Guofeng Cao CyberInfrastructure and Geospatial Information Laboratory Department of Geography National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Overview of Geog 480

Course Description This course is intended to introduce students to basic principles in the rapidly growing field of Geographic Information Science (GIScience) and commonly used methods in spatial analysis. The course will be held in a lecture format combined with hands-on projects. The emphasis is on the concepts and principles that underlie the development of GIS and its intelligent use. The knowledge that students gain in this course will be general and will not be limited to a specific GIS product.

Survey Name, major, year What do you expect to learn from this class? GIS experiences (courses taken, projects participated, etc.) Programming experiences (programming languages, databases, and etc) Open Source experiences o Unix/linux like operating system? Note: Don’t be scared, it would be totally fine if you don’t have such experiences.

Class Information Instructor: Guofeng Cao ( o Lectures: Tues/Thurs 3:30pm-4:50pm (Davenport Hall 338) o Office Hours: Tues/Thus: 2:00pm -3:30pm (Davenport Hall 316) Prerequisites: o Geog 379 or consent of instructor o General Background: Knowledge on GIS, Cartography, Database and information system will help understand the course materials. Course website: o Textbook: o Worboys, M. and Duckham, M GIS – A Computing Perspective, Second Edition. New York, NY: CRC Press. Worboys, M. and Duckham, M GIS – A Computing Perspective, Second Edition. New York, NY: CRC Press. o Smith, M. D, Longley, P. and Goodchild, M. F Geospatial Analysis – A Comprehensive guide (free) Smith, M. D, Longley, P. and Goodchild, M. F Geospatial Analysis – A Comprehensive guide o Other reference materials

Course Work Two midterm exams: 40% ( 20% each ) Course projects: o The project will be divided into four stages, and report of each stage plus lecture related problems considered as four assignments (15% each * 4 = 60%); the first stage starts from end of week3 o The project will be evaluated based on (1) technical innovation, (2) thoroughness of the work, and (3) clarity of presentation o Team composition: teams must include no more than 4 students and 2 graduate students

Topic Coverage of Geog 480 Concepts of GIS (Textbook: Chap. 1 – 9) o Database o Spatial concepts o Geospatial Data Models o Representations o Spatial Analysis o Spatial Query o Architecture o Interface o Spatial Uncertainty Hands-on Tutorials on open source GIS o Why bother using open source tools? o PostGIS (open source spatial database) o Geoserver (open source geospatial data sharing) o OpenLayers (free maps for the web )

Research Frontiers in GIScience Spatiotemporal dynamics Social media analysis Volunteer geographic information Spatiotemporal statistics (data mining) Semantic geospatial web “Big” spatiotemporal data Cyberinfrastructure-enabled GIS (CyberGIS) High performance spatiotemporal computing …

Useful links Cyberinfrastructure and Geospatial Information Laboratory CyberGIS Speaker Series ESRI International User Conference o July , San Diego Convention Center o Student Assistantship Program Includes registration, accommodation, meals, Apply online: assistantshttp:// assistants ESRI Summer Internship Program

Introduction

Information systems: an association of people, machines, data, and procedures working together to collect, manage, and distribute information of importance to individuals or organizations Geographic information system (GIS): a computer-based information system that enables capture, modeling, storage, retrieval, sharing, manipulation, and presentation of geographically referenced data Geographic Information Science (GISc, or GISci, GIScience): studies the theory behind the development, use and application of GIS Geospatial data: geographically referenced data What is GIS

Elements of GIS Databases elements Data Processing element Data storage and retrieval element Data sharing element Data presentation element Spatial reasoning element Accuracy, precision, and reliability Spatiotemporal element

Data and information Context: the structure of interrelationships between data and how data is collected, processed, used, and understood within an application o Understanding the data model and the limitations of data, are elements of the context for data Data is only useful, taking on value as information, within its context information = data + context

The Nature of Geographic Data Spatial (and temporal) Context: “Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things” o Waldo Tobler’s First Law (TFL) of geography o nearby things are more similar than distant things o phenomena vary slowly over the Earth's surface o Compare time series

The Nature of Geographic Data Implications of Tobler’s First Law: o We can do samplings and fill the gap using estimation procedures (e.g. weather stations) o Spatial patterns o Image a world without TFL: White noise No polygons (how to draw a polygon on a white noise map?)

The Nature of Geographic Data Spatial Heterogeneity o Earth’s surface is non-stationary o Laws of physical sciences remain constant, virtually everything else changes Elevation, Climate, temperatures Social conditions o Global model might be inconsistent with regional models: Spatial Simpson’s Paradox

The Nature of Geographic Data Fractal Behavior o What happens as scale of map changes? o Coast of Maine Implications: o Volume of geographic features tends to be underestimated Lengths of lines Surface areas

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