Research into the science of geographic data handling and research involving the use of geographic information system technology has a long history at the University of Connecticut. Currently, GIS related research includes departments and centers across almost every college and school of the university. The following are some examples of research activities occurring during the past three years in various colleges and schools:
Current or Pending
· Better Land Use Planning for the Urbanizing Northeast:
Creating a Network of Value-Added Geospatial Information, Tools,
and Education for Land Use Decision Makers. NASA Regional Earth
Science Applications Center (RESAC), NRA-98-OES-08. January 1,
1999 - December 31, 2001.
· Impervious Surface Mapping for Improved Landuse Planning for the Urbanizing Northeast, Storrs Agricultural Experiment Station, October 1, 1998 - September 30, 2000.
· Remote Sensing Thrust Area, Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Connecticut Space Grant College Consortium, June 1, 1999 - May 31, 2000.
· Curriculum Development, Implementation, and Internet-based Distribution for Introductory and Advanced Remote Sensing. Curriculum Development Award, Connecticut Space Grant College Consortium, July 1, 1999 - May 31, 2000.
· Spatio-Temporal Characterization of CO2 Fluxes, Forest Fragmentation, and Urban Growth in the Boston-New York Megalopolis. NASA Land Use and Land Cover Change Program, NRA-99-OES-06. July 1, 2000 - June 30, 2003. (in review)
Recent Past
· Greenhouse gas emissions inventory for the State of Connecticut.
Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection. May 1, 1998
- February 28, 1999.
· Center for Excellence in Applications of Remote Sensing to Regional and Global Integrated Environmental Assessments: The Laboratory for Earth Resources Information Systems. National Aeronautics and Space Administration Mission to Planet Earth NRA-97-MTPE-05. October 1, 1997 - September 30, 1998.
· Development of the North Stonington Town GIS. Co-Investigator (with Peter Tebeau). Awarded to the North Stonington Citizens' Land Alliance. Pawcatuck Watershed Partnership, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. October 1, 1997 - May 31, 1998.
· Development of a distance-based approach to teaching quantitative remote sensing. urriculum Development Grant, Connecticut Space Grant Consortium. September 1, 1996 - May 31, 1997. May 1, 1996 - May 31, 1997.
· Forest species classification using resolution-enhanced Landsat Thematic Mapper satellite remote sensing data. University of Connecticut Research Foundation Large Grant Competition, January 1, 1996 - December 31, 1996.
· Spatial Modeling of Eastern Hemlock decline due to the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid: Phase I - Hemlock mapping and site selection using satellite remote sensing and field observations. Cooperative Agreement between The University of Connecticut and The Northeastern Forest Experiment Station US Department of Agriculture Forest Service. August 15, 1995 - December 31, 1997.
· Understanding Connecticut's Urban Forest Ecosystem. Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, Division of Forestry. September 1, 1995 - August 30, 1997.
· Land use and land cover mapping for the Connecticut and New York portions of the Long Island Sound Watershed. Long Island Sound Research Fund, Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection. July 1, 1995 - June 30, 1997.
Project for the town of New Britain to map crime patterns and to design police patrol districts that minimize response times and balance workloads.
Project for assessing Race-as-Predominant-Factor claims resulting from congressional redistricting plans.
Projects funded by the Centers for Disease Control through the State Department of Public Health and Addiction Services for Lyme Disease intervention.
Project funded by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry through the State Department of Public Health and Addiction Services, to analyze the Town of Stratford's environmental epidemiology.
Project for Health Risk Consultants, Inc. for HIV/AIDS mapping in Connecticut.
Project funded by the State Department of Public Health for developing a GIS for Water Supplies Management.
Project funded by the Connecticut Department of Transportation for the location of highway maintenance facilities (cooperatively with the School of Engineering).
Project funded by the Connecticut Chapter of the American Red Cross to develop vehicle scheduling and routing for blood drives.
The Center for Real Estate and Urban Economic Studies has funded a number of summer GIS projects to develop geographic databases for housing and real estate analysis.
Project funded by the Connecticut Department of Transportation for the location of highway maintenance facilities (cooperatively with the School of Business Administration)
Project funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation New England Region University Transportation Center on the integration of transportation management systems (cooperatively with the School of Business Administration).
Project funded by the Connecticut Department of Transportation on the use of land based digital image acquisition systems in transportation planning, design, and maintenance.
Project funded by the Connecticut Department of Transportation quantifying benefits of highway safety improvements.
Project examining national mortality data files for evidence of county-level clusters of death from selected rheumatic diseases.
Project with the Massachusetts Department of health to evaluate their census-tract level data on the distribution of late stage breast cancer.
Project using the Connecticut Tumor registry for analyzing female breast cancer incidence within Connecticut.
Project funded by the USGS NSDI Competitive Cooperative Agreements Program for establishing a national spatial data infrastructure clearinghouse node for Connecticut.
In addition to these research projects, the faculty have published numerous scholarly articles related to GIS and the journal Cartography and Geographic Information Systems is edited at the university for the American Congress of Surveying and Mapping.
The University of Connecticut has been providing GIS instruction for the last thirteen years. The Department of Geography developed an introductory graduate course in 1984 and since that time GIS instruction has been offered at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. In addition to the individual courses listed below, the University through the Department of Geography has offered a Graduate Certificate in Geographic Information Systems since 1988. This certificate requires completion of 12 credits in GIS-related courses, of which Geography 301 and Geography 303 form the mandatory core.
GEOG 246 - Introduction to Geographic Information Systems, Fall Semester.
GEOG 248 - Applications of Geographic Information Systems, Spring Semester (the sequel to GEOG 246).
GEOG 249 - Special Topics in Geographic Information Systems, semester by arrangement.
