TRP 216
Urban Analytics
Level 2
Assessment brief: GIS Technical Report (Individual: 75%)
Introduction
This assessment is aimed at developing your spatial analysis, mapping and critical analysis skills. The principal output is the production of an individual technical report that illuminates a selected planning-problem or challenge.
Objectives
This assessment is designed to develop and test your achievement of all of the module objectives:
● Objective 2: Appreciate basic ethical, scientific and technological issues related to the use of spatial and aspatial secondary data for urban planning.
o Your work should be rooted in a planning-related problem or challenge leading to an understanding of how spatial data might be used to illuminate discrete problems or challenges and why certain approaches and techniques are adopted over others.
● Objective 4: Use appropriate software to perform. basic quantitative and spatial methods of data analysis to answer problems in the context of planning and understand their implications
o Your work should clearly show how the application of a range of spatial analytical techniques to socioeconomic data using GIS contributes towards understanding of your chosen planning-related topic/problem
● Objective 5: Visualise and critically interpret secondary data using appropriate graphical and spatial methods
o Your work should demonstrate the effective use of data and data visualisation as evidence for planning-related issues
The Task
You are a consultant who has been commissioned by a client to undertake a spatial analysis to evidence a planning problem or challenge. As part of this exercise you should choose ONE of the project briefs and associated data package from those that will be made available in the Assessment 2 folder on Blackboard. Using some or all of the components of this data package, you will develop a technical report in which you will:
● Provide a clear introduction and background to your chosen planning/policy problem or challenge.
● Select components of the data package that you deem relevant to analysing the chosen planning/policy problem.
● Provide a technical summary of the methodology you used to develop the approach taken, and the rationale for doing so.
● Provide a written commentary on the analysis and maps to aid the clients understanding of the planning problem.
● Suggest potential policy implications and or areas in need of further analysis.
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Assignment Information
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Explanation
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“written report”
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This means that your report should be handed in as a document written on a computer. It can be helpful to divide it into sections with sub-headings (e.g. Introduction, Conclusion).
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“1,500 word”
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The report should be 1,500 words (+/- 10%). The range is therefore 1,350 to 1,650 words. If it’s shorter than this, you will have to say a little more. If it’s longer than this, you’ll have to cut it down.
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Font size, type, etc.
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You can use any font you like, so long as it is easy to read and a minimum of size 12.
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Paper size
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You submit your work electronically but try to use A4 portrait size as a standard setting.
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Use of images and charts
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In academic work, images include charts, maps and photos. They should be labelled as a Figure and should be numbered consecutively (e.g. Figure 1, Figure 2, Figure 3) and referred to in the text. You should give the figure a caption that gives some indication of the content and acknowledges the source (this is very important).
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Use of tables
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The use of tables can also be effective. If you use a table, make sure it is referred to in the text and labelled correctly (e.g. Table 1, Table 2, Table 3).
You should give the table a caption that gives some indication of the content. As with images, always acknowledge the data source within the caption.
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