Community Service with Web-Based Geographic Information Science and Technology (GIST)
Spring 2016 Semester @ UMass | Natural Resources Conservation 597WG |
Fridays 1:25-4:25 pm | Public Policy and Administration 597WG |
Course Description
Maps on the World-Wide Web are so commonplace that it’s hard to find a commercial web site without one, and many sites have mapping as a central focus. Even individuals can put points on a map relatively easily. But when it comes to full-featured interactive maps that leverage political boundaries, census data, landscape features, elevation imagery, et al., to help analyze and evaluate custom information, there is still a significant level of geographic understanding and programming expertise required to pull it all together — important skills for the twenty-first century.
Geographic Information Science and Technologies (GIST) have been present on the Web from early on, and now take the form of a spatial data infrastructure that brings together map servers, databases, and client software with a “glue” of open protocols for exchanging information. Commercial products from Google and Esri predominate, but open-source technologies are available that make it possible to customize the user mapping experience with little cost. Open-access data is becoming increasingly available, whether from government, educational institutions, or “crowd-sourced”. Many nonprofit organizations and educational institutions in our community can benefit from inexpensive GIST applications that help illuminate the difficult problems they tackle and facilitate their solutions.
In this course you will work in teams to design and implement a Web-based open-source GIST project for a community organization or one of the Five Colleges. In the process you will learn and understand how the World-Wide Web works, the nature of geographic information and how it is processed and visualized on the Web, and the importance of open standards, software, and data. In addition you will be able to analyze and evaluate possible approaches to geospatial problems.
The course is open to all Five College students with some some background in GIS, such as NRC 585, Geography 352, or courses offered by one of the other Five Colleges. Computer programming experience is helpful but not required. It may be of particular interest to those majoring in Environmental Studies, Computer Science, Biology, Geology, Sociology, Economics, and/or Statistics. Amherst, Hampshire, Mt. Holyoke and Smith College students must contact the registrar's office at their home school for information on how to participate.
Instructors
Charles Schweik, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Andy Anderson, Amherst College
Jon Caris, Smith College
Learning Goals
Students will understand how the World-Wide Web works, the nature of geographic information and how it is processed and visualized on the Web, the importance of open standards, software, and data, the value of teamwork, and how to creatively apply their knowledge of GIST and Web programming to benefit their community.
Learning Outcomes
Students can create interactive maps on the Web using a spatial data infrastructure, specifically:
- composite geographic layers to facilitate visual analysis;
- join tables of information from different sources
- build a spatial database and use spatial selections to focus analysis;
- display raster data sets and georeference scanned maps;
- transform vector and raster data into more useful representations;
- mark up web pages that contain text, imagery, and vector graphics;
- programmatically create web pages;
- add interactivity to web pages to allow the choice of data to display;
- send requests back to web servers for selection, analysis, and updates of data.
Preliminary Syllabus
Week | Day Date | Topic | Concepts | Technologies |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Fr 1/22 | Web Maps and Open Standards | Web Interoperability Spatial Data Infrastructure Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS) Open Data Formats Open Web Standards |
QGIS + GeoServer Web Mapping Service (WMS) Web Feature Service (WFS) |
2 | Fr 1/29 | Mapping Place-Name Data | Tables Relational Databases (nonspatial) Queries, Joining, Analysis |
QGIS + PostGres Comma-Separated Values (CSV) Structured Query Language (SQL) Git |
3 | Fr 2/5 | Mapping Coordinate Data | Spatial Databases Projections, Web Mercator Spatial Indexing Web Data Formats |
QGIS + PostGres + PostGIS Well-Known Text (WKT) CSV, GPX, KML, GeoJSON |
4 | Fr 2/12 | Mapping Raster Data | Raster Data Formats Georeferencing Tiling |
QGIS + PostGres + PostGIS JPEG, PNG, GeoTIFF, etc. |
5 | Fr 2/19 | Transforming Map Data | Raster Arithmetic Geoprocessing |
QGIS + PostGres + PostGIS GeoServer + GeoWebCache |
6 | Fr 2/26 | Creating the Web | Document Markup Styling Graphics |
Text Editor + Web Browser + Git HyperText Markup Language (HTML) Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) |
7 | Fr 3/4 | Programming the Web | Programming: data, operators, loops, functions. | Text Editor + Web Browser JavaScript |
8 | Fr 3/11 | Interacting with the Web | Asynchronous Programming Client-Server Interaction |
Text Editor + Web Browser + Git GeoServer + Leaflet HTTP, AJAX |
9 | Fr 3/25 | Transacting on the Web | Vector Editing Forms |
Text Editor + Web Browser + Git GeoServer + Leaflet Representational State Transfer (REST) Web Feature Service – Transactional (WFS-T) |
10 | Fr 4/1 | Project Work | ||
11 | Fr 4/8 | Project Work | ||
12 | Fr 4/15 | Project Work | ||
13 | Fr 4/22 | Project Work | ||
14 | Fr 4/29 | Project Presentations |