Welcome to Methods 3, Lecture 1
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Methods 3
Syllabus
Syllabus
6 weeks: GIS
5 weeks: online maps
Syllabus
6 weeks: GIS
5 weeks: online maps
4 weeks: final projects
Assignments will be posted in Canvas
Do assignments on time or lose 25% credit.
Final grade =
20% attendance and participation +
30% assignments +
50% final project
Email
Please use descriptive subject lines
Please include links to relevant data and sites
Please include screenshots where applicable
GIS
cartography
projections
choropleths
geoprocessing
heat maps
georectification
Online maps
Carto
OpenStreetMap
Mapbox
maps that I've made
What is a map?
GIS
GIS
"Any system for capturing, storing, checking, and displaying data related to positions on the Earth's surface"
source
VIDEO
a GIS will let you:
visualize map data
create and edit map data
overlay map data
analyze map data
the history of cartography in four bullet points:
up to 15th c: maps mostly as diagrams
up to 15th c: maps mostly as diagrams
15th c: world maps for navigation
up to 15th c: maps mostly as diagrams
15th c: world maps for navigation
19th c: maps combined with data
up to 15th c: maps mostly as diagrams
15th c: world maps for navigation
19th c: maps combined with data
mid 20th c: GIS
"The geographical concept called 'land use' is normally restricted to property mapping. But land is also used directly by humans. What is it that the human child in Fitzgerald actually touches? Is this a suitable surface for human contact, or it just cheap, easy to maintain, easy to drain?"
Bill Bunge, Fitzgerald
"During the last 50 years or so cartography and GIS have very much aspired to push maps as factual scientific documents. Critical cartography and GIS however conceives of mapping as embedded in specific relations of power ."
Crampton, Mapping
What are latitude and longitude?
lab
Introduction to webmaps
aka "the geoweb", "online maps"
webmaps
maps on the internet and the practices and software that facililtate their creation
"practices and software"
platforms for working with maps and data
adding spatial data to otherwise non-spatial artifacts
(eg, geotagging of pictures on a service like flickr, adding location to tweets, etc)
"practices and software"
platforms for working with maps and data
(open) data
adding spatial data to otherwise non-spatial artifacts
How did we get here?
first web maps were static
click
click
...wait
click
...wait
entire page reloads, map is panned east
static online maps are often indistinguishable from paper maps
how did we get here?
~1997 - today
GPS
the web changed
more data became available
FOSS became mainstream
1. GPS
the end of Selective Availability (2000)
2. the web has changed
"Web 2.0" (~2004)
Tim O'Reilly
Britannica Online → Wikipedia
Britannica Online → Wikipedia
publishing → podcasting, blogging
Britannica Online → Wikipedia
publishing → podcasting, blogging
...
desktop GIS → webmaps
AJAX (2005)
AJAX
(Asynchronous Javascript and XML)
AJAX
(Asynchronous Javascript and XML)
dynamically loading portions of webpages
3. data becomes more available
open data
open data
data that is:
accessible (online, in a widely-used format)
open data
data that is:
accessible (online, in a widely-used format)
licensed freely
open data
data that is:
accessible (online, in a widely-used format)
licensed freely
usually created by a large entity
How do we give data back?
collaborative data
Haiti in OpenStreetMap before 2010 earthquake
source
Haiti in OpenStreetMap after 2010 earthquake
source
4. FOSS comes into the mainstream
Free / Open Source Software
goal is to protect the "fundamental freedoms of software users"
by opening source code
freedoms to
use,
study,
modify, and
redistribute
this source code
in exchange for
attribution, and sometimes
sharing your changes under the same license
backed by licenses
~1997 - today
GPS
the web changed
more data became available
FOSS became mainstream
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