The Final Project

CE 414 Engineering Applications of GIS
Dr. Dan Ames

CE 414 · Week 13 — Final Project IntroductionLast Updated: 2026-10-09© 2026 Daniel P. Ames · CC BY 4.0

Today's Goals

  • By the end of class you should be able to:
    • Say what the final project is for, and how it differs from a lab
    • Judge whether an idea is the right scope for four weeks
    • List the requirements every project must meet
    • Know exactly what to bring to your proposal meeting
    • Describe how the project is scored, including by your classmates
CE 414 · Week 13 — Final Project Introduction

Why a final project?

Every lab this semester gave you a question, the data, and a recipe.

The project takes two of those away.

  • You pick the question — something you actually want to know
  • You find and vet the data
  • The recipe is still ModelBuilder, