Description:
This intensive five-day course introduces students to basic GIS concepts through the use of ArcGIS 9.2 software. It covers a wide range of topics and is designed for people with little or no experience with GIS; however, familiarity with PCs, file and folder management, and basic computing chores is required.

The course is organized into a series of topics that focus on specific GIS functions. Each topic is presented and discussed in a classroom setting and is followed by a hands-on lab exercise that uses the GIS tools discussed and demonstrates how the tools can be used to display, create, manage and analyze GIS data.

Course exercises are geared towards natural resource management and community planning and decision making and makes extensive use of a "typical" municipal GIS database and Connecticut's public domain geospatial datasets. Topics covered include:

• Introduction to ArcMap and ArcCatalog
• How to work with attribute data
• Displaying and plotting geospatial dataset
• How to perform attribute and spatial data queries
• How to perform spatial analyses
• On-screen digitizing of map data, address matching, importing coordinates
• How to georeference aerial photographs
• Overview and use of satellite and aerial multispectral imagery
• Finding, accessing and using data over the Internet
• Metadata - what it is and why you need to know about it and create it