Geography 464 Winter, 2012
GIS and Decision Support
Art Hall 003

12:30 - 1:20 MWF Lecture; MTWTH Labs
http://courses.washington.edu/geog464

Instructors:

Tim Nyerges, Professor, nyerges@u.washington.edu

Smith 402, Office hours : MW 11:30-12:20 AM, or by appointment

Guilan Weng, Teaching Assistant, Wengguilan@gmail.com

Smith 430, Office/lab hours as announced in Section

 

Overview:

This course is designed as a learning experience about GIS-oriented decision support methods. The course makes use of concepts from regional and urban planning, improvement programming, and implementation-level (PPI) work to inform the process of GIS methods. The course makes use of issues in land use, transportation, or water resources (LUTWR) to focus the substantive context of GIS work.  We treat PPI processes and LUTWR substance within the context of GIS-based decision support methods in an integrative way.  This perspective leads us to issues about urban growth management in connection with community and regional sustainability in connection with approaches to integrative resource management, particularly from a decision support perspective. GIS, as an information technology, and particularly a decision support technology in a broad sense will mature, if we challenge it to address complex and demanding problems.  Furthermore, we develop our own expertise when we challenge ourselves to use GIS technology in complex ways.  Group-based decision support of LUTWR within PPI processes is among the more complex and important topics in the 21st century – because the integration of these ideas can be a practical (as well as theoretical) foundation for addressing growth management and sustainability concerns. These kinds of concerns are highlighted within a memo about place-based policy analysis from the Obama Administration. This course is taught at an intermediate level. Consequently, students are expected to have taken at least a beginning level course in GIS mapping, and have some exposure and interest in regional and urban topics.

 

Although there are several definitions for GIS, Prof. Nyerges’ working definition of GIS for this course that integrates three perspectives (components, processes, and purpose) is: a combination of hardware, software, data, people, procedures, and institutional arrangements for collecting, storing, manipulating, analyzing, and displaying information about spatially distributed phenomena for the purpose of inventory, decision making and/or problem solving within operations, management, strategic contexts as related to urban-regional issues. Although Prof. Nyerges’ expertise focuses on land use, transportation, and water resource issues, other urban-regional issues are treated based on teaching assistant and student interest through readings and class discussion. 

 

The fundamental learning objectives for students in this course are to:

  • understand the intellectual benefits and costs of integrated data processing strategies with GIS, particularly within the context of urban-regional growth management and sustainability issues. These strategies include (but are not limited to) problem definition, database design, data collection, data structuring, data analysis, and information presentation in a modeling approach.
  • master the use of several GIS data processing strategies as applied through hands-on use of GIS software to complete laboratory assignments as practice in critical enquiry.
  • experience the process of working in groups in order to encourage a broader and deeper understanding about the value of using geographic information to address complex urban-regional geographic issues within a context of a pluralistic society, i.e., a society that mediates multi-valued interests for overall improvement.

Required Reading:

- Nyerges, T. and Jankowski, P. 2010, Regional and Urban GIS: A Decision Support Approach, (aka RUGIS) Guilford Press.

- Selected readings – available directly through various web sites as indicated by specific URL.

Optional Books:

- Michael Zeiler, Modeling Our World, ESRI Press, 2000

- ESRI, Getting to Know ArcGIS, ESRI Press, 2004

 

Grading:
- Two exams containing short answer essay questions (1st exam is 25% of grade; 2nd exam is 25% of grade = 50% of total grade)
- Six lab assignments plus a final project lab assignment with presentation (50% of total grade).

- Peer evaluation for final project activity is required.

Software to be used in Geography’s Sherman Lab in Smith 401: ArcInfo 10.0 running on Windows operating system. Software is also available on workstations in the Smith 411 Commons Room and in Smith 415C Geography Collaboratory.