Administrative notes regarding lab exercises and schedule

• Next Monday: Go directly to the Room 37-312 lab at 2 PM. Lab Exercises #2 & #3 will be available online
• Lab Exercise grading
  • we aren't going to grade every detail
  • you'll get a 'check' = okay, 'check-plus' = especially good, or 'check-minus' = not as complete as we had hoped.
  • all together, the lab exercises count for 25% of semester grade.
• Lab Exercise purpose:
  • quick start with basic ArcGIS tools and features
  • highlight important ideas and methods
  • assist you in becoming more self-sufficient with ArcGIS help pages
  • as semester progresses, they will be less cookbook and a little more open ended
  • Don't just push the buttons to get the 'right' answer - pause to think about what you are trying to do, what info/tools are needed, and why ArcGIS is organized in a particular way.

Outline of Today

• Two handouts: pages 1-15 from Worboys and Chapter 1 from O'Sullivan and Unvwin
• Review Introductory GIS concepts from Lecture 1
• Continue discussion of vector and rastor data models and examples
• Thematic mapping issues: symbology, classification, and normalization

Components of GIS

• Hardware, Software, Data, People, Procedure, Network (Internet)
• GIS hardware is no longer extraordinary (nothing special about the hardware)
  • but often benefits from extra components
    • large monitor, disk drive, RAM
    • special (large) printers/plotters (for large, detailed, color maps)
    • special input devices (scanners, digitizers, GPS recorders, PDAs, etc.)
• Data models and algorithms - what is important about the information that's stored and analyzed
• representing and managing information about what is where
• Often, the output comprises maps and images
• BUT, not necessarily: e.g., "which clinic is closest"
• AND, what is stored may 'look' very different
• special functions that work on geographic information in order to:
• display on the screen (interconnected maps and tables)
• edit, change, transform (via map or table)
• measure distances, areas, proximity, adjacency
• combine (overlay) maps of the same area together

Example GIS Applications - think about useful data models for each example

• Resource inventory (what is available where?)
• Thematic maps (spatial pattern of population density, income, household size, etc.)
• Network Analysis (How to get somewhere by road in the shortest amount of time?)
• Location Analysis (Where is the 'best' place to locate a shopping mall?)
• Terrain Analysis (What is the danger zone for a natural disaster? What can be seen from here [visibility analysis])
• Spatio-Temporal Analysis (Land use: what has changed over the last twenty years, and why?)
• Runoff models (If it rains 1 inch in 3 hours, how big is the storm surge at the bottom of the hill?)

Examples to view and discuss: which are GIS? what to learn? how to add your own data/analyses?

• Spatial analysis using commercial GIS software
  • In Lab #1: ArcMap (part of ESRI's ArcGIS) to do thematic mapping of Cambridge block groups.
  • Thus far, little spatial analysis (only simple thematic mapping) and mostly visualization of geographic patterns
  • Spatial analysis example: which Cambridge housing sales are in low-income neighborhoods, in flood plains, near major roads...
• Private sector mapping services - try these on your own
  • Mapquest or Google-Maps to find a location and generate a street map: www.mapquest.com, maps.google.com
  • Google-Earth or Virtual Earth to navigate and 'fly' over the earth: earth.google.com, local.live.com
    • Note overlays of vector (roads), raster (imagery), 3D (buildings) and mashups of user-generated data
    • Explore user interface (managing 3D view) and virtual earth's "bird's eye" view (using pictometry data)
• Web services using open-source (LAMP) tools
  • Compare ways of accessing data on MassGIS website: http://www.mass.gov/mgis
  • via ordinary browser, Oliver (java) applet, and OGC Web Mapping Services protocols

Evolution of GIS: A Timeline from 1970s to now

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  GISytems, GIScience, GIStudies, and GIServices

  • GISystems – A computerized tool that helps solve geographic problems.
  • GIScience – The development of data models, algorithms, and methods for representing geography and spatial relationships in order to support spatial analysis and location-based computing
  • GIA - Geographic Information and Analysis
  • GIStudies – the systematic study of society’s use of geographic information, including institutional, organizational and procedural issues.
  • GIServices – The business of providing GIS data and analysis tools to GIS users (often by chaining interoperable components in lego-block fashion).

   

• What are the various parts of ArcGIS and what do they do
• How is ArcMap organized
• Can you utilize ArcGIS Help effectively
• How can a problem be split into operations that utilize the underlying 'vector' and 'raster' data models
  • E.G., which Cambridge housing sales occurred in low-income neighborhoods

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