Lecture

GIS Teaser

Graph Chat

Chat with Graph Search

Ask any question about EPFL courses, lectures, exercises, research, news, etc. or try the example questions below.

DISCLAIMER: The Graph Chatbot is not programmed to provide explicit or categorical answers to your questions. Rather, it transforms your questions into API requests that are distributed across the various IT services officially administered by EPFL. Its purpose is solely to collect and recommend relevant references to content that you can explore to help you answer your questions.

Description

This lecture introduces the use of geographic information systems (GIS) in protecting endangered species like black rhinoceroses by monitoring their locations with drones. It covers the acquisition, storage, analysis, and representation of geo-data, as well as the importance of databases in GIS software.

Official source

Related concepts (14)

Geographic information system

A geographic information system (GIS) consists of integrated computer hardware and software that store, manage, analyze, edit, output, and visualize geographic data. Much of this often happens within a spatial database, however, this is not essential to meet the definition of a GIS. In a broader sense, one may consider such a system also to include human users and support staff, procedures and workflows, the body of knowledge of relevant concepts and methods, and institutional organizations.

Spatial analysis

Spatial analysis is any of the formal techniques which studies entities using their topological, geometric, or geographic properties. Spatial analysis includes a variety of techniques using different analytic approaches, especially spatial statistics. It may be applied in fields as diverse as astronomy, with its studies of the placement of galaxies in the cosmos, or to chip fabrication engineering, with its use of "place and route" algorithms to build complex wiring structures.

Geographic information science

Geographic information science (GIScience, GISc) or geoinformation science is a scientific discipline at the crossroads of computational science, social science, and natural science that studies geographic information, including how it represents phenomena in the real world, how it represents the way humans understand the world, and how it can be captured, organized, and analyzed. It is a sub-field of geography, specifically part of technical geography.

Boundary problem (spatial analysis)

A boundary problem in analysis is a phenomenon in which geographical patterns are differentiated by the shape and arrangement of boundaries that are drawn for administrative or measurement purposes. The boundary problem occurs because of the loss of neighbors in analyses that depend on the values of the neighbors. While geographic phenomena are measured and analyzed within a specific unit, identical spatial data can appear either dispersed or clustered depending on the boundary placed around the data.

Spatial database

A spatial database is a general-purpose database (usually a relational database) that has been enhanced to include spatial data that represents objects defined in a geometric space, along with tools for querying and analyzing such data. Most spatial databases allow the representation of simple geometric objects such as points, lines and polygons. Some spatial databases handle more complex structures such as 3D objects, topological coverages, linear networks, and triangulated irregular networks (TINs).

Related lectures (64)

Relational Databases: Fundamentals MOOC: Geographical Information Systems 1

Covers relational and spatial databases, including storage, management systems, ACID properties, historical typologies, primary and foreign keys, and spatial functions.

Data modeling: Geographic Information Systems MOOC: Geographical Information Systems 1

Introduces data modeling in the context of Geographic Information Systems, covering the added value and methods used.

GIS: Introduction to Geographical Information Systems

Covers GIS, vector and raster data, spatial analysis, and coordinate systems.

Vector-Vector Data Layer Interactions MOOC: Geographical Information Systems 2

Covers interactions between vector layers in GIS, including geometric properties, spatial arrangement, autocorrelation, altitude models, and SQL equivalents.

Geographic Information Systems: Urban Morphology and Modeling