Provide comprehensive instruction in the underlying concepts and principles of geographic information system (GIS) technology and its application to the design and analysis of civil and environmental engineering systems. The focus is a fundamental understanding of spatial data acquisition, geoprocessing, geostatistical methods; visualization, and querying of spatial data; network modeling, terrain mapping, and spatial analysis. Students are trained to become proficient in usage of ESRI ArcGIS 9.3 software through extensive computer lab sessions, including applications in urban hydrologic modeling, urban stormwater management, nonpoint source pollution control, ecological assessment, utility and infrastructure management; water, sewer and transportation network analysis, and river basin management.
Course Topics
1. Introduction to GIS; engineering applications: utility system maintenance, urban hydrologic modeling, urban flood control, water supply, water distribution system design, stormwater
quality monitoring/control, sold waste management and hazardous waste management.
2. Introduction to ArcGIS Desktop GIS; exploring the ArcMap interface and ArcCatalog for spatial data management.
3. GIS spatial data sources on the Internet; creating new data sets from xy events; heads-up digitizing; GPS for GIS data capture.
4. Spatial data structures in GIS; map projections and coordinate systems; map scale; rasterand vector spatial data models; topology and relational query; selecting and editing
features displaying and editing tables; joining and linking tables.
5. GIS analysis functions and operations; feature proximity, containment, intersection; spatial joins; overlays; buffers; geoprocessing; creating/editing spatial data; map display.
6. ArcGIS Spatial Analyst Extension; identifying, displaying, querying and managing grids; converting grids; resampling and generalizing grid data; spatial analysis.
7. Urban hydrologic modeling in GIS; digital elevation model analysis; time-area watershed mapping; spatially derived unit hydrographs; least-cost routing; Dijkstra’s algorithm.
8. Urban stormwater runoff modeling in GIS; spatial data requirements for EPA SWMM model; GIS in urban stormwater management; base map layers; derived maps; zone-risk
analysis.
9. Image processing; supervised and unsupervised classification; image rectification and resampling; ArcScan Extension for vectorizing raster lines.
10. Utility Network Analyst in ArcGIS; building water networks in ArcCatalog; performing network analyses; developing network connectivity rules; network validation and editing.
11. ArcGIS Network Analyst Extension; network modeling and analysis; defining cost surfaces; finding best routes; closest facility; service areas.