Learning Partnerships, Unit Catalogue 2009/10 |
AS20320: Geographical information systems |
 Credits: |
5 |
| Level: |
Intermediate |
| Period: | This unit is available in... |
| Semester 2 at City of Bath College | |
| Semester 2 at Wiltshire College |
| Assessment: |
CW 100% |
| Supplementary Assessment: | Like-for-like reassessment (where allowed by programme regulations) |
| Requisites: |
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| Description: | Aims: Students to be able to: * Discuss the principles of Geographic Information science and its relationship to applied Geographic Information Systems (GIS); * Understand how Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can be used to study and solve problems in transportation, environment, local government and business; * Demonstrate their understanding of the application of GIS to applied problem solving by developing a GIS to meet an identified need in business, science or public policy making. Learning Outcomes: On completion of the unit the student should be able to: * Define the nature of geographic information and the type of decisions that make use of such information; * Discuss the problems and techniques of representation, (including generalisation, discrete and continuous fields, georeferencing and uncertainty of data); * Develop a GIS to meet an identified need, using suitable software, appropriate data modelling and data collection techniques; * Perform appropriate geovisualization, query, measurement and transformation and inference to the GIS they have developed; * Discuss issues of maintaining the currency of large scale geographic databases; * Evaluate a geographical information system including fitness for purpose and data integrity issues that may affect the validity of the model and reduce dependency on the outcomes. Skills: * Academic skills - Research, analyse, compare and contrast, apply, evaluate. (Taught and Assessed). * Practical skills - GIS programming skills, development skills, programming and SQL design skills, coding skills, management skills. (Taught and Assessed). * Personal skills - time management, personal organisation, problem solving, and research. (Taught and Assessed). * Communication skills - demonstrations, working with an employer. (Taught and Assessed). Content: * Problems of representation by abstraction and generalisation that are required to produce maps and useful spatial data sets; * Principles of uncertainty with respect to GIS; * Identify and use appropriate data representations; raster, vector, georeferencing; * Explain the limitations of data collection techniques; * Develop a GIS. Identifying system requirements, developing a GIS application to meet the identified need, applying geo-referencing within the application and implement the design and populate it with data; * Spatial Analysis using the geographical information system by generating relevant hypotheses and applying these hypotheses to support decisions. |