Geographic Software Design

Course Overview

This course will focus on the creation and design of open-source Python packages for geospatial analysis and interactive mapping. Students will be exposed to various popular Python IDEs including Visual Studio Code, Jupyter Notebook, and Google Colab, and will utilize these tools to package and share their code with collaborators and the broader Python community. They will also learn to build upon popular geospatial packages and contribute to the open-source community. Upon course completion, students will have the ability to create their own Python package and accompanying documentation website, which can be freely hosted on GitHub. The practical skills acquired in this course will greatly enhance students' resumes and make them more competitive in the job market for technical positions such as GIS analyst, data scientist, and software developer. The geemap and leafmap Python packages are great examples to follow. 

Email Communication Policy

All course-related questions, except those of a personal and private nature, must be emailed to the Group Email ut_geog510@live.utk.edu. Emails of a personal or private nature sent to the instructor should include “GEOG-510” in the email subject line. The instructor reserves 30 extra credit points (3% of the total grade) for those students who actively respond to the questions from other students posted to the Group Email. The instructor will strive to respond to questions within 24 hours during the week and 48 hours on the weekend. 

Course Websites

Time

Instructor

Qiusheng Wu

Dr. Qiusheng Wu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography & Sustainability at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. In addition, he holds positions as an Amazon Visiting Academic and a Senior Research Fellow at the United Nations University. Specializing in geospatial data science and open-source software development, Dr. Wu is particularly focused on leveraging big geospatial data and cloud computing to study environmental changes, with an emphasis on surface water and wetland inundation dynamics. He is the creator of several open-source packages designed for advanced geospatial analysis and visualization, including geemap, leafmap, and segment-geospatial. For a closer look at his open-source contributions, please visit his GitHub repositories at https://github.com/opengeos.