[MUSIC] Hello there and welcome to the project-based course that brings together the concepts and skills in the Coursera specialization in GIS. For those of you who have gone through the previous courses and the specialization, this one works slightly differently. The entire course is centered around a project that you design that can put to use and strengthen the skills you have learned in the previous courses. It should be fun and give you a chance to analyze data that you're interested in, or need to work with for other reasons. Now, this course is designed to model the Real-world Analysis process as much as possible. From problem conception and a hypothesis, all the way through data analysis, to interpreting your results and coming up with the conclusion. As part of that process, what you choose to research or analyze in this project is up to you. We'll provide you some suggestions for projects, but It will be up to you to find the data, decide on the analysis, implement the analysis and present the results. You won't be alone though. Throughout the project you'll have milestones, where you'll submit specific parts of your project so you can get a grade and also get feedback from your peers along the way. In splitting the project into pieces, you'll also have time to iterate and improve on your work before proceeding to the next phase. In the first milestone of this course, which we expect will take most of you one or two weeks, you will conceptualize and design your project in the abstract. And, come up with a short proposal describing your question or hypothesis, and how you expect to find appropriate starting data, analyze it, and complete the project. You will also write up the executive summary of your project to be used throughout the course. To complete the milestone, you will be required to submit the final proposal for feedback and grading. For the second milestone, you will develop at least one core algorithm for processing your data. Depending on your project, this milestone may be brief, or it may be very significant, it's designed to get you to think through your analysis in advance, so that you spend the rest of your time conducting a doable project rather than having to restart if you decide it's not achievable. It doesn't need to be final analysis or even functional, but you'll think through your analysis and develop a model of how you plan to process your data. Do your best to make it accurate but know that it will change as the project evolves. You will then submit this model for review to complete the milestone. For the third milestone, you will undertake the core work on your project. Obtaining data, processing it, running it through your models or other workflows in order to get your rough data products. This will be where you do the bulk of your work. And once you have analyzed your data you will interpret your results in how they relate to your initial question or hypothesis. We expect this milestone should take you two to three weeks, maybe more in some cases depending on the project you choose. But, once you are done all that is left is to create the maps to help present your results. In the final milestone, you'll present your results in two ways, as a Web map and as a PDF map for print. The Web map will allow you to share your data interactively with others, and the print map will allow you to demonstrate more specific themes to help explain your data and results. For each of these milestones, we'll provide you with reminders of skills to think about and use, strategies and cautions to consider, pointers to other resources and practice materials, and often an optional practice submission for those of you who want to get feedback before submitting each milestone. You'll have plenty to keep you busy in the course, from the moment you start thinking of what you want your project to be, all the way until you submit your final map. As you consider potential projects, remember that the final maps will be portfolio pieces for you. Something you can show a coworker, a friend, or a potential employer to demonstrate your GIS capabilities. Similarly, the analysis phase is a time to get practice with datasets that you want to work with in the future. Choose a topic that balances familiar data and tools with new things you want to teach yourself, so that you remain comfortable, but can also push your own capabilities a bit. One final note. If this is your first course in this specialization, know that this project based course is design to be taken last, after completing the first four courses in the GIS specialization. As I said before, this course will require you to blend together all of the skills and topics from the previous courses. If you have no experience with GIS, you should stop right now, and go take those courses first. If you some experience, I'd recommend you audit each of those courses so you can look at the curriculum, and ensure you have the necessary experience from those courses in order to complete this capstone project. If you find yourself missing knowledge and skills from any one course, I'd recommend you take that course before attempting this one. Okay. That's it. I hope you are looking forward to this project. It should prove fun, challenging, and rewarding. When you're ready, I'll see you in the next module to talk about milestone one, where you'll decide on a project and drop the proposal.
