Physical Geography: Geographical Databases

<p>The course is an elective course at advanced level for a master's degree in GIS and Remote sensing and for a master's degree in Physical geography and Ecosystem science, all specializations.</p><p>The aim of this course is to provide students with the theoretical understanding of how a geographic database is built-up and how it can be used. You will study key concepts for handling geographic databases with special focus on spatial databases, object oriented modelling of the contents of geographic databases, the query language SQL (and spatial development of this) and indexing of spatial data. You are introduced to concepts of open source code for geographic databases and so called "Volunteered Geographic Information" (VGI). After completion of the course you should also have the practical ability to model, create and use a geographic database in a correct way.</p> <p>On completion of the course, the student shall be able to:</p> <ul> <li>explain how query languages can be used to create an advanced relational database and how it is used for advanced data selection</li> <li>describe how geographic data are stored in a searchable way in a database</li> <li>analyse advantages and disadvantages to store geographic data in a database compared with storing in a file structure</li> <li>give an account of basic concepts in object oriented modelling and explain how object oriented modelling can be used to describe the structure for a geographic database.</li> <li>independently create an object oriented model for the structure of a geographic database by means of a standard tool for database modelling</li> <li>communicate with a database developed for geographic data</li> </ul> <h3>Teaching</h3> <p>The teaching consists of theoretical lectures and practical exercises. The practical exercises are connected to the theoretical concepts and highlight these with data from relevant applications. The course also contains a final compulsory group work project presented in a written report. Participation in exercises and projects and associated components is compulsory.</p>