18-Geom-A7 Geospatial Information Systems · May 2017
Nivaar worked solution (AI-drafted; not reviewed by a licensed engineer)
National Exams — May 2017 — 04-Geom-A7 Geospatial Information Systems. Closed-book; any non-communicating calculator permitted. Format: fifteen questions of varied value totalling 100 marks; fifteen questions constitute a complete paper and all fifteen are solved in full below. Most answers are required in essay form. Datum and coordinate conventions follow the Canadian spatial reference framework — NAD83(CSRS) horizontally and CGVD2013 vertically.
Reference texts: P. A. Longley, M. F. Goodchild, D. J. Maguire & D. W. Rhind, Geographic Information Systems and Science (4th ed., Wiley, 2015); P. Bolstad, GIS Fundamentals: A First Text on Geographic Information Systems (6th ed., XanEdu, 2019); P. A. Burrough, R. A. McDonnell & C. D. Lloyd, Principles of Geographical Information Systems (3rd ed., Oxford, 2015); M. Worboys & M. Duckham, GIS: A Computing Perspective (2nd ed., CRC, 2004); H. Samet, The Design and Analysis of Spatial Data Structures (Addison-Wesley, 1990); ISO 19115 Geographic information — Metadata.
Question text not reproduced: the examination questions are © Engineers and Geoscientists BC. Open the official past paper (linked at the top of this page) to read the question, then follow the worked solution below.
(a) Metadata is "data about data" — structured, standardized documentation that describes a dataset without being the mapped features themselves. It records the who, what, when, where, why and how of a dataset: its identification and abstract, the coordinate reference system (datum/projection), source scale or cell resolution, spatial extent, capture and update dates, positional and attribute accuracy, logical consistency and completeness, lineage/provenance, attribute (field) definitions and coded-value domains, and the custodian, access and licensing constraints. Its role is to let a user who did not create the data judge its fitness for purpose, find it in a catalogue, and use it correctly.
(b) Two common metadata standards are: ISO 19115 — Geographic information — Metadata (the international standard, encoded in XML via ISO 19139); and the FGDC Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata (CSDGM), long used in North America. (The lightweight Dublin Core element set is also widely used for general resource discovery.)
