geog328

Autumn 2024: GEOGRAPHY 328 - Web GIS

Instructional Team:

Web-based Geographic Information Systems (Web GIS) combine web, mobile technology, and GIS. It’s a growing field in academia and industry, expanding GIS capabilities from local servers to the cloud. This makes online maps and geospatial data more accessible to fields like geography, transportation, and oceanography. The integration of web and GIS has led to advancements like smart cities, location-based services, and pandemic dashboards. This course teaches students to manage web GIS projects, use the latest geospatial cloud technologies, and provides real-world case studies.

This course will explore using ChatGPT to assist in Web GIS development. ChatGPT can simplify development, enhance productivity, and reduce the learning curve with its natural language interface. It helps with error analysis, data analysis, and producing GeoJson data for story maps, making web GIS applications more engaging. ChatGPT’s user recommendations can personalize and improve the user experience.

All Web GIS applications in the course can be used on both Windows and Mac OSX, with all required software being open-source or free. The course includes lectures and lab exercises. Lectures cover Web GIS theories like web architecture, front-end coding, responsive design, and web-based spatial analyses. Labs provide hands-on practice in web programming and web GIS development.

course cover

_This web page is the syllabus. The schedule might change during the quarter, so check it frequently. If you have any questions, feel free to contact the instructor.__

Course Objectives

Weekly Schedule

To get started, you need to Gear up the working environment. Over this quarter, you are expected to read all the assigned reading materials by the end of the Wednesday of each week and complete the lab assignment and quiz by the due day.

Week 1: Intro to Web GIS

The lecture sessions in this week introduces you to the fundamentals of Web GIS. Over this quarter, you will frequently use GitHub for synchronizing course material and managing Web GIS project. So, in Lab 1, you will learn to manage a web-based project using GitHub.

Week 2: Web Fundamentals

Today, almost everyone has used the Internet. To develop Web applications by yourselves, you need to dive into some fundamental concepts. So, in this week, you will learn the basics of the web environment, its mechanics and standards. To maximize your learning outcome, we encourage you to read over the reading materials before the lectures. To test how well you are familiar with the materials and the lecture content, you are required to complete the Quiz 1 all by yourself before the due day.

Week 3: Front-end Coding: HTML and CSS

To build websites, you should know about HTML, CSS and JavaScript. HTML is the fundamental technology used to define the structure of a webpage, CSS is used to style the web page, and JavaScript takes the charge of the behaviors of the Web. We will spend two weeks to focus on these three primary coding languages of the Web. This week mainly introduces you to HTML and CSS. To evaluate your learning outcomes, we offered a quiz and a lab for your practice.

Week 4: Front-end Coding: Javascript and GeoJSON

In this week, we will focus on learning JavaScript. Also, for web applications, geographical data are stored in the JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format, or namely GeoJSON. This week will introduce you to the general format of GeoJSON, demonstrate how to asynchronously load GeoJSON data to your Web GIS application. Similar to the previous week, we offer a quiz on JavaScript and a new lab on how to load, parse and map GeoJSON data on the web.

Week 5: Geospatial Web Server

In this week, we will focus on geospatial web servers. A geospatial web server plays a significant role in maintaining web based geospatial application. It stays in the cloud and provides multiple services relevant to geospatial data, such as geospatial data indexing, data format conversation, reprojection, and even spatial analyses. In this week, two geospatial web servers are introduced, including Mapbox (Proprietary) and GeoServer (Open Source).

Week 6 : Thematic Map Design on the Web

In this week, we will introduce you to map making on the web. The web based interactive map is built upon MapBox, which is a popular map library. It not only contains fundamental map related functions, but also offers a lot of cool map features for your use and further explore. We will walk you through at least two MapBox applications, and you will use MapBox to make an interactive web map in the lab session too.

Week 7 : Geocoding on the Web

Starting from this week to the last week, we will dive into a series of lectures on web-based spatial analysis. In this week, we will introduce you to web-based geocoding using MapBox Geocoding API. The Mapbox Geocoding API allows you to make forward geocoding, which means that a text query like University of Washington gets turned into longitude and latitude coordinates. But sometimes it’s not enough to find query results. Often, you want the geocoder to find query results that are biased toward a location, limited to a specific area, or both.

Week 8 : Sorting by Distance

In this week, we will introduce you to a basic spatial analysis that uses distance to sort geographical data. This application is made upon MapBox too. Starting from this week, you will work on your final project. Its requirement will be introduced in this week’s lab session. In short, you will need to make an advanced spatial analysis to deal with a real-world problem.

Week 9 : More advanced spatial analysis on the web

In this week, we will introduce how to deal with time on the web. The instructor will walk you through a more complicated application that illustrate how geographical data changes over time. In the lab session, you will continue to work on your final project.

Week 10 : Project Development and Report

There will be no lectures this week, the TA wil be in the lecture room and help you with your final project. In addition, You are encouraged to work on your final project in the lab session.

Final Project Report：needs to be delivered to Canvas by Monday, March 17th 11:59 PST.

