Teaching

GEOG4/590: GIS and Public Health

Lecture&Lab, Department of Geography, University of Oregon, 2023

This course introduces the applications of GIS and spatial statistics in exploring and analyzing spatial health and medical datasets. Three major themes will be explored: 1) spatial and spatiotemporal patterns of health phenomena, 2) risk factors associated with health outcomes, and 3) health service access. The course focuses on preparing and organizing health datasets, detecting disease clusters, statistically modeling the association between risk factors and health outcomes, interpolating point- and area-based health data, and measuring and optimizing health services. Weekly assignments will provide hands on experience with example health data. Students who successfully complete this course will develop a skill set of spatial analytical methods to solve contemporary health and medical geographical problems.

GEOG607: Selected Topics in Spatial and Spatiotemporal Analysis

Graduate seminar, Department of Geography, University of Oregon, 2023

This seminar discusses selected topics in spatial and spatiotemporal analyses, including long-standing and newly proposed fundamental issues such as the Modifiable Areal/Temporal Unit Problem and the Uncertain Geographic Context Problem. Opportunities and challenges that spatial and spatiotemporal analyses face in the big data era are also covered, for example, the ethical and geoprivacy issues. For each topic, there will be readings from journal articles and/or book chapters. Students will lead presentations of readings and participate in discussions. Depending on the enrollment size of the class, each student will be a discussion leader at least once during the term. Students will also conduct independent research on a topic covered in the course that they are interested in and/or relevant to their own research. An oral presentation and a 15-page report of student research are required. This report could take the form of an article, a dissertation chapter, or a term paper.

GEOG4/594: Spatial Analysis

Lecture&Lab, Department of Geography, University of Oregon, 2023

This course introduces the theory, methods, and tools used to conduct spatial analysis and understand geographical phenomena. Topics covered in this course include descriptive spatial analysis, probability theory, spatial sampling, inferential spatial analysis, spatial interpolation, spatial correlation, and spatial regression. Common issues in spatial analysis will also be introduced, such as the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP) and the Uncertain Geographic Context Problem (UGCoP). Lectures focus on the geographic theory and associated (mathematical) equations behind each method, and assignments provide an opportunity for students to implement a variety of methods to address questions that are geographic in nature.

GEOG281: The World & Big Data

Lecture&Lab, Department of Geography, University of Oregon, 2023

This course introduces relevant concepts (e.g., 5 V’s) and techniques (e.g., cloud computing) of big (spatial) data as well as its applications in the real word, such as delineating communities using social media data and responding to disasters with volunteered geographic information (VGI). The students will have hands-on experiences such as contributing VGI (e.g., creating and uploading geographic information to Open Street Map), retrieving social media data associated with location (e.g., “geo-tagged” Tweets), operating relational database management system (RDMS) and NoSQL databases, and visualizing big spatial datasets.