Research Computing Area (Smith Hall Basement): 2 workstations | Public, reservation available| ArcGIS; All centrally licensed data sets and large scale census data; Can geocode locally; Full range of statistical, math, office, graphics, survey software | Staff help with full range of topics, by appointment
010 Smith Hall: 12 workstations | For teaching and instruction only, by reservation| ArcGIS; MS Office | Staff can help with recording and publicizing instructional opportunities
Student Multimedia Design Center (Lower Level, Morris Library): 1 workstation |Hours, Requires a staff assisted log in | ArcGIS; Full list of data, includes centrally licensed data sets as well as Geolytics | Staff help by appointment with basic GIS questions such as what GIS can do to help your research and producing a map of data for posters, presentations, and publications
203 Pearson Hall: 33 workstations |Hours, Drop-in when not scheduled for a class, can be reserved for classes| ArcGIS, ENVI+IDL | No staff assistance
Processing of geospatial data
The Farber and Mills Community clustersprovide capabilities for ongoing or very large, compute intensive jobs. Interface through the ArcGIS python module (arcpy) and IDL are supported. Matlab is the most mature analytical computing package on the Mills system, and can be used for some types of geospatial analysis.
Amazon EC2 is recommended for one-off, memory, and compute intensive tasks that have not been optimized for parallel or distributed computing. IT CS&S can assist with deploying these systems, which are conveniently and rapidly provisioned/released for one-off jobs. The Esri software on the machine (e.g., ArcGIS Server or SDE) is available as part of our site license and therefore often at no extra cost, but Amazon will charge based on use. More information available on request.
Serving geospatial data, databases, services, and applications
ArcGIS Online is an easy, intuitive, free platform for sharing many geospatial data types. See below for instances where cloud-based ArcGIS server is a better option.
Cloud-based ArcGIS Server is a new service we’re providing at UD. This service would replace a physical ArcGIS Server or SDE instance, and can provide substantial resource savings and ease of use. This option is useful for large datasets, publishing geoprocessing services, spatial database needs, or where there are intellectual property or access considerations. It is also a much less expensive option than Amazon EC2 over the long-term.
Google Fusion is particularly adept at generating choropleth maps from tabular data based on a boundary-type file
Google My Maps is a consumer-focused option which is the least capable/private of all these options, but is nevertheless preferred in some cases where ease-of-use and interoperability trump other considerations.
