Geoinformatics for Science and Society Course Lectures

This page contains the lectures of the course "Geoinformatics for Science and Society" which is offered as part of the MsC programme at the Institute for Geoinformatics at the University of Münster. This course counts for 5 credit points with 30 hours of seminars plus 30 hours of additional group work and homework.

Whenever possible, the course will focus on applications that use large data sets of geospatial data ("big data")and will emphasize novel applications of geoinformatics. We will focus on the possible scientific uses of big data and compare them with the current practices. In cases where big data is not be available, we will use existing data sets, since the focus in on Science. The course covers the following topics:

  1. Introduction: How Geospatial information represents and models society and nature?. 
  2. Impacts of Big Geospatial Data in Science and Society.
  3. Population and census data: representation and analysis.
  4. Social Exclusion and Poverty measurement. 
  5. Spatial Segregation and Urban Planning. 
  6. Agent-based modelling for Urban Applications. 
  7. Health Geographics. 
  8. Landscape Ecology. 
  9. Land Change. 
  10. Social Networks.

Geoinformatics for Science and Society Course Assignments

This page contains the student assignments of the course "Geoinformatics for Science and Society" which is offered as part of the MsC programme at the Institute for Geoinformatics at the University of Münster. This course counts for 5 credit points with 30 hours of seminars plus 30 hours of additional group work and homework.

The course will be graded based on completed assignments (50%) and the final project (50%). For the assignments, students may work in groups of two. The final project is individual. The assignments will consist of the following topics

  1. Building a geospatial database for societal applications. 
  2. Redistricting with census data. 
  3. Social Exclusion and Poverty measurement. 
  4. Spatial Segregation. 
  5. Health Geographics. 
  6. Landscape Ecology. 
  7. Land Change. 

The final project will be assigned by agreement between the student and the course professor. It will consist of a more in-depth investigation of one of the topics covered in the course.

All slides, papers and course information can be found on the course pages at geoinformatics.cc.