CIDE-3143 Maps and Data as Development Tools
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.
Instructor
Guhl Andres
Catalog page for this course