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Spatial Databases and Data Management
Geography 414—Spatial Databases and Data Management
MWF 9:05-9:55
Fall 2013 Instructor: Bruce A. Ralston
Office Hours: Tuesday 9:00 – 10:30, F 10-11
Email: bralston at utk.edu
Prerequisite: Geography 411 or equivalent
Syllabus: FA2013-GEOG-414
Text and PDF materials: The GIS Guide to Public Domain Data, Kerski, Joseph and Jill Clark Designing Geodatabases, Arctur, David and Michael Zeiler Several pdfs and other documents made available during the semester through Blackboard.
We will also use several tutorials available from ESRI. These are available as PDF files on the computers in 206 and 404. You will be expected to copy the PDFs and tutorial data to your own CD or USB drive or computer. I have order copies of ArcGIS for all students. These copies are good for one year after you register them with ESRI.
The main topics for this course are the role of public domain data, sources of spatial data for the Tennessee, the United States, and the world, methods of data capture, entry and editing, linear referencing and dynamic segmentation, the importance and use of metadata, legal aspects of spatial data, some theories of spatial database systems, geodatabase design and implementation, free and open source alternatives to commercial software, and management of spatial data in a multi-user environment.
The goal is to give you the kinds of knowledge and skills you will need in the workplace or in your own research. Discussions with past graduates of our program have indicated that these topics are extremely valuable.
This will be a very “hands-on” class in which you will work with several software packages including Global Mapper, ArcGIS, SQLServer, PostgreSQL and PostGIS., and some software written by the instructor.
Grades will be based on homework assignments (30%), a midterm exam (35%) and a final exam (35%).
The schedule below is a rough guide. If necessary, we may expand or contract some of the topics. I am working to arrange some guest speakers and a possible field trip to beautiful downtown Knoxville.
The following schedule is approximate. In addition, some exercises from that book may be added. Key: KC = Kerski/Clark book, DG = Designing Geodatabases
Topics for Midterm Exam Topic Readings/Exercises Overview, Why Spatial is Special? Chapter 1 (KC) DRGs/Orthos/Elevation Data Chapter 3 (KC) DLGs/Land CoverLab: DRGs/DLGs/Errors in Metadata Census Data Chaps 2,7 (KC) Lab: Working with Census Data Hydrography Data Model Chapter 2 (DG) Linear Referencing and Dynamic Segmentation Lab: Hydro Modeling LRS and Transport Data Lab: Building Linear Referencing Systems Metadata Readings to posted; Lab: Building Metadata
Data Capture and Geometry Lab: ArcScan and ArcEdit Crowd Sourcing and Data Portals Chapters 5 and 8 (KC) Midterm Exam is scheduled for Friday, October 11.
Topics for Final Exam Database Concepts and Normal Forms, PDFs to be posted on class website Spatial Indexing, PDFs to be posted on class website Intro to Geodatabases Chapter 1 (DG) Managing Large Raster Datasets Chapter 7 (DG), Lab: Raster Management in the GDB Parcels and Cadastre Chapter 5 (DG) Geodatabase Implementation Chapter 9 (DG) Topology in GDB, Topology Editing Lab Multiuser Environments, Two Multiuser Labs Editing over the web ArcServer Lab Other DBMS systems, PDFs Final Exam is on Wednesday, December 11 at 8 AM
