Module Objectives

This module aims to introduce students to the development of computer applications (software development) in the areas of spatial analysis and geoinformatics and deepen their knowledge in statistical programming. This module also aims to inform students on spatial data visualization capabilities with writing code.

The technical knowledge acquired by the student refers to software development in the programming language R for implementing Statistical algorithms, Spatial Analysis and data management with GIS principles. This is done in order to support calculations and function that are not necessarily provided by the relevant commercial software.

Course Content

– The principles of software design
– The importance of the user friendliness of software
– Principles of Human – Computer Interaction
– Object-oriented programming
– Introduction to the statistical programming language R
– Variables, data types and tables
– Cases and Loops
– Functions in R
– Visualization of spatial data with rgdal
– Data visualization with ggplot

Teaching and Assessment

3-hour lectures that include either theory or practical exercises; they take place in the computer lab.

Assessment:

Written examination or individual essay. An individual essay includes software development and accompanying text that could be a paper or a user manual of about 2,000 words (80% of the mark) and presentation of this paper and real time run of the software (for the remaining 20% of the mark) .

Teaching material:

The teaching material includes lectures and practical exercises to familiarize students with software development. Students are informed the R package lctools (http://gisc.gr/software/lctools-r-package/) that was developed by the module leader in the Department of Geography. Sample code from this software is teaching material. Teaching material includes two e-books authored by the module leader.