By the End of This Project You Will Be Able To

By the End of This Project You Will Be Able To

GEOB 270 – Jan 2018

Final Project

The final project is worth 25% of your final grade and is due Tuesday April 10th by midnight.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this project you will be able to:

  1. Formulate a Geographic Analysis Scenario, similar to the scenarios given in labs (determining storm surge, environmental impact assessment, housing affordability).
  2. Identify geospatial datasets appropriate for the geographic analysis scenario (City of Vancouver municipal type datasets, Census Canada population and socio-economic datasets, GeodataBC natural resource datasets)
  3. Setting up the geodatabase of datasets for the geographic analysis (ensuring spatial and tabular data integrity)
  4. Conduct GIS analyses that will demonstrate your knowledge of GIS analysis concepts and software tools (joining tables, queries, proximity analysis, overlay analysis, 3D analysis – whichever of the analysis tools from the labs will be relevant to the geographic scenario analysis)
  5. Represent the results of your analysis in maps and a report and flow chart of analysis process
  6. Follow a project proposal to until the project is successfully completed
  7. Build teamwork skills

Please note: The learning objectives for the final project are to essentially put together your own lab using the concepts and tools and datasets taught in the course.

Deliverables

Your deliverables for this project will consist of the following:

  1. A one page project proposal outlining the objectives of your analyses (5% of project mark, due Thursday March 22th at midnight)
  2. A flowchart summarizing/illustration your analytical process (15% of project mark) due with final project report
  3. A project report + Appendices which contain maps etc. (80% of project mark) due Tuesday April 10th midnight

Groups

You are expected to form a group of 4 students who have similar interests with respect to the datasets and subsequent analysis (urban/social geography, environmental impact assessment, natural hazards and emergency preparedness, health, etc.). As a group, you will do a project which will consist of a GIS analysis and maps, a written report and a flowchart. You will submit one copy of your project report and flowchart, and all students will receive the same grade.

As with any group project, you will be expected to effectively deal with the inevitable tensions that arise during the creative process.

Process

1. Selection of the Topic / Project Proposal

You can obtain ideas for your project from your labs, particularly labs 3 (natural hazards/emergency preparedness, city of Vancouver data), lab 4 (social geography, housing, urban, census data), and lab 5 (natural resource data, environmental impact assessment for any variety of scenarios). You should go through the data sets stored in the geography server (G: drive). Your TA, Jose and can all help point you in the right direction.

You should discuss your project with your TA and submit a one page project proposal. The proposal template can be found on the course web site and includes:

  • A brief description of the topic
  • The data sets that will be used (you need to find these datasets, try downloading them, ensure that they are available and usable).
  • A preliminary analysis plan

Once the TA approves your proposal, you are ready to start working on your project. You should have your proposal approved by the TAs the week of March 19. The final deadline for the project proposal is Thursday March 22th midnight.

Some things to think about when formulating your project proposal:

a) Is the project is overly ambitious, and would be difficult to complete in the 3 weeks remaining in the semester, or is the project is not ambitious enough (cannot just be a repeat of one of the labs, needs to incorporate additional analysis than the lab it is modeled after).

b) There is no clear understanding shown of how you are going to go from your data to your final deliverables.

c) The data you wish to use is unavailable or very hard to obtain.

2. Acquisition of Data and Exploratory Data Analysis

Once your proposal has been approved, you will need to download and format the suitable data. Review the datasets and determine which layers and associated attributes you will need for your study. Pay special attention to the format of the data (not all datasets are compatible with ArcGIS – look for shape files .shp), and to the projection information (all of your data layers should be projected in the same projection) before you can start analyzing the data (lab2: aligning spatial datasets).

3. GIS Analysis

The project should have a higher level of complexity than any of the five labs you completed during the course, or, should not be a repeat of one of the labs. Think about all the operations and tools that you have learned in the course, and apply these to your particular data and GIS analysis topic. A list of potential analysis operations includes:

a) Calculation of areas

b) Joining tables

c) Select by attribute: various queries

d) Adding a field and calculating values into the field (area, criteria, normalizing the data with respect to percents etc)

e) Select by location

f) Buffers

g) Overlay tools: clip, erase, union, intersect

h) Working with DEMs (elevation, slope, aspect)

4. Flow Charts

As you go through your GIS Analysis steps, document what you are doing and the specific operations you are performing. You will produce a flow chart of your analysis and include it in the report. (We will spend a lecture in class on how to do flow charts).

5. Data Visualization

You will need to make a series of maps (approximately 3) to visualize the GIS Analysis steps, and final results. These maps must follow the conventions of data classification and data display as learned in the course, and include all necessary map elements (legend, title, scale, north arrow, sources, neatline, inset where necessary etc.) and take into consideration cartographic design (lecture in class on design). In addition to maps, you may feel that other examples of data visualization are effective, such as charts, histograms and if so, include these.

6. Report

Each group is to hand in a five to six page single-spaced typed report on the project (all figures, tables, and maps should be included as Appendices and will not count towards the page total). In the body of the report you are to present a thorough discussion of the data, the analysis, problems encountered and the group's findings. The written report must follow standard report formatting guidelines, and include a title page, abstract, table of contents and a bibliography.

The report should include the following sections:

  • Title Page
  • Abstract (200 words max.)
  • Description of Project

Scenario like in the labs; Study Area; and general description of Data (~300 words)

  • Methodology: with sub headings from Ben Fry’s Data Visualization Pipeline (~500 words)
  • Acquire (where did you get the data)
  • Parse Filter (how did you modify data: joins, clips, delete attributes)
  • Mine (what analysis did you perform – this will be visualized in a flow chart as well)
  • Represent (considerations for preparing the maps)
  • Table of dataset: include the following table:

Table 1: Original Datasets

Layer / datafile name / Source / Uses / Entity/data model / Attributes / Modifications
Original and renamed / Agency, date compiled, data extracted / For example DEM to determine slope / Vector polygon/raster / Item names or general if big file with many columns / Changes: project, clip out project area, delete attributes..
  • Discussion and Results (~1500 words)
  • Error and Uncertainty (~500 words)
  • Further Research/recommendations (~300 words)
  • Appendices
  • Bibliography
  • Maps and figures
  • Flowchart

7. Individual and Group Evaluation

Group members will be asked to submit individual group evaluation forms describing the role and effort of each team member (including you). You will provide an estimate of the percentage that each team member contributed to the overall project.

Please submit this form on connect. We will combine all the reports from each team and use them to evaluate each member’s performance. These reports could be used to adjust an individual member’s grades (up or down) in exceptional circumstances.