Teaching

GEOGR 5212 – Geospatial Databases for GIS

The future will be data-driven. Most scientific and professional enterprises, as well as consumers, are generating and using data in most activities. Much of these data will be georeferenced and have geospatial footprints.  This course focuses on designing, implementing, querying and managing spatial databases or persistent data stores where most entities have footprints in geographic space and time. This is critical for designing and implementing GIS for projects and organizations. It is also crucial for moving beyond GIS to the bigger world of geographic information services.  GEOG 5212 Geospatial databases – Spring 2018 syllabus

GEOGR 5226 Spatial Simulation and Modeling in GIS

This course is about the use of computational techniques to simulate the evolution of  geospatial systems such as ecosystems, transportation, weather/climate, cities, societies and land-use/land-cover.  These and other complex geospatial systems have a multitude of relatively simple parts interacting over space and time to create surprising, emergent behaviors.  Powerful computational techniques, often linked with GIS software, allow the simulation of realistically large systems at a fine-level of granularity, providing new insights that were unavailable through traditional modeling techniques.  We will learn how to build dynamic spatial simulation models with NetLogo, a free, open source programming language and software environment.  GEOGR 5226 Spatial Simulation Autumn 2017 syllabus

GEOG 5301 – Sustainable Transportation

The explosion in mobility over the past two centuries is one of the most profound changes in the history of human civilization.  While mobility has benefits, it comes with environmental, social and economic costs.  A crucial challenge facing humanity is addressing the environmental cost of transportation while maintaining  or increasing mobility and access to opportunities.  This course examines issues involved in developing sustainable transportation systems.  We will examine the environmental and human problems associated with transportation, including climate change, air quality, consumption of non-renewable resources, safety, congestion and social inequity.  We will also examine possible solutions to these problems, including pricing, planning and public transit, policy and advanced technologies.