GIS Education & Resources

Student Projects In Urban Geographic Information Systems

The third course in the series of GIS courses offered by the Department of Urban Planning, Applied Projects in Urban Geographic Information Systems, is the capstone course in the series because it offers students the opportunity to use the skills they have gained in the earlier courses together with authentic local government data to solve a problem or study an issue for a real client. By using data that has been transferred from the City of Milwaukee to the University, the mundane tasks of digitizing and data entry are avoided (GIS County already gave them a flavor for that!) so that the students can concentrate on the capabilities of GIS software to solve real world problems. Recently completed GIS Student Projects include:

• a homelessness prevention project for an area in Milwaukee about to experience gentrification;
• a housing survey and analysis project for a neighborhood organization;
• a breast cancer awareness project for the City of Milwaukee HealthDepartment;
• an evaluation of the African-American Immersion Program for two central city elementary schools;
• a GIS database development and mapping project for a neighborhood community development corporation strategic planning effort;
• an analysis of the impact on property values surrounding proposed light rail system stops;
• a commuter information system that identifies the nearest bus to an address that travels to City Hall with one or no transfer;
• an economic development plan for a community organization that experienced the loss of a major industrial employer in the central city (a project that recently was awarded second place in the ESRI (Environmental Systems Research Institute) User's Group contest on ArcView applications).
• an evaluation of neighborhood quality indicators and their relationship to public investment in housing for the Community Block Grant Administration of the City of Milwaukee.

Current Student work in Urban Geographic Information Systems, Click Here.