290245 PS Advanced Methods in Spatial Statistics (2009S)

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and spatial analysis are increasingly becoming important research and application areas in geography and related disciplines. The focus in this course will be on different groups of spatial analysis techniques, including spatial data collection, point and area pattern analysis, spatial cluster analysis, exploratory spatial data analysis and spatial regression. At the end of the semester I will give several examples of application areas, including geo-visualization, forensic anthropology, public safety and public health. The analysis techniques discussed in this class mostly use discrete spatial data and therefore are foremost applicable to social science research and applications. We will not deal with techniques that commonly employ continuous spatial phenomena. If you are looking for some background information, check out the homepage of the Center for Spatially Integrated Social Sciences (CSISS) (http://www.csiss.org). A second very useful site is the homepage of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) in Santa Barbara, CA (http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu/). Both web sites provide comprehensive publication lists and information on recent research projects, data and spatial analysis software.
Basic knowledge in statistics and GIS is helpful but not required.