Drawing together the various readings on the initiating and developing a GIS project - suppose you have been contacted by the City of Lowell who is considering initiating a city GIS. Prepare a phasing documents (in outline) that has the key phases of the effort and the key factors that each phase should address.

Chrisman makes the point that you need to measure the project not the data? What does he mean by this and how does a focus on measuring the data often lead to failed or problem laden projects?

Outline the steps necessary to digitize a paper map using a standard digitizer.

What technological (hardware and software) changes have lead to major movement away from manual digitizing?

Define aka Chrisman and B (a) undershoot, (b) overshoot and (c) dangle. What digitizing situations are likely to create each of these?

Compare the advantages/ disadvantages of stream digitizing vs point digitizing?

Compare the advantages/disadvantages of scanning versus manual digitizing.

How are digitizer coordinates "mapped" to world coordinates?

B lists a series of potential problems that can occur when raster line work is vectorized (page 160) GeoMedia has a number of raster-to-vector conversion tools that address a number of these errors. List the error type and the GM tool that can address it.

In general terms why should you not take a "standard" aerial photograph and digitize from it?

In outline - what does the process of rectification of aerial photography do? How does rectified photography compare to orthophotography?

Discuss the statement "in the Ozarks you generally get more acres than your surveyed area records."

Define "survey traverse", POB, "closing a traverse," and COGO.

In many situations - when you enter survey data into a GIS using COGO - the results from two different surveys from two different section corners of adjacent parcels will end up with the parcel boundaries overlapping in the GIS event though they do not overlap on the ground. If both surveys were "properly done" how can this situation occur?

In outline - how does the surveying process create a planametric set of coordinates from measurements taken from locations over a surface with irregular/differing heights?

Discuss the statement: "the higher cost of survey grade GPS equipment can be justified in situations where there are long traverses to connect a parcel to proper geodetic control." Is this correct? If so - why are there few surveying firms in Arkansas using GPS?

Discuss the statement: "understanding GPS is basically simple - its just a 3D version of the old technique of using dividers in geometry class to bisect a line or create a right angle."

According to B there are seven measures to assess quality in geospatial data. Describe each measure and how to (a) evaluate a data set according to the measurement and (b) what the implications of poor quality in this measure will imply.

Given the above measures - which ones are addressed by the basic (required) FGDC metadata? Which FGDC metadata category applies to which of the above measures. Which, if any, of the measures are well addressed by FGDC metadata and which are poorly addressed?

Discuss the statement: "Two locations are accurately located, their coordinates are accurately expressed in UTM values and in SPSC values. However, the distance between the two points is more accurately reflected by the SPSC values than the UTM values."

Define (a) ellipsoid, (b) geoid, (c) coordinate systems, (d) projection, and (e) datum.

Why are there so many datums in use? Why is the "same" point assigned different latitude and longitude values with different datums?

In looking at the position shifts in the image:
http://www.utexas.edu/depts/grg/gcraft/notes/datum/gif/shift.gif
why are the Tokyo and Indian farther from the WGS84 position than the NAD27 one?

In outline - what is the "standard" process for general datum conversion. How is the datum transformation from NAD27 to NAD83 different from a generic shift and why?

Many map projections require latitude and longitudes for origin and parallels. What is a projection's origin and parallel and how can using different values for (a) the origin and (b) parallels change the resulting map?

In choosing a map projection to use what are the general criteria to consider - if the area to be map is (a) the world (b) the US (c) a state like Arkansas (d) the area around Fayetteville.

Why does USGS use UTM for its quadrangle maps for Arkansas and all local Arkansas cities use SPSC?

Why are there so many SPSC zones?

Describe the basic characteristics of a UTM zone. How wide is it, how are the coordinates defined? Arkansas is covered by two UTM zones. What are they?  Is is possible to assign all locations in the state to one UTM zone. How would this be done? What are the problems that this creates?

Using the following data (adapted/modified from that developed in the last day of class) draw a cost curve for a small municipality for six years (you can ignore inflation and computation of present values). You are given the below benefits - define three additional benefits - you may make up the numbers (be rational) but the numbers MUST be conceptually possible to measure - plot the benefits. Does the GIS program break even in five years. If so when? Over five years what is the total "profit or loss" of the program? Compute the difference between the cost line (minus) and benefit line (plus) for each year and plot that - this is your annual "profit/loss" or cost/benefits. Sum all of the individual year's values for the five years. Doe this GIS program make financial sense?
 
 

Category	Hardware	Software	People	Training	Data
Initial	45,000	15,000	100,000	25,000	400,000
Annual	15,000	4,000	100,000	5,000	40,000

YOUR benefits?