The course provides an overview of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and digital Cartography, and of how GIS can be used in practice to solve real-world problems. The course also provides students with theoretical background knowledge of concepts, data types and GIS-related typical processes and algorithms of GIS packages.
After the course “Introduction to GIS and digital cartography” the student will be able to:
1) Explain what a GIS is and what real-world problems it can help solve;
2) Describe the quality aspects of geo-datasets and compare the two conceptualisations of space (field versus objects), and how these are modelled in a GIS;
3) Use a GIS to visualise, convert and analyse geographical datasets coming from different sources;
4) List the main spatial data structures and algorithms used in GIS, compare and discuss them in terms of applicability depending on the problem to be solved;
5) Explain and analyse what the basic spatial operations are and consist of, and how they are performed;
6) Generalise the GIS knowledge to solve more complex spatial problems by integrating existing tools and
developing tailored solutions/workflows.
