NCSU GIS 714: Geospatial Computation and Simulations

Course logistics

Course web site and Moodle

The course follows Schedule, where you will find links to the course material for each week. Assignment reports, notebooks, presentations and the final paper are submitted through Moodle where feedback and grades will be posted following the submission. Help is provided through Moodle forum and a link to Zoom sessions (if applicable) is available through Moodle as well.

Software

Course focus will be on open source software:

GRASS GIS. To help testing and reporting on the current version download and install GRASS GIS 8.4.0 for your operating system. On Windows, install the stand-alone package GRASS GIS 8.4.0.
Python and R which you should have installed already

Additional information about software will be provided with the individual assignments.

Learn Geospatial Modeling with GRASS GIS 8.4.0: GIS582 assignment videos

Data

Links to data are provided on the assignment webpages or included with the notebooks. If needed, instructions for downloading the educational GRASS GIS dataset are on the GIS582 Course logistics web page (see the section on Data).

Assignments

Assignment submissions will be in the form of brief research papers or notebooks.

Papers

Depending on the topics, the papers should be approx. 3-4 pages, including graphics and tables.
Required paper sections:
1. Introduction: task, problem, background, importance, motivation
2. Methods: general description of methods and concepts. In this section you should demonstrate that for the given step-by-step instructions your were able to explain what methods are being used to solve the given problem
3. Results: maps, graphs, tables with comments, focus on what is interesting in the data and the derived maps, how does the method used influence the results.
4. Discussion: was there anything unexpected or problematic in the results? Were there any issues related to the methdology? Also discuss the software issues, including fixes and suggestions for improvements here.
5. Conclusion: 1-2 sentences what you have learned
6. References
Sample paper formatting for MS Word (DOCX), LibreOffice (ODT) (view online in rollApp), and LaTeX (open online in Overleaf). Do not use the text from this example, it is for formatting only!
The submitted paper should be in PDF using naming convention LastnameFirstname_HW#.pdf or in a format (e.g., html) indicated in the assignment.
Upload your assignment paper on the Moodle site by 11pm on the due date.
Although the HW papers are short they should be in a writing style suitable for scientific publications. You can learn more about scientific publishing in Elsevier instructions. Please also read the first 10 pages on Publishing process and Structure of a science paper.

Jupyter Notebooks

Access the Jupyter Notebooks and read the instructions in the GIS714-assignments Github repo. Directions to launch the Jupyter Notebooks:

Download and unzip the repo
On Windows: open the JupyterOnWindows.ipynb for directions
On Mac and Linux: install jupyter lab, navigate to the repo in the command line, and launch jupyter lab. Open the notebook from the file browser side panel.
Work through the notebooks and add your own analysis / answer for each question.
Export the notebook as HTML (File>Export Notebook as...>HTML) and upload the HTML to Moodle.
If you have issues running the notebooks or launching GRASS in Jupyter, post on the Moodle Forum.

Project

See Projects page. You will use Moodle to post your project proposal, project progress talk, presentation and a final paper as well as any additional material that you would like to share (videos, demos, data, google maps).

Grading and Policies

See Syllabus web page.

Don’t cheat (e.g. use other person’s results), but you are encouraged to collaborate and help each other with advice, for example, through the message board.