Me

Peter Halls – University GIS Advisor / Senior GIS Consultant A geologist by background Became involved in GIS/GISc as a geologist

at the Geological Survey Methodologist Responsible for teaching, advice and support

and research enabling in GIS/Remote Sensing at staff / graduate level across the university

Contacting me

Email: P.Halls@york.ac.uk Telephone: 3806 Office: LFA/114

Office Hours: ring or email first to check I'm available

Or trust to luck! VLE course will remain open until August

Materials can also be accessed through the VLE-based GIS Community site

Self enrolment: search on the Community tab Facility for discussion with others exploiting GISc

Teaching methodology Mixture of theory and practicals, with most of

the theory online rather than lectured. Online material, practicals and practical

submission uses the University VLE http://vle.york.ac.uk/ - your ordinary username and password.

I will use the Course Blog to comment on any issues that arise from the exercises or submitted assignments, however the latter are optional; you may also use the blog for your own comments, etc.

The materials use elements of Problem Based Learning, with theory behind the exercises.

You should have, under “Courses in which you are enrolled:”

Computing Service Introduction to Geographic Information Systems

The module menu provides: Announcements Staff Information Course Materials lead to the class

exercises Exercises class exercises Assignments hand-in exercises Course Blog Breaking News

The Assignments section both links to the assignments and to the online submission tool.

Course Plan Week 1 : Getting Started

Creating maps in ArcMap and selection by attributes

Week 2 : Thinking Spatially Map reading (optional) and how maps work;

how we understand and communicate the space around us; Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis

Week 3 : Asking Spatial Questions (1) Analysis concerns testing hypotheses: spatial

analysis using overlay techniques Week 4 : Asking Spatial Questions (2)

Proximity: spatial analysis of adjacency Week 5 : Asking Spatial Questions (3)

- your choice of further vector or raster analytic methods

Why Bother?

Most, if not all, components of the natural and human environments are spatially organised Through interaction with and dependence

upon each other; Through dependence upon and interaction

with other phenomena; Thus analysis must take account of the spatial

organisation; Modelling must reflect the impact of changes

to that spatial organisation.

Inspire & UK Location Strategy

INSPIRE is an EU Directive, with the aim of harmonising spatial data infrastructure, initially to make environmental data interoperable across the EU

The Location Strategy for the United Kingdom, published November 2008, is the White Paper to implement INSPIRE in the UK. It goes beyond the initial phases of

INSPIRE by bringing all public data related to location into the framework

Government has argued that it is cheaper to do all at once than piecemeal

From the UK Location Strategy

Place matters. Everything happens somewhere.

Most data collected by government includes something that indicates place or location Over 80% of public sector information

contains a location element The question where? is asked constantly Data collected by different agencies can be

linked by place or location Geographic information from Ordnance

Survey is said to underpin in excess of £100bn of GDP per annum

GISc provides the underlying methodologies that permit the storage, manipulation and analysis of data on the basis of place or location

Web 2.0 provides the search, discovery and dissemination methodologies for information

The two technologies are envisaged as a partnership in a spatial data infrastructure, SDI

Several GIS vendors / packages already support web services, including ArcGIS

GISc?

Geographic(al) Information Science (GISc): The discipline concerned with methodologies for the

representation, manipulation and analysis of phenomena that are spatially (geographically) organised.

Geographic(al) Information System (GIS):

An implementation of some of the methodologies developed by Geographic Information Science;

Usually a computer package.

Geographic Information Science is defined as that branch of Information Science that deals with information concerning geographic phenomena by systematic study according to scientific principles into the nature and properties of information.

GISc is concerned with the general theories and principles that arise from the systematic study of geographic information and with the methodologies that arise from such study.

These definitions do not define whether such information is collected, managed, communicated or analysed in a digital or analogue form. Indeed, the early development of many of the formulae and techniques that form the foundation for GISc predate computers and digital representations by many, hundreds in some instances, of years.