Course Requirement

GitHub: This course material will be hosted on GitHub instead of UW Canvas. On this dedicated GitHub repository, you can find most of the course material, participate in group discussions by submitting GitHub issues, and create new GitHub repositories to turn in the lab deliverables. By the end of this quarter, you will be more proficient in operating a cloud-based coding environment and able to host your work online as a way to gain public and peer attentions.

Participation: You should participate in the ad-hoc discussion items and complete all assigned readings and get familiar with the lab instructions before class meetings.

Quizzes: There will be two quizzes in this quarter. Each quiz is designed to test your comprehension of new material. Questions may include multiple choice questions, matching questions, fill-in-the-blank questions, and short answer questions. Before you answer the questions, please read the following instructions carefully:

Lab Assignments: You need to finish all four labs by the due date. You are encouraged to work on the lab assignments in groups, However, each student should submit their own work. In addition, you are encouraged to use ChatGPT to code or debug your program, but please do not use ChatGPT to create textual content that is required in your Lab Assignments. If you have any questions about the lab further, please refer to the troubleshooting section below.

Thinkpieces: Your weekly thinkpiece should be at least 350 words and share it on the Canvas discussion board. Your thinkpiece should delve into your utilization of AI tools such as ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, or any other relevant tools in completing the lab assignment.

Grading

Grading items %
Participation 2%
Thinkpiece 18%
Quizzes 15%
Lab Assignments 40%
Final Project 25%

Troubleshooting

General Course Issues

For course-related issues, please first check the syllabus. If you still have questions, email me directly.

Coding Issues

If your issue is related to coding and debugging, please follow these steps before reaching out:

  1. Ensure you have carefully read the course requirements.
  2. Verify that your code follows basic syntax and rules.
  3. Use the inspector or your development environment to check for system errors or warnings.
  4. Search for solutions on Google or other search engines. If you find any, try implementing them.
  5. If the issue persists, use ChatGPT to seek a solution.
  6. If you have tried all the above steps and still cannot resolve the problem, email the TA. In your email, describe the issue and include:
    • The source code or a link to your GitHub repo.
    • System errors or warnings from step 3.
    • Links to solutions you found through Google (step 4).
    • Screenshots of ChatGPT’s responses (step 5).
    • A subject line summarizing your email (e.g., “Question regarding Web Map Stylesheet of Lab 4”).

Equity & Inclusivity

Our very highest priorities include creating a brave and supportive class environment where each of us contributes, we can ask big questions, we give and receive critiques in a supportive way, we notice and engage the ways that we are differently situated within past and present relationship of power, privilege and oppression. I invite you to think hard about how race, gender identity, religion, age, citizenship status, first language, ability, sexuality, class, and other axes are at work in our interactions, and what this might mean in terms of when to speak up, when to step back, how to listen, and much more. Each of you is a welcome and invaluable part of our collective whole.

Disability Accommodations

We welcome the opportunity to work with any students with disabilities in this class to ensure equal access to the course. If you have a letter from Disability Resources for Students (DRS) outlining your academic accommodations, please present the letter to me (or email us, to confirm, if the letter is electronic) as soon as possible so that we can discuss the accommodations you may need for this class. Any discussions between student and professor need to occur as early as possible in order for adequate arrangements to be made. If you do not yet have a letter from DRS, but would like to request academic accommodations due to a disability, please contact DRS here (Links to an external site.), or in-person at 011 Mary Gates Hall, or at 206-543-8924 (Voice & Relay), uwdrs@uw.edu.

Religious Accommodations

Washington state law requires that UW develop a policy for accommodation of student absences or significant hardship due to reasons of faith or conscience, or for organized religious activities. The UW’s policy, including more information about how to request an accommodation, is available at Religious Accommodations Policy. Accommodations must be requested within the first two weeks of this course using the Religious Accommodations Request form.

Student Care & Safety

It is important that you take care of yourselves inside and outside of class as you work through stress and other obstacles. There are many different support services on campus that can help, such as the Counseling Center, Hall Health, and the IMA. UW’s Student Care program can help you connect to these and other resources. Learn more an contact them directly: http://depts.washington.edu/livewell/student-care/, livewell@uw.edu, or 206.543.6085. If you are concerned about yourself or a friend who is struggling SafeCampus is a helpful resource. Please add 206.685.7233 to your phones

This course advocates for the open culture. The course materials are open source for both students and open source community to access. This course also builds on the work of Bo Zhao, Xiaoqi “Steven” Bao, Liz Peng, among many others, who have designed and taught or TA-ed previous iterations of this course.

Notably, students are not allow to videotape or audio-tape (record) this class in any form, and sharing recordings outside of class without the written consent of each student in the class is not permitted by FERPA. I encourage each of you attend the lectures instead of watching the recorded videos afterwards. Your in-class participation is a key factor to yield the best learning outcome. The instructor determines if their class can and cannot be recorded. This decision should be clearly communicated by the instructor at the beginning and throughout the quarter. In Zoom, the recording feature can be controlled by the instructor, as the meeting host.

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