Geography 493S - S-SpatialDecisionMaking&Supprt

This graduate-level course is aimed at students who have a foundation in basic GIS techniques and applications and are interested in expanding their knowledge into their area of spatial decision making and visualization of the decision maps. We will start with the linkage between GIScience, spatial analysis, and decision support. We will then discuss different decision-making techniques and highlight the important distinction between conventional MCDA methods and spatially explicitly multicriteria approaches. An overview of handling spatial uncertainty as well as sensitivity analysis will be discussed. The course will also introduce Python scripting for geoprocessing as flexible approach for the development of spatial decision-making models.
In this course, students will:
- Learn the fundamentals of spatial decision making and support
- Become familiar with using Python scripting to solve decision-making problems for spatial models
- Create decision analysis maps along with uncertainty/sensitivity maps in order to support the decision-making process