The term Spatial Informatics is sometimes used in place of GISc in order to make a distinction between the application of GISc in the pursuit of some discipline and the academic discipline of Geography.

GIS

Geographic Information Systems are concerned with the management of geographic information and with the application of procedures to those information. See Chapter 1 of Burrough and McDonnell.

Whilst a computer is not necessary to work with geographic information, the sheer volume of such information and the ease with which a digital computer can process such volumes of information tend to make GIS synonymous with computing applications.

A GIS is thus a computer application, or a suite of computer applications, to enable a user to apply Geographic Information Science to communicate or gain a better understanding of the information concerning some phenomenon.

Spatial Information Systems is an alternate term, sometimes used in order to avoid any implied restriction of the range of their interest: it refers to exactly the same as GIS.

A grasp of GISc theory is essential to exploiting GIS to their full potential.

Some examples of GISc in action

Drawn from a random sample of journal papers and other sources

In no particular order but offered to provide some illustrations of the way GISc is exploited in a variety of disciplines and industries

Transportation

Route planning and analysis SatNav systems Public Transport planning and timetabling Next Service displays Delivery Service management Service provision analysis – retail, health,

education Study of travel times / access to facilities or

services Impact analysis – eg noise, pollution Network management

Demography

Census planning and analysis Planning, especially flood risk analysis Insurance risk analysis Service provision – retail & commercial,

health, education, etc. Housing and related services Law enforcement Road safety analysis Emergency response planning Disaster preparedness and response Electoral reform

Infrastructure

Transport networks Location of services, eg water, gas,

electricity, etc Service delivery, eg load estimation,

maintenance Land use planning and planning

approvals Environmental impact Environmental response Surveying and mapping

Within the University

Ecology: biodiversity, epidemiology, genetic variation & mutation, etc

Environmental management: human impact, species response, etc

Health & medicine: epidemiology, service provision and access, deprivation, etc

Social Sciences: PWR, deprivation, societal responses

Humanities: historical human activity, language, archaeological site and landscape analysis, etc

The GIS software We are using ArcGIS, a family of products from

ESRI. We will mostly use the menu-driven Desktop tool,

but will also use the older, command-line interface of Workstation.

We are using release 10.0. It is available in all Computing Service classrooms and is available in Add/Remove Programs for 'supported' Office PCs

'Unsupported' Office PCs and Home copies are permitted by the license But only on Windows, not Mac or LINUX Go to

\\csrvfs\appl\arc\windows\cds_for_10.0 (Not a URL) Read the file ReadMe.txt for installation instructions.

Getting Started

ArcGIS is started from the Start / All Programs / ArcGIS menu. Three key components:

ArcCatalog provides management and

conversion toolsArcMap interface for mapping & analysis

ArcWorkstation command-line GIS The Getting Started exercise takes you

through the basic steps for using ArcMap.

Getting Started, explores the steps for creating maps using ArcMap; the nature of maps and how we think about the space around us will be explored in Unit 2.

Key texts: Burrough & McDonnell, 1998, Principles

of Geographic Information Systems, OUP Monmonier, 1996, How to lie with maps

Through selection by attribute, it introduces a common technique in spatial analysis to attempt to describe a phenomenon.

The assignment exercise requires you to perform some simple analysis and to describe, attempting to explain, your results.

Maps

Are a means of conveying spatial information – information about how some phenomenon or phenomena are located or distributed. The earliest 'maps', amongst cave

drawings, probably communicated where to find food or dangerous areas to avoid.

Later early maps had an administrative purpose, developed as urban environments came into being.

Require adoption of conventions to achieve communication, otherwise art.

As with Statistics, poor use of the conventions can result in a misleading product. Key conventions cover

Scale, legend, graticule and coordinate system, orientation, title, date, authorship & acknowledgements;

The legend reports the symbology employedColour can both help and hinder communication;

Symbols must be legible and not easily confused.

Above all, a map is selective and generalised. Selective because not everything can be included. Generalised because of the scale of

representation.