GEOG 4550/5550 – Advanced GIS

Fall, 2002

Wednesday 6:00-8:50 PM

Instructor:	Minhe Ji	Office:	ENV 310G
Email:	jminhe@unt.edu	Office Hour:	MR 2:30-4:30 PM
Phone:	940-565-2377	Webpage:	www.geog.unt.edu/~jminhe

Course Objectives

This course consists of one independent project designed and conducted by the student and exploration of two advanced GIS topics. Each student will identify a project to be approved by the instructor during the first two weeks of the class. From the second week onward, students are expected to work independently using CSAM or facilities offsite as needed to complete their chosen project. The student will periodically discuss project progress and demonstrate provisional results to the class. Most of the time required for completing the students’ projects will be outside of scheduled class hours – students should expect to spend approximately 6-10 hours per week in order to complete a significant project.

To help students formulate and conduct a rigorous GIS project, the two GIS topics chosen for this semester include 1) designing a well-structured ArcGIS geodatabase for the student’s field of interest and 2) exploring various GIS-based multicriteria decision analysis methods. Exploration of these topics will be in the format of a forum. Students will be assigned assorted reading materials and homework each week and come to class in the next weekly meeting to discuss and demonstrate their findings. As part of the independent project, students will have a chance to implement the designed geodatabases and the selected analysis procedures in the ArcGIS environment.

Course Grading

The grade for the class will be based on three considerations: 1) the quality of the project and level of effort and sophistication required for its execution, 2) the student’s presentations in class during the semester, and 3) the final project deliverables.

To ensure success of the project, a project plan is required within the first two weeks of the semester. This should detail the student’s proposed project, including its scope and objectives, what software will be used, what data will be used and its sources, what processing, programming, and analysis will be done, and what the final deliverables will be. It is particularly important to ensure that the data required for the project be available in an appropriate form within the time constraints.

The final deliverables must include: 1) a hard-copy report (10-15 pages) documenting the project, 2) any map, aml, avenue, VB script, or database resulting from the project, and 3) a final presentation in Microsoft powerpoint format. Students with superior projects will be strongly urged to develop a poster for presentation at South Central Arc Users Group conference next year or make a presentation at the next North Central Texas GIS group meeting.

You must also submit an evaluation of all final presentations except your own. Your evaluation should 1) identify and rank order the five strongest reports and briefly justify their selection and 2) identify and rank order the five weakest reports and briefly justify their selection. (In other words, identify the people you would and would not “hire to do a GIS project.”)

Tentative Schedule

WEEK	TOPICS
1	Course introduction. Discussion of project plans. Reading assignment for the first topic – ArcGIS geodatabase design.
2	Detailed discussion of project plans. Steps in building a geodatabase.
3	Your project plans due. Object modeling and geodatabases.
4	How maps inform, GIS data representations, and the structure of geographic data.
5	Smart features, the shape of features, and managing work flow with versions.
6	Linear modeling with networks, cell-based modeling, surface modeling with TINS.
7	No class. Students implement selected geodatabase design in ArcGIS.
8	Midterm presentation. Reading assignment for the second topic – GIS-based multicriteria decision analysis.
9	Introduction to Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MDA) and spatial MDA.
10	Evaluation criteria. Decision alternatives and constraints.
11	Project progress reports. Criterion weighting.
12	Decision rules and sensitivity analysis.
13	Case studies: Land suitability analysis, habitat restoration problem.
14	Case studies: Health care resource allocation, site selection problem.
15	Final presentation.
16	Project deliverables and evaluations due.

Special Notes

1. The project is intended to demonstrate your ability to independently conduct work in GIS. While guidance will be available, it is important that you develop your own problem solving skills.

2. “Incompletes” will only be given under exceptional circumstances such as serious illness. The last day to drop the course is October 4. After that date, a course grade other than “Incomplete” will be assigned, which can only be changed by retaking the course.

Assorted Readings (An incomplete list)

GIS Database Design

Zeiler, M. 1999. Modeling Our World: The ESRI Guide to Geodatabase Design. ESRI. ISBN 1-879102-62-5.

MacDonald, A. 2001. Building a Geodatabase. ESRI. ISBN 1-879102-99-4.

ESRI, 2002. ArcGIS Desktop Data Models. (www.esri.com > online support center > arcgis desktop > data models)

Course Grading

Tentative Schedule

Final presentation.

Project deliverables and evaluations due.

Special Notes

Assorted Readings (An incomplete list)

GIS Database Design

GIS-Based Multicriteria Decision Analysis