ABSTRACT

A Proposal for <Title of Project>

By

<Student name>

Write the abstract here

The length of the abstract is from 150 to 200 words.

1.0    Introduction

The purpose of the Major Individual Project (MIP) proposal is to clearly articulate your project problem and to recommend a solution for solving the problem that fits within the timeframe and degree requirements of the MS GIS program (University of Redlands, 2009). In the Introduction section, you should discuss the background for the problem (Section 1.1), demonstrate that you have sufficiently explored prior research and possible existing solutions for your problem before launching off on your own (Section 1.2), and provide evidence that you clearly understand the problem as it needs to be solved (Section 1.3). You should also introduce the client who will be sponsoring your project, and describe their anticipated role in the project (Section 1.4)

1.1     Background

The Background section is where you explain the general context for your problem, describe the circumstances for what created the problem, illustrate why the problem is worth solving within a GIS framework, and clarify the spatial components of the problem. You should also define basic terms as you introduce them.

1.2     Statement of the Problem

The primary requirement for a major individual project (MIP) is that you identify a problem that has a significant spatial component, and that would be interesting to solve using GIS. In this section you need to make sure that you express your project idea as a problem that has a geographic (spatial) context. It needs to be a problem that someone would like to have solved, or, at a minimum, a problem whose solution would have benefits for someone and which has a likelihood of being implemented. In making your problem statement you should first establish a context for the problem, that is, explain why this problem is important. You should be certain to explain how the client will assist you in defining the scope, function, and overall purpose of the project.

1.3     Previous Work

In this section you place your problem in an application domain(s) (e.g., transportation, environmental science), cite relevant examples from the academic and professional literature, and discuss approaches that have been used or could be used to solve the problem. These solutions may be from the particular domain you have identified for your problem, an approach from another domain that may not have been tried, and may include both GIS and non-GIS solutions.

A good literature review should establish for the reader how this problem fits into a broader field and identify relevant examples to the problem context and solution. The review should set up the solution that you will propose in Section 2 by building from the general problem domain to increasingly specific approaches to the problem. Include in your discussion issues surrounding the methods, particularly those that will have an impact on what method you plan to implement.