GEOG 488/588: Geographic Information Systems I


Graduate Project Description

A GIS project is required for graduate students. The project is intended to provide a deeper understanding of a GIS application through experience. The project should investigate a particular research problem using the GIS software packages that we use in class. You will need to acquire the spatial data and the project should involve some type of spatial analysis.  The deliverable is a presentation that you will present to the class. You should use the knowledge and skills you acquire in the class discussion, books, and practical component of the course. Every project must include the following sections: an Introduction, Methods, Results, and Conclusions.  

There are two stages to the project (the dates they are due are listed on the course schedule):

·         Submit a one or two page project proposal. It should include a research question, a detailed description of the spatial and attribute databases you will use, and a conceptual description of the methods you will use. 

·         Oral presentations.  The presentation should describe data sets, the analyses you performed, and display the maps and tabular output. 


It is suggested that you use secondary GIS data sources to do your project.  While you are welcome to digitize (heads-up or table) or do a GPS survey to create your own spatial data set, doing so is very time-consuming and is not the purpose of this project.  Doing GIS analyses is the purpose of this project.  You can download GIS data layers from the any number of on-line sources as well as obtain data from various other places (e.g. the student/data/gis folder on the I drive. Minott Kerr of Metro has compiled this nice list of Oregon specific spatial data web sites.
 

I have dropped examples of both project proposals and presentations on my ftp site. You can find a list of the projects here.



Geography Home Page

GEOG 488/588 Home Page