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Fall 2012
This Fall, 11.520 will be taught by Prof. Sarah Williams and will use this Stellar website: https://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/11/fa12/11.205/. The first class will be lab orientation session in Room 37-312 on Wednesday, Sept. 5, or Thursday, Sept. 6, at 4 pm.
The webpage you are currently viewing is from Fall 2010 and is maintained to facilitate access to that semester's lecture notes and exercises. Please note that, for Fall 2012, the first half of 11.520 is combined with 11.205 (the required half-semester GIS class for MCPs). Also, 11.188 (the undergraduate lab) will be taught separately in the Spring and will not be offered in Fall 2012.
Course
Description (Fall 2010)
This class uses lab exercises and a workshop setting to help
students develop a solid understanding of the planning and public
management uses of geographic information systems (GIS). The goals
are to help students:
- Acquire technical skills in the
use of GIS software.
- Acquire qualitative methods skills
in data and document gathering, analyzing information, and
presenting results.
- Investigate the potential and practicality
of GIS technologies in a typical planning setting and evaluate
possible applications.
The
workshop teaches GIS techniques and basic database management at a
level that extends somewhat beyond the thematic mapping and data
manipulation skills included in the MCP core (the half-semester GIS and spatial analysis class, 11.205). Both 11.205 and 11.520/11.188 cover basic thematic mapping and the buffering and overlay operations (using vector and raster data) that are involved in basic 'site suitability' assessments. The full-semester 11.520/11.188 class adds a bit more database management (using MS-Access), an introduction to model building tools (Model Builder), and a small, individual project. We try to teach GIS methods and techniques with some attention to open-ended planning questions that invite
spatial analysis but will
- require judgement and exploration
to select relevant data and mapping techniques,
- involve mixing and matching new,
local data with extracts from official records (such as
census data, parcel data and regional employment and population
forecasts),
- utilize spatial analysis techniques
such as buffering, address matching, overlays
- use other modeling and visualization
techniques beyond thematic mapping, and
- raise questions about the skills,
strategy, and organizational support needed to sustain such
analytic capability within a variety of local and regional
planning settings.
Students seeking graduate credit
should enroll in the subject 11.520; undergraduates should enroll
in the subject 11.188. The subjects meet together and have nearly
identical content.
Class
Meetings
- Lecture: Wednesday, 2-3:30 PM in Room 14E-310
- Lab Preparation & Lab: Monday, 2:00-6:00
in Room 37-312
[Hearing the Lab prep and starting the exercise are the key lab parts. Students can leave for other classes beginning at 3:30 or 4 and finish the exercises later on their own. To accomodate the large class, the lab exercise presentation will be repeated at 4:15 so the 4-6 pm period can serve as an alternative lab time slot.]
- Additional optional lab times to be arranged. Currently, these are Friday, 10:30 - 1:30 and Sunday, 4:00 - 7:00.
11.520 website design - Jee-seong Chung
Last modified on 4 September 2012 (JF)
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