Reflections of an Online Geographic Information Systems Course Based on Open Source Software

Schweik, Charles M.; Fernández, María Teresa Martínez; Hamel, Michael P.; Kashwan, Prakash; Lewis, Quentin; Stepanov, Alexander A.

doi:10.1177/0894439308320793

Cited by 11 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…While the availability of open standards, and of open source software components, provides us with a great deal of flexibility in application implementation, Schweik et al (2009) point to advantages in course design and training. The use of open source software for training allows the trainer to tailor the software to the needs of the course, and removes the burden of acquiring and administering software licences.…”

Section: Software Component Stacks For Geocomputationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some of the insights from our earlier work in fact fed directly into the development of interfaces between the open source GRASS GIS and the R statistical language and environment, as initially This practical approach to the conduct of research is noted by Sui and DeLyser (2011) in the context of academic geography, which one might hope will make helpful contributions in the future after a period of discriminating against quantitative methods even where they were appropriate. Recent years have seen surveys of the potential of open source geospatial software in areas as diverse as health geographics and spatial epidemiology (Fisher and Myers, 2011;Vanmeulebrouk et al, 2008;Yi et al, 2008), landscape ecology (Steiniger and Hay, 2009), water resources management (Chen et al, 2010), and courseware for GIS education (Schweik et al, 2009). Roberts et al (2010) provide much insight into the ways in which open source and proprietary software solutions intermesh in ecological geoprocessing.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Geocomputation and Open Source Software: Components and Software Stacks

Bivand

2011

SSRN Journal

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Geocomputation, with its necessary focus on software development and methods innovation, has enjoyed a close relationship with free and open source software communities. These extend from communities providing the numerical infrastructure for computation, such as BLAS (Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms), through language communities around Python, Java and others, to communities supporting spatial data handling, especially the projects of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. This chapter surveys the stack of software components available for geocomputation from these sources, looking in most detail at the R language and environment, and how OSGeo projects have been interfaced with it. In addition, attention will be paid to open development models and community participation in software development. Since free and open source geospatial software has also achieved a successively greater presence in proprietary software as computational platforms evolve, the chapter will close with some indications of future trends in software component stacks, using Terralib as an example.

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Section: Software Component Stacks For Geocomputationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geocomputation and Open Source Software: Components and Software Stacks

Bivand

2011

SSRN Journal

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“…Free GIS software and data has been used by Schweik et al. (2009) to provide online tutorials to students in developing countries, although issues were encountered due to Internet speed and other technical restrictions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This hyper-text tool allowed users to step through the tutorial and learn GIS concepts at their own pace. Supervised self-paced learning remains a popular concept in GIS (see for example , Zerger et al 2002, Schweik et al 2009). However, more recently the availability of free/libre and open source software (FOSS) and the emergence of free Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI, Goodchild 2007) have enabled the use of actual GIS packages and data in teaching rather than simple hypertext forms.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, more recently the availability of free/libre and open source software (FOSS) and the emergence of free Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI, Goodchild 2007) have enabled the use of actual GIS packages and data in teaching rather than simple hypertext forms. Free GIS software and data has been used by Schweik et al (2009) to provide online tutorials to students in developing countries, although issues were encountered due to Internet speed and other technical restrictions. Turton (2009) reports success with GeoServer, uDig and OpenLayers when teaching students how to develop a thin webmapping client.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Can Free (and Open Source) Software and Data be Used to Underpin a Self‐Paced Tutorial on Spatial Databases?

Ellul

2012

Transactions in GIS

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University College London's Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering (CEGE) offers a number of Masters programmes in topics related to Geomatics, including Surveying, Hydrographic Surveying, Remote Sensing and Geographical Information Science. Data management, and in particular the technology and applications of Spatial Databases, forms a key part of the curriculum on these courses. Interest in Spatial Databases is, however, more widespread – especially with the increasing understanding of the relevance of geospatial techniques to fields as diverse as anthropology and architecture. This article describes the development and evaluation of a self‐paced hands‐on course on Databases and Spatial Databases for CEGE students, presented to students to complement and enhance in‐class teaching. The article focuses on both pedagogical elements of self‐paced learning and the suitability of Free and Open Source Software and Open Data (PostgreSQL/PostGIS, Quantum GIS, Open Street Map) for the Spatial Databases curriculum. The resulting material was evaluated by a cohort of 25 students in 2010, and their feedback (very positive) and the overall results provide an interesting insight into suitable methods to employ when teaching technical subjects to a cohort having differing background skill levels.

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GRASS GIS: A multi-purpose open source GIS

Neteler

Bowman

Landa

et al. 2012

Environmental Modelling & Software

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a b s t r a c tLet f be a univariate polynomial with real coefficients, f ∈ R[X ].Subdivision algorithms based on algebraic techniques (e.g., Sturm or Descartes methods) are widely used for isolating the real roots of f in a given interval. In this paper, we consider a simple subdivision algorithm whose primitives are purely numerical (e.g., function evaluation). The complexity of this algorithm is adaptive because the algorithm makes decisions based on local data. The complexity analysis of adaptive algorithms (and this algorithm in particular) is a new challenge for computer science. In this paper, we compute the size of the subdivision tree for the SqFreeEVAL algorithm.The SqFreeEVAL algorithm is an evaluation-based numerical algorithm which is well-known in several communities. The algorithm itself is simple, but prior attempts to compute its complexity have proven to be quite technical and have yielded sub-optimal results. Our main result is a simple O(d (L +ln d)) bound on the size of the subdivision tree for the SqFreeEVAL algorithm on the benchmark problem of isolating all real roots of an integer polynomial f of degree d and whose coefficients can be written with at most L bits. Our proof uses two amortization-based techniques: first, we use the algebraic amortization technique of the standard Mahler-Davenport root bounds to interpret the integral in terms of d and L. Second, we use a continuous amortization technique based on an integral to bound the size of the subdivision tree. This paper is the first to use the novel analysis technique of continuous amortization to derive state of the art complexity bounds.

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Reflections of an Online Geographic Information Systems Course Based on Open Source Software

Cited by 11 publications

References 3 publications

Geocomputation and Open Source Software: Components and Software Stacks

Geocomputation and Open Source Software: Components and Software Stacks

Can Free (and Open Source) Software and Data be Used to Underpin a Self‐Paced Tutorial on Spatial Databases?

GRASS GIS: A multi-purpose open source GIS

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