations for all resources drawn upon for the project. See: For even more detail, go to:

10 Literature Reviews All research and analysis should build upon the existing base of knowledge It is imperative that you identify the existing state of knowledge in order to –Establish appropriate objectives –Advance meaningful hypotheses –Select and use legitimate methodologies This is accomplished by reviewing the existing literature On scientific knowledge published in refereed journals On best practices by other organizations

11 Doing a Literature Review Doing a standard Google search is not sufficient! Instead, use Google Scholar If you access Google Scholar from on-campus via the UTD Library web page at it will give you automatic access to materials subscribed to by UTD library (very clever!) For information on how to configure Google Scholar to access UTD library materials from off- campus, go to This site also gives guidelines on when to use bibliographic databases in place of Google Scholar Databases available at UTD for literature searches, covering both citations and complete text, can be found at: The single most commonly used bibliographic database is probably “Web of Science” at Or directly at For information on accessing these library databases from off-campus, go to: Because of licensing restrictions, you will need to follow these instructions for off-campus access

12 How to Format Citations It is important that you learn to use the correct format when citing literature Doing a copy/paste of a URL, which may be gone tomorrow, is not sufficient! The Chicago Manual of Style is the accepted norm. The Chicago Manual of Style. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 15th ed., 2003 –Or replicate the format used by any mainline GIS journal A nice summary is available at: – –Or, –Use it!!!! For presentations, include the full citation on slides where you reference the item, in addition to having them in your list of references at the end. A person reading can "flip to the end" to check a reference, but the listener cannot do that with a presentation! You must format citations according to the Chicago Manual of Style or similar!

13 And now to your projects….