Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Cartography

The course provides an overview of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and digital Cartography. It shows 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.

The course has both a theoretical and a practical part in which students do exercises to get hands-on experience with GIS packages. The open-source software QGIS and GRASS GIS/SAGA GIS packages and FME by Safe Software are used for this purpose.

The course has 3 parts:

1. Introduction to GIS

- fundamentals of Geodesy, Coordinate Reference Systems, and map projections,

- spatial data modelling (vector and raster spatial models),

- geo-data manipulation (editing, digitizing, importing, converting, etc.),

- overview of spatial analysis operations,

- production of interpretable output (e.g. maps),

- fundamentals of data quality.

2. Algorithms and data structures for GIS

- data structures for vector and raster data (including topological data structures),

- basic algorithms for vector (point-in-polygon, Boolean operations, intersection, area, etc.),

- basic algorithms for raster (encoding, quad trees, map algebra),

- networks and related algorithms such as shortest-path.

3. Applications of GIS to real-world problems

Real-world problems related to the built environment (e.g., urban spatial analyses, estimation of energy demand for buildings, determination of noise impact due to construction of infrastructure) will be solved with the help of GIS packages.