GEOG 301 - Fundamentals of Geographic Information Systems, Fall Semester.
GEOG 303 - Application Issues in Geographic Information Systems, Spring Semester (the sequel to GEOG 301).
NRME 252 - Geographic Information Science for Natural Resources Management
NRME 377 - Natural Resource Applications of Geographic Information Systems, alternate Fall Semesters.
CSE 275 - Principles of Computer Graphics, semester by arrangement.
CSE 355 - Computational Geometry, semester by arrangement.
CSE 356 - Interactive Computer Graphics, semester by arrangement.
CSE 372 - Image Processing, semester by arrangement.
GEOG 240 - Cartographic Techniques, Fall Semester.
GEOG 245 - Introduction to Computer-Assisted Cartography, semester by arrangement.
CE 274 - Photogrammetry, Spring Semester
CE 374 - Air Photo Interpretation, semester by arrangement
NRME 237 - Introductory Remote Sensing, Fall Semester.
NRME 238 - Advanced Remote Sensing, Spring Semester.
GEOG 242 - Geographic Data Analysis, Spring Semester.
GEOG 333 - Location Analysis, Fall Semester.
GEOG 342 - Spatial Data Analysis, Fall Semester.
GEOG 343 - Spatial Statistics and Modeling, alternate Spring semesters.
GEOG 382 - Computer Applications in Spatial Analysis, semester by arrangement.
NRME 387 - Geospatial Data Processing Techniques, alternate Fall Semesters.
CSE 255 - Principles of Data Bases, either semester.
CSE 331 - Distributed Database Systems, semester by arrangement.
CSE 350 - Advanced database Topics, semester by arrangement.
OPIM 371 - Decision Support Systems, semester by arrangement.
OPIM 372 - Data Base Systems, semester by arrangement.
CE 271 - Elementary Surveying, Fall Semester.
GEOL 212 - Field Geology, Spring Semester.
NRME 250 - Surveying Practice, Fall Semester.
Abbreviations: CE-Civil Engineering; CSE-Computer Science and Engineering; GEOG-Geography; GEOL-Geology; NRME-Natural Resource Management Engineering; OPIM-Operations and Management & Engineering
The University of Connecticut has developed a number of laboratory facilities for both teaching and research in the geographic information sciences. The following is a representative list of facilities on campus:
Spatial Analysis Laboratories: The teaching lab contains 15 Pentium computers running Windows NT with attached graphics tablets that are networked into the campus backbone allowing access to mainframe software, the Homer Babbidge Library and the Internet; a similar connection exists for the four Pentium computers located in the research lab. Software includes Arc/Info and ArcView, Erdas Imagine, IDRISI, PC SAS, CorelDraw and TRANSCAD among others. Hardcopy devices include HP color inkjet and laserjet printers.
Laboratory for Earth Resources Information Systems: LERIS possesses a wide range of geoprocessing tools, including Pentium computers with access to more than 15 Gb for hard drive storage; geoprocessing software including ER Mapper, ERDAS Imagine, ESRI ArcInfo and ArcView, IDRISI, PCI EASI/PACE. PFINDER, among others; color hardcopy devices including HP 1200C/PS and HP 650C/PS color ink jet printers; a fully-networked system of computers and peripherals; and other input and output devices including scanner, digitizers, tape drives, CD-ROM, and other geospatial software and hardware. The LERIS facility not only houses an array of computer-related hardware and software for geoprocessing, but is a repository for aerial photographs, paper maps, computer tapes, and other support supplies and equipment.
LERIS has been just recognized by NASA as a 'Center of Excellence in Applications of Remote Sensing to Regional and Global Integrated Environmental Assessments.' This grant award will provide the resources to more than double the capacity of the current LERIS facility, by acquiring 15 Pentium-II level PCs, site licenses for ERDAS Imagine, ERDAS MapSheets, Earth Resources Mapper, additional GPS receivers, computer peripheral, and additional geoprocessing-related hardware and software. Additional information can be found at its web site (http://www.lib.uconn.edu/CANR/nrme/index.html).
Map and Geographic Information Center: MAGIC is located at the University's main library, a federal and state depository. The Center has the largest map collection in a public institution in New England. It collects, catalogs and provides access to over 170,000 sheets of maps, over 50,000 air photos, charts, atlases, geodata on microfilm and CD-ROMs. The University Library has a large network of two hundred workstations. It is a selected federal depository for federal documents and is currently receiving almost all electronic data sets, particularly those on CD-ROM, distributed by the federal government. MAGIC has been collecting and making digital geodata available to the University of Connecticut user community since 1987 by establishing several working relationships with state data producers for publishing their datasets. It can provide active public access to a deep collection of public domain data for the State of Connecticut. The work of converting file formats to Arc/Info and MapInfo formats is done in-library, zipped, and put on its web site (http://magic.lib.uconn.edu/). Access usage averages 287 megabytes of compressed data downloaded in 1,170 files per month. The data for MAGIC is stored on a Sun Workstation with over 30 Gb of hard drive storage. MAGIC also has facilities for citizens to digitize their own geodata and print their own maps.
The University community involved in the geographic information sciences have developed many cross-disciplinary activities. A number of the research and education activities mentioned earlier involved collaboration among more than one department, college, and school. To promote further multidisciplinary activities, the university recently created the University of Connecticut Center for Geographic Information and Analysis. This facility is housed in the Homer Babbidge Library in space adjacent to the Map and Geographic Information Center. The mission of this center is to provide training in GIS and related geoprocessing techniques, to conduct contract work and promote multidisciplinary research in the area of geographic information processing, to catalog and maintain digital spatial databases, and to provide support services to the University of Connecticut and the larger state community. One of its first tasks was to coordinate the preparation of this document for the University of Connecticut's application to become a member of the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science.