Welcome to the home page of Geob 479 -- GIScience in Research. This advanced course provides an overview of  how GIScience is used in research, and builds upon the knowledge and skills you will have gained in GEOB 270 (Introduction to GIScience) and GEOB 370 (Advanced Issues in GIScience).  The approach I take in this course is to use research examples drawn from a variety of fields--Landscape Ecology, Crime Analysis, and Health Geography-- that have been transformed by the introduction of GIS, and in turn have transformed how GIS has developed. In the lectures you will discover the commonalities found across research areas when addressing spatial aspects.

After taking this course you will have a deeper understanding of how spatial analyses is conducted in the social and physical sciences. In particular, you will have developed an appreciation of the spatial analytical components of

• landscape ecology (e.g., scale and hierarchy theory, understanding landscape metrics, linking remote sensing and GIS in vegetation assessment),
• crime analysis (e.g., point pattern “hot spot” analysis, the use of census data), and
• health geography (e.g., spatial clustering of health events, case/control issues, Bayesian methods).

Using the menu above you can access a course description (the 'syllabus'), as well as the schedule of lectures and labs. A description of the project is available, as well as examples of projects produced by students in previous classes. The projects are excellent examples of the thoughtful analyses that you should be able to achieve as a result of taking this course.

This course will be of interest to those with an interest in GIScience and spatial analysis, and to students and researchers in fields where space is considered an important explanatory element, including landscape ecology, conservation biology, forestry, geography, health, archaeology, planning and criminology.

For those particularly interested in the health geography aspects of this course, I recommend that you attend some of the Occupational and Environmental Hygiene (OEH) Seminars held on Friday's at 12:30. Details can be found here. The first talk on Jan 15 on Honey as a biomonitor for lead distribution in urban environments should be of particular interest.

Why you should become a GIS professional.