2018 QUARTER 04

A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P R S T U V W
FC-30 - Private sector origins
  • Identify some of the key commercial activities that provided an impetus for the development of GIS&T
  • Differentiate the dominant industries using geospatial technologies during the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s
  • Describe the contributions of McHarg and other practitioners in developing geographic analysis methods later incorporated into GIS
  • Evaluate the correspondence between advances in hardware and operating system technology and changes in GIS software
  • Describe the influence of evolving computer hardware and of private sector hardware firms such as IBM on the emerging GIS software industry
  • Discuss the emergence of the GIS software industry in terms of technology evolution and markets served by firms such as ESRI, Intergraph, and ERDAS
KE-02 - Problem definition
  • Recognize the challenges of implementing and using geospatial technologies
  • Create a charter or hypothesis that defines and justifies the mission of a GIS to solve existing problems
  • Define an enterprise GIS in terms of institutional missions and goals
  • Identify geographic tasks for which particular geospatial technologies are not adequate or sufficient
  • Identify what is typically needed to garner support among managers for designing and/or creating a GIS
AM-87 - Problems of currency, source, and scale
  • Describe the problem of conflation associated with aggregation of data collected at different times, from different sources, and to different scales and accuracy requirements
  • Explain how geostatistical techniques might be used to address such problems
FC-26 - Problems of scale and zoning
  • Describe the concept of ecological fallacy, and comment on its relationship with the MAUP
  • Describe the MAUP and its affects on correlation, regression, and classification
  • Describe the modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP) associated with aggregation of data collected at different scales and its affect on spatial autocorrelation
GS-11 - Professional and Practical Ethics of GIS&T

Geospatial technologies are often and rightly described as “powerful.” With power comes the ability to cause harm – intentionally or unintentionally - as well as to do good. In the context of GIS&T, Practical Ethics is the set of knowledge, skills and abilities needed to make reasoned decisions in light of the risks posed by geospatial technologies and methods in a wide variety of use cases. Ethics have been considered from different viewpoints in the GIS&T field. A practitioner's perspective may be based on a combination of "ordinary morality," institutional ethics policies, and professional ethics codes. By contrast, an academic scholar's perspective may be grounded in social or critical theory. What these perspectives have in common is reliance on reason to respond with integrity to ethical challenges. This entry focuses on the special obligations of GIS professionals, and on a method that educators can use to help students develop moral reasoning skills that GIS professionals need. The important related issues of Critical GIS and Spatial Law and Policy are to be considered elsewhere.  

KE-31 - Professional Certification

Professional Certification has been a part of the GIS enterprise for over two decades. There are several different certification programs and related activities now in operation within GIS, though there has been much debate over its merits, how it should be done and by whom. 

KE-27 - Professional organizations
  • Compare and contrast the missions, histories, constituencies, and activities of professional organizations including Association of American Geographers (AAG), America Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS), Geospatial Information and Technology Association (GITA), Management Association for Private Photogrammetric Surveyors (MAPPS), and Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA)
  • Identify conferences that are related to GIS&T hosted by professional organizations
  • Discuss the mission, history, constituencies, and activities of the GIS Certification Institute (GISCI)
AM-85 - Propagation of error in geospatial modeling
  • Compare and contrast error propagation techniques (e.g., Taylor, Monte Carlo)
  • Explain how some operations can exacerbate error while others dampen it (e.g., mean filter)
FC-10 - Properties
  • Formalize attribute values and domains in terms of set theory
  • Develop alternative forms of representations for situations in which attributes do not adequately capture meaning
  • Define Stevens’ four levels of measurement (i.e., nominal, ordinal, interval, ratio)
  • Describe particular geographic phenomena in terms of attributes
  • Determine the proper uses of attributes based on their domains
  • Characterize the domains of attributes in a GIS, including continuous and discrete, qualitative and quantitative, absolute and relative
  • Recognize situations and phenomena in the landscape which cannot be adequately represented by formal attributes, such as aesthetics
  • Compare and contrast the theory that properties are fundamental (and objects are human simplifications of patterns thereof) with the theory that objects are fundamental (and properties are attributes thereof)
  • Recognize attribute domains that do not fit well into Stevens’ four levels of measurement such as cycles, indexes, and hierarchies
GS-07 - Property regimes
  • Explain the legal concept “property regime”
  • Compare and contrast the U.S. federal government’s policy regarding rights to geospatial data with similar policies in other countries
  • Compare and contrast the consequences of different national policies about rights to geospatia data in terms of the real costs of spatial data, their coverage, accuracy, uncertainty, reliability, validity, and maintenance
  • Describe organizations’ and governments’ incentives to treat geospatial information as property
  • Outline arguments for and against the notion of information as a public good
  • Argue for and against the treatment of geospatial information as a commodity

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