Project Based GIS - Overview
Overview - What is “Project-Based GIS”?
In this section we examine GIS not as a set of spatial analysis tools (as we did in the Fundamentals of GIS), but rather as a central component in an analytical workflow. These workflows often start with a somewhat vague or general questions which we need to form into a set of actionable GIS tasks. From there, we need to find the data required to execute these tasks, and if those data don’t exist, either create/collect those data or determine how available data can be used as proxies for the data we need. Then, at last, comes the actual geospatial analysis, but in doing this analyses, we should consider how the results should be communicated: as a single value, a set of figures, a memo, a report? And finally, the workflow should include an evaluation of the project’s success as well as an archive of the complete workflow so that you and/or others might improve on it or adapt it to a new situation.
Thus, Project-Based GIS is a review of how GIS and geospatial analysis falls into the broader context of getting work done….
Learning Objectives
- Describe the stages in a project workflow, from defining the objective to evaluating the success of your analysis.
- Describe the components in the “analytical ecosystem” used in tackling a GIS-based project.
- Create an organized and distributable GIS workspace.
- Articulate vague or general objectives into a set of actionable GIS tasks.
- Effectively search for the data required to execute an analysis; acknowledge and overcome the limitations of using available data by supplementing them with experts, literature, and general assumptions.
- Leverage your existing knowledge of GIS to execute the analysis.
- List the various means for communicating results and decide which one best suits both your audience and your message.
- Evaluate the success of your analysis: did it succeed in its original objective? Would you have done things differently?