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Identifying the location of natural, socioeconomic, and political phenomena is a fundamental factor with an influence on a region’s development process. Those phenomena or processes where location is important is a special type of data that is known as geographic or spatial information. A consideration of where different phenomena are located allows us to answer questions such as: Which regions develop more than others? How are environmental and socioeconomic variables related in the region? How has this relationship evolved over time? Where these phenomena are found can also be both cause and consequence of activities associated with development, and of the equity or inequity of their impacts and benefits. The development of computational tools for the analysis and manipulation of geographic information, in particular geographic information systems (GIS), global positioning systems (GPS) and the information coming from remote sensors, has revolutionized the way the phenomena, resources, and processes present on the earth’s surface are managed and analyzed. These tools and their application to the management and analysis of geographic information for solving specific problems have formed a new discipline called Geomatics. Geomatics allows us to answer five basic questions about a specific region or place according to two topics: In the topic of spatial distribution there are two (2) questions answered: What phenomena or resources are present and Whereare they located in different places. Relative to processes that are resolved the how, when, and why are used because a region is the geographic space where these activities are carried out. Geomatic tools have enormous potential in regional planning processes, development, and the administration and management of a region’s resources. Among other things, these tools contribute to decision-making for resource management, they permit an evaluation and monitoring of the region’s administration and of the impact of development policies. In addition, they permit the simulation and modeling of the impacts of applying different types of regional management. Despite the enormous potential of geomatic tools, it is important to bear in mind their limitations, not only relative to the tools in and of themselves, but also relative to the information available for using them. The general purpose of this course is to give an overall vision of geomatic tools so that each student can learn their basic functions, the advantages and disadvantages of their use, information limitations, and their application potential to the different disciplines of knowledge. Unlike other geomatics courses, this course does not teach a specific packet. Rather, what it seeks is for each student to acquire the basic concepts of spatial analysis that can be used independently of which program is available.

This course is aimed at presenting and discussing with the students some of the topics considered strategic and core to what its known nowadays as development studies. In this way, students appreciate and understand the complex and interdisciplinary nature of said process, the urgent nature of studying and becoming significantly involved in development, taking into account the different dimensions it involves, and the possible role in its discipline and career.

For several decades now it has been evident that human activities have an enormous influence on the functioning of our planet. The development process, the majority of which so far has been sustained by the economic utilization of so-called natural capital to improve the income and quality of life of people, together with population growth and changes in socio-cultural patterns at the world level, has generated enormous pressures on the planet’s resources. According to many researchers, development as currently conceived is not compatible with the planet’s limited resources. When we talk about Global Change it is assumed that it is a process that has only had an impact in the last 40 or 50 years. This is not true, however, since the earth since its formation has been in a process of constant change. The contemporary change process, however, is different in the sense that a single species (ours) is responsible for the majority of the transformation, for the use of resources, and in this sense for the future of all living beings and of the planet itself. A change of this magnitude by a single species has very few parallels in the geological past of the Earth. Although environmental issues and the relationship between society and its surroundings are at the very center of this global change, it also generates significant transformations in the political, economic, social, and institutional arenas. Global change is not something happening "over there" or something over which the regular citizen has no influence. Our daily activities contribute to global change, and what we do or don’t do has repercussions on the functioning of the planet and society. The purpose of this course is to understand how human activities have an influence on the planet, how the development process impacts the planet, and in this way, the student will be able to answer questions such as, "What is climate change?" What causes it? What other aspects of human activity and of the development process have an impact on the planet’s functioning? What future will we have if we continue the way we are going?