Core Curriculum-Geographic Information Science (1997-2000)

By the mid-1990s, interest was growing in geographic information science as a discipline based on fundamental geographic concepts that could engage student learning from early childhood to a life-time interest in the infrastructural and intellectual developments required for advances in the modeling of complex environmental and social processes. Seeking to accommodate this need, NCGIA adopted a new approach for a revised core curriculum. It was organized around four major themes:

(1) “Fundamental Geographic Concepts for GIS"—enumerating the concepts and describing their role in human cognition;

(2)"Implementing Geographic Concepts in GIS"—discussing the implementation and handling of geographic concepts in digital computers;

(3) "Geographic Information Technology in Society"—examining the management of these technologies, their implications for society, and the social context in which they are used; and

(4) "Application Areas and Case Studies"—critically examining how GIS is used in various applications.

Each of these four groupings consisted of self-contained teaching units based on a one-hour lecture format of approximately 7 pages of point-form text, with inline sketches and graphics. By placing the materials on-line, the potential existed for instructors or subsidiary project teams to develop supporting structures (e.g., hypertext) to organize the lecture notes and other on-line materials into interactive tutorial systems.

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Outline of the Core Curriculum in GIScience

(2015)

This outline gives an overview of the units that comprise the Core Curriculum in GIScience, along with hyperlinks to each. Note that hyperlinks are active only from the downloaded PDF document.

Introduction to the Core Curriculum in GIScience

(2015)

This introduction provides context to the Core Curriculum in GIScience, including its design philosophy, organization of core concepts, editorial procedure, a development timetable, list of original developers and editorial notes. Note that hyperlinks are active only from the downloaded PDF document.

Unit 051 - Information Organization and Data Structure

(2000)

This unit presents an overview of the terminology and concepts pertaining to information organization and data structure in the context of information science and management. The aim is to provide a general but articulate introduction to the principles and methods of information organization, with special reference to geographic information, that serves as a prerequisite for more advanced studies of data models and database in subsequent units.

Unit 099 - Detecting and Evaluating Errors by Graphical Methods

(2000)

This unit discusses error detection and evaluation by graphical methods. It describes example methods used in statistics, cartography and GIS; challenges including issues in graphic design, metadata, error analysis and detection; techniques for analyzing raw data; and a framework for graphical methods.

Units 090-091 - Natural Resources Data

(2000)

These units provides a general overview of natural resources data, including types of data; typical applications; and common problems and limitations. Soil data are discussed in greater detail, including soil classification and mapping; types and contents of soil surveys; and the structure of soil data in GIS applications.

Unit 055 - Rasters

(2000)

This unit covers topics including the definition of raster; raster layers, how they are sampled from reality and how they represent reality; geometry and topology of rasters and edge effects on rasters; other forms of rasters including hexagonal and curved surfaces; run length encoding; and issues about working with rasters.

Unit 064 - Representing Networks

(2000)

This unit covers topics including the basic elements of a network; how networks are represented; commonly used shortest path algorithms; and common application areas in which networks are used.

Unit 188 - Artificial Neural Networks for Spatial Data Analysis

(2000)

This unit presents a definition of artificial neural networks (ANN); describes different types of ANN and their applications in geography and spatial analysis; explains differences between ANN and AI and between ANN and statistics; and describes how to apply a supervised ANN in model classification and function estimation problems.

Unit 130 - Process Modeling and Simulations

(2000)

This unit covers the definition of process modeling and simulations; types of processes relevant to GIS; approaches to process modeling and simulations; calibration, error propagation and sensitivity analysis; integration of process models and GIS; and application examples.

2 supplemental videos

Unit 128 - Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis

(2000)

This unit explains the purpose of exploratory data analysis and exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA); the model which underlies statistical ESDA; the importance of cartographical, graphical and tabular tools in processing geographical data for ESDA; a range of ESDA techniques and their use in analyzing geographical data; and the limitations of current GIS software for undertaking ESDA.

National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis

Core Curriculum-Geographic Information Science (1997-2000)