An SDI for the GIS-education at the UGent Geography Department

The UGent Geography Department (GD) (ca. 200 students; 10 professors) has been teaching GIS since the mid 90’s. Ever since, GIS has evolved from Geographic Information Systems, to GIScience, to GIServices; implying that a GIS specialist nowadays has to deal with more than just desktop GIS. Knowledge about the interaction between different components of an SDI (spatial data, technologies, laws and policies, people and standards) is crucial for a graduated Master student. For its GIS education, the GD has until recently been using different sources of datasets, which were stored in a non-centralized system. In conformity with the INSPIRE Directive and the Flemish SDI Decree, the GD aims to set-up its own SDI using free and open source software components, to improve the management, user-friendliness, copyright protection and centralization of datasets and the knowledge of state of the art SDI structure and technology. The central part of the system is a PostGIS-database in which both staff and students can create and share information stored in a multitude of tables and schemas. A web-based application facilitates upper-level management of the database for administrators and staff members. Exercises in various courses not only focus on accessing and handling data from the SDI through common GIS-applications as QuantumGIS or GRASS, but also aim at familiarizing students with the set-up of widely used SDI-elements as WMS, WFS and WCS services. The (dis)advantages of the new SDI will be tested in a case study in which the workflow of a typical ‘GIS Applications’ exercise is elaborated. By solving a problem of optimal location, students interact in various ways with geographic data. A comparison is made between the situation before and after the implementation of the SDI.

ISBN:9789088262173

Publication year:2011

Accessibility:Open