NCSU GIS/MEA582:
Geospatial Modeling and Analysis

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Lectures

Introduction and course logistics

Outline:

Data acquisition and integration

Outline:
  • mapping natural phenomena, concept of continuous fields and discrete sampling
  • on-ground/in-situ, airborne, satellite, and lidar data acquisition
  • projections, coordinate transformations, georeferencing
Lecture: Supplemental materials:

Geospatial data models

Outline:
  • raster and vector data models
  • raster-vector conversions and resampling
  • geospatial formats, conversions, geospatial data abstraction library
  • data repositories, metadata
Lecture: Supplemental materials:

Data display and visualization

Outline:
  • display of continuous and discrete data, use of color, shading, symbols to extract the spatial pattern and relationships
  • 3D visualization: multiple surfaces and volumes, 3D vector objects
  • visualization for data analysis (lighting, zscaling, transparency, cutting planes, animations)
  • Sharing data on-line
Lecture: Supplemental materials:

Geospatial Analysis: Global, zonal and focal operations, map algebra

Outline:
  • global and zonal statistics
  • neighborhood (focal) operations
  • raster map algebra
    • expressions, operators, functions and variables
    • basic calculations, integer and floating point data
    • "if" conditions, handling NULLs and creating masks
  • raster map patching and overlay
  • raster map reclassification and rescaling
Lecture:

Geospatial Analysis: buffers, cost surfaces, least cost path

Outline:
  • measuring distance, proximity operators
  • point, line, and area buffers
  • cost surfaces, least cost path
Lecture: Supplemental materials:

The following lectures are about Geomorphometry and modeling of processes.

Spatial interpolation and approximation: methods

Outline:
  • definitions, principles and applications
  • selected methods and their properties
  • influence of interpolation parameters
Lecture:

Spatial interpolation and approximation: splines, point selection

Outline:
  • influence of spline interpolation parameters: tension/range and smoothing
  • implementation - point selection techniques
  • special cases: contours, profiles, anisotropy
  • trivariate interpolation of volumes and topo-climatology
  • evaluating interpolation accuracy, crossvalidation
Lecture: Supplemental materials:

Terrain modeling

Outline:
  • 3D mapping technologies: topography and bathymetry
  • mathematical and digital terrain models
  • point clouds, multiple return data, CLICK, LDART
  • triangular irregular networks
  • regular grid (raster), NED, SRTM, CRM
  • isolines
Lecture: Supplemental materials:

Spatial and temporal terrain analysis

Outline:
  • summary parameters: volumes, surface areas
  • first and second order point parameters: general approach
  • methods for slope, aspect and curvatures using polynomial and spline approximation
  • combining parameters to map landforms and terrain features
  • computing parameters from noisy data, accuracy and uncertainty, scale and level of detail
  • raster time series analysis, quantification of coastal change
Lecture: Supplemental materials:

Viewshed, solar energy potential analysis

Outline:
  • line of sight, viewshed and cumulative viewshed: principle and applications
  • solar radiation: components and dynamics
  • solar radiation in complex terrain, cast shadows
  • cumulative solar irradiation, solar energy potential
Lecture: Supplemental materials:

Flow tracing, watershed analysis

Outline:
  • cumulative terrain parameters based on flow tracing: definitions and general approach (flow path length, flow accumulation, stream networks, watershed boundaries, ridge lines)
  • methods for computing flow direction (D8, Dinf), flow tracing (SFD, MFD, uniform, weighted)
  • methods for flow tracing through depressions and flat areas (filling, carving, hybrid, least cost path)
Lecture:

Modeling Geospatial Processes: Hydrologic and erosion modeling

Outline:
  • spatially explicit modeling: principles and applications, role of GIS
  • geospatial aspects of models: spatially averaged and distributed models
  • general approaches and methods: empirical and physics based components of models
  • steady state, continuous time and dynamic models and related modeling tools
  • spatial hydrologic modeling: processes and methods
Lecture:

Modeling Geospatial Processes: Erosion modeling

Outline:
  • spatial modeling of erosion, sediment transport and landscape evolution
  • deriving input parameters, analysis and visualization of modeling results
  • simulating impact of landuse and climate change
Lecture: Supplemental materials: