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Welcome to episode five of the DRC online GIS Workshop Series:
Creating a project file structure.
Episode objectives: In this video, we will create a file structure for our GIS project.
Before diving straight into finding data and downloading it to your computer,
you should consider how you are going to organize the data on your hard drive.
Why organize your data? Organizing your data
makes it easier to preserve data documentation. Datasets often come with
PDF documentation
that records crucial information, such as the creator of the dataset,
publication date, data collection methods,
and the meanings of codes used within the dataset. Without this documentation,
the dataset may be useless. Organizing your data can also reduce duplication.
If you can't find the dataset you downloaded, you may have to go download it again;
that takes up valuable time and storage space.
A third reason to organize your data is to avoid confusion.
Datasets often come with names that are hard to understand.
If you don't organize them using a system that make sense to you,
it's easy to get confused. Finally,
GIS projects often need to be worked on at several different computers,
especially when you're working on a group project. Enabling portability of
your data is important.
Properly organized data can be easily copied to a USB key and moved from
computer to computer,
while moving disorganized data can be a near-impossible task.
So how should you organize your data? That's up to you to some degree.
The most useful system is the system that make sense to you.
However, it's important that your system satisfy these four requirements.
In particular, make sure your system preserves your data with its documentation
and make sure it enables portability.
I'm going to suggest a method organizing your data that you should use for this workshop.
Keep in mind that this is just one method; there are lots of other systems
that work just as well.
In this file structure, all data is located within one top
folder, which is called "Guelph School Project."
Keeping all your data in one top folder will make it portable;
you only need to copy one folder and its contents
to bring the entire project over to another computer. Inside the top folder
is a series of folders that organize the data by
type. For example, all roads data will be stored in the roads folder
and all land use data will be stored in the land use folder.
These folders can contain more folders to further subdivide the data.
For example, inside the census boundaries folder,
there are two subfolders: census subdivisions
and dissemination areas. Subdividing the data in this way
ensures that there is no confusion and allows the correct dataset to be
easily found.
Now that we understand the finished file structure, let's create it on our computers.
Using Windows Explorer, find the place on your computer to save your data.
Make sure the file path does not contain any spaces
or unusual characters. Underscores are OK. I've decided to save my project in
my C Drive
in my GIS_Projects folder. Such a folder is useful
if you expect to complete many GIS projects in the future.
Create a new folder and name it Guelph underscore
School underscore Project. Double-click on the folder to open it.
Create a new folder, and name it roads.
Create another new folder, and name it points
Underscore of underscore interest. Continue to create folders,
naming them orthophotos,
"census" underscore "boundaries,"
land underscore use, and the "census" underscore "data."
Double-click on the census_boundaries folder to open it.
Create a new folder, and name it "dissemination"
underscore "areas". Create another new folder,
and name it "census" underscore "subdivisions."
Now, you're finished creating the file structure.
In this video, we created a file structure for a GIS project.
Do you have questions about the content of this workshop? Staff in the Data
Resource Center are ready to assist you.
Drop-ins and appointments are welcome Please check the DRC's website for our hours.
You can also email us at drchelp@ouguelph.ca.
Thanks for watching!