Welcome to the class!
This course is Analysis of Spatial Data, with a strong focus on GIS analysis and the automation of analysis procedures.
This is a practical course. After this course, you will be able to acquire and analyze spatial data for your own research and purposes.
Hold onto your hats folks, because this will be one heck of a 15-week ride!! No doubt it will be a lot of work, but data analysis and GIS is just so dang fun that I promise it will be worth it.
This blog should be checked regularly for any important information, such as changes to my office hours, assignment changes, or class cancellations (but don't hold your breath waiting for that one...).
What does this mean?
This means after this course, you will be able to perform a site selection analysis using weighted average ranking, create an automated model, perform viewshed analysis, perform shortest path analysis, generate 3D terrains, understand basic interpolation techniques, and more. Bottom line is that you will develop an understanding of many of the ArcGIS extensions in order to perform whatever analysis you need. This course will focus most extensively on the Spatial Analyst extension, but will also explore the 3D Analyst and Geostatistical Analyst extensions as well.
What experience do I need?
An introductory understanding of GIS and a basic working knowledge of ArcGIS. This course can, in theory, be taken simultaneously with an intro to GIS course, but it is inadvisable.
How hard will this course be?
A bit challenging. Between homework assignments, projects, presentations, and exams there will always be something to keep you busy. No worries, though, as most projects and presentations will be done in groups. A bit of a warning: The midterm will be challenging. The grade distribution on my midterms are regularly 50% 85+ and 50% 65-.
I understand it will be challenging, but will it be fun?
Yes! All class exercises and projects will incorporate real-world, practical, analysis concepts and procedures. The final project is a project of your own choosing, so you will be able to apply the skills learned to your own research/interests.
This sounds pretty good. I think you are the best instructor ever!
Yep... You're well on your way to earning an 'A' with thinking like that.
Here's what I want for us to do:
Homework:
- Duplicate pizza demo for a new Cici's Pizzeria.
- Create a Word document containing the (1) reclassification scheme and (2) weights for each layer in the analysis. Also include a screenshot (print-screen and paste) of the generated suitability layer. (It will save you all a whole heap of time if you take screenshots of your reclassifications/weghts instead of attempting to retype them.) There is no need to print out this document or send it electronically to me. I will circulate around the room and look at each person's work next week.
- If you want to follow the walkthrough, use the Guide_WithGeoprocessing.doc.
There are 8 layers that the Model takes into consideration when generating the suitability layer. One of these layers is the distance to existing California Pizza Kitchen restaurants. Of course, this layer is not relevant for CiCi's.If you assign a weight of 0 (zero), this layer is removed from the equation. So you will then have only 7 layers whose weights must add up to 1.0.
It is not necessary to acquire any additional data. You do not need to consider the locations of any existing CiCi's. Yes, many of you can generate a layer consisting of all CiCi's in the metroplex (either through ReferenceUSA or by querying/exporting the existing pizzeria feature class) but we have not yet learned how to integrate it into our analysis.
Each student will receive a 12 month educational license for ArcGIS 9.3. This software includes single-use code. This means you cannot install the software on more than 1 computer.
When registering the software on your own computers, you are prompted to specify which extensions you would like to trial. You need to select at least 'Spatial Analyst', '3D Analyst', 'Network Analyst', and 'Geostatistical Analyst'. It does you no harm, however, to simply select all of them. I recommend you select them all.
From ESRI:
Please advise the students that as they register the software, they should make sure to write out the full school name in the organization field rather than using any acronyms, the word "Student", or the word "Self". When those words or initials are used, there is a delay in the registration time as it is required that ESRI manually review the registration rather than having the process be completed automatically.
It is advisable that you install ArcGIS 9.3.1 Service Pack 2. You want the ArcGIS Desktop (ArcInfo, ArcEditor, ArcView) version (121mb).