GIS Term Project Guideline

 

Students registered in GEOG 588 (i.e., graduate level) are required to submit a typed project outline to my mailbox in 424 CH or email address (jduh@pdx.edu) by 5 pm on Oct 27. Your final term project will be carried out following the project outline. The outline should include the following information.

 

  1. Problem statement: A short paragraph describing the problem to be solved in your project and its significance and contribution to a broader context.
  2. Specific aims / objectives: Describe the questions you will answer using GIS approach.
  3. Study area and data layers: Describe your study area, the GIS data layers needed to achieve your aims/objectives, and the information that will be derived from analyzing these data layers.
  4. Methods, techniques, and assumptions: Describe the method and specific GIS techniques you will use to process your data. State the assumptions involved in your methods. You don’t have to spell out any specific GIS commands or operative procedures here, but you need to point out the relevant GIS techniques you will apply,  for example, using overlay analysis to generate development suitability information based on, say, soil and slope data.
  5. Expected results: Describe the intended products of your project. The results can be maps, findings, procedures (or algorithms), or a combination of them.
  6. Limitations and pitfalls: State what could be the limitations of your project and why.
  7. Literature cited.

 

The quality of your project outline is decided by the cohesiveness and logic of your problem statement, the clarity of your objectives, and the appropriateness of the methods and techniques. The complexity and comprehensiveness of your project will not be criteria in judging the quality of your project.