Print
Cloud GIS
Cloud GIS is an emerging set of technologies, concepts, and work practices, rather than a settled set of services. This course is intended to provide you with both practical skills that you need to use cloud computing in your everyday work, and also the background and critical thinking you need to make decisions about how cloud computing should be used in your organization.
Cloud computing discussion
Most lessons feature a cloud computing discussion page that presents an important aspect of cloud computing and encourages you to envision its potential impact on GIS systems. Many of these will be accompanied by required readings that will guide you toward the discussion. We'll use several free online chapters of Rosenburg and Mateos' The Cloud At Your Service. Buying the entire book is optional, but I will list other chapters from it that will be helpful in some of the discussions.
The trends we will cover this term are:
- GIS cloud computing
- Cloud computing and you
- Cloud computing economics
- Cloud security
- Cloud architectures
- Cloud service vendors
- The future of cloud computing
I'll ask you to participate in threaded discussions with your classmates based on several prompts that I will provide on the topics above. These constitute an important part of your participation grade.
On the next page, you'll find your first cloud computing assignment. In this assignment, we will examine what cloud computing is, how we are using, and how we plan to use cloud computing in GIS.