GISC 2401 - Data Acquisition & Analysis GIS

4 Credits (3 hrs. lec., 3 hrs. lab.) Study of the management of geographic information, system life cycles, and cost benefits. Includes institutional issues such as data providers, data management, combination of attribute and graphical data, information storage and access, Texas and national standards for spatial data; and applications of GIS for data modeling and analysis. Texas and national standards for spatial data; and applications of GIS for demographic modeling and analysis. Emphasis is placed on the purpose and analysis of metadata sets for a project; outline of national and international census data infrastructure; selection and evaluation of data for source, quality, and collection. Student formulates geographic-based databases queries; establish an audit trail; use geographic information in decision-making; design a data acquisition project; and utilize datum, coordinate systems, and mapping projections. Prerequisite: GISC 1401