GIS Program
CSU campus GIS annual subscriptions through the GIS Specialty Center provide significant benefits in support of campus GIS activities:
1. Site License for ESRI products
The CSU system-wide site license for software products from ESRI (Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc.) is a major benefit included in the subscription.
2. Technical Support Program
Each campus has a designated Technical Representative who may be able to address local technical problems directly. Hardware and software installation and consulting services will also be provided by the CSU GIS Specialty Center at San Francisco State University. Any questions not addressed by the GIS Specialty Center will be referred directly to ESRI via the creation of a technical support incident with ESRI. In addition, software technical support via telephone and email is available from ESRI (through two designated representatives on each campus). The CSU GIS Specialty Center staff can help you get the software installed, attach peripherals, and solve other configuration problems.
3. GIS Training Programs
A variety of training programs are available.
Virtual campus. each CSU campus has unlimited access to certain online courses through ESRI's Virtual Campus. The Virtual Campus Subscription Administrator for each campus provides access codes to these courses. For more information regarding the Virtual Campus class descriptions, please see the ESRI Virtual Campus Web site.
Instructor led. This benefit includes vendor-based instructor-led training at ESRI facilities in Redlands and other California venues. There are a limited number of these instructor-led training days. Use of these training days is limted to faculty and staff.
ESRI training manuals. Lecture materials and exercises for introductory and advanced courses in GIS, accessible online or by mail. Exercises use local California datasets, such as a 20-layer coast-to-bay transect of the San Francisco peninsula for environmental analysis, or a landuse and demographic analysis of the San Gabriel Valley.
CSU/GIS workshops. each year the CSU GIS Specialty Center organizes workshops by and for CSU faculty and technical support staff. The number of specialized workshops (in applications areas, e.g. ecological modeling, cartography, business applications, geologic mapping, census mapping, natural resource modeling, etc.) depends upon subscriber interests and needs.
4. ESRI User Conference and Education User Conference Registration
The ESRI User Conference and Education User Conference are held once a year in San Diego, usually in July or August. These conferences are a valuable way to learn more about techniques and applications of GIS. One to two complimentary registrations are available per campus under this program. During the User Conference the CSU hosts a lunch meeting where members of the CSU GIS community may meet and provide input to the activities of the GIS Specialty Center.
5. Networking
An important part of learning GIS technology is to see how others are using it. This CSU GIS website has been created to help facilitate inter-campus communication. It is linked to other CSU sites, where campus users can show others what they're doing (this generates a great deal of good PR, and often attracts students).
Geographic Information Science
- Geographic Information System (GIS) - is a comprehensive database tied to location, with an integrated set of tools for querying, analyzing, and displaying that information. Some important classes of GIS tools include those that support: (1) logical map overlay, integrating multi-layer data sources in an analysis; (2) proximity analysis and spatial buffering; (3) network analysis (e.g. of roads or streams); (4) geocoding and address-matching; and (5) three-dimensional surface modeling. GIS technology is rapidly gaining popularity as a means of dealing with all sorts of information stored on maps.
- Remote Sensing - Analysis of the earth's surface and interpretation of its features using imagery collected from air or space platforms. Image processing methods use visible and nonvisible (e.g. ultraviolet and infrared) parts of the electromagnetic spectrum to interpret land cover patterns of vegetation, soil, land use, and environmental systems, including up-to-the-minute changes in these systems. With new satellite platforms going up every year, with increasing richness in spatial and spectral detail, this technology is becoming an essential tool for geographic information scientists.
- Cartography - The art and science of making maps. An important methodological arena for geographic information scientists is communicating the results of studies. Cartographical theories and methods focus on information content, symbolization and design to get the correct message across.
- Global Positioning System(GPS) - provides a means for determining earth location and navigation, using a constellation of formerly military GPS satellites and the technology for interpreting their signals. Field data collection for GIS and Remote Sensing projects is increasingly dependent on GPS.
The synthesis of spatial theory, methods and technologies used to study and map geographic interrelationships, distributions, networks, temporal change and other spatially aware information, in order to better understand and manage limited earth resources. Includes: