Instructors: Dr. Gregory Elmes  Sue Bergeron,   Jesse Rouse.
Email: greg dot elmes at mail dot wvu dot edu
Office Hours: Tu / Th 1:00 - 2:00 p.m. and by appointment

Course Content

Course Schedule Spring 2008

More Course Links

Text: Worboys, M.F. and Duckham, M. (2004) GIS: A Computing Perspective, Second Edition, CRC Press, ISBN: 0415283752. (Required).

Laurini, Robert, and Thompson, Derek, 1992, Fundamentals of Spatial Information Systems, Academic Press.
Shashi Shekhar, and Sanjay Chawla, 2002 Spatial Databases: A Tour Prentice Hall; 1st edition
Wise, Stephen, 2002, GIS Basics, Taylor and Francis, London and New York.

Jochen Albrecht, 2008, Key Concepts and Techniques In GIS, Sage Publications

Burrough, Peter, A., and Rachael McDonnell, 1998, Principles of GeographicaI Information Systems, OUP, Oxford.

Nicholas Chrisman 2001, Exploring Geographical Information Systems, 2nd Edition (Paperback)

DeMers Michael, 1997, Fundamentals of Geographic Information Systems, J. Wiley and Sons (1st edition is the best read)
Jones Christoper, 1997, Geographical Information Systems and Computer Cartography, Longman

Frank A.U. (ed) 1995 Geographic Information Systems - Materials for a Post-Graduate Course, Dept. of Geoiformation, Technical University, Vienna.

Hirtle S. C. and Frank A. U. (eds.) 1997 Spatial Information Theory, A Theoretical Basis for GIS, International Conference COSIT 97, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, # 1329, Springer, Berlin

Kainz W., Riedl A., and Elmes G. (Eds). 2006, Progress in Spatial Data Handling 12th International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling, Springer.

Other proceedings you should be familiar with include: AUTOCARTO, COSIT,  ESRI User Conferences (www.esri.com), GIS/LIS (now defunct), International Symposia on Spatila Data Handling, Spatial Databases.

Please note: Not all the materials in this outline will be treated in equal depth. Please see Dr. Elmes if one or more topics is of particular interest to you.

The first section of the course will cover fundamental spatial concepts, fundamental database concepts, spatial representation and algorithms. The second section will provide computing skills in customising GIS for desktop applications and Visual Basic.

Coordinate Systems and Geocoding
General coordinate systems
Map projections
Affine and curvilinear transformation
Discrete georeferencing

Vector Data Structure and Algorithms
Storage of complex spatial objects
Storage of lines: Chain code
Simple Algorithms I: Line intersection
Simple Algorithms II: Polygons
Polygon overlay operation
Complex spatial objects

Databases for GIS
Relational database principles, concepts and implementation.
Query language (SQL)
Object-Oriented databases

Raster Data Structure, Algorithms
Raster storage
Hierarchical data structures
Quadtree algorithms and indexes

Error Modeling and Data Uncertainty
Metadata: quality and accuracy of spatial databases
Managing error and uncertainty
Line generalization algorithms

GIS Customization
Graphic user interfaces
Customizing procedures and spatial analysis
Visual Basic
ESRI Map Objects
Visualization of spatial data
Output: Automated display and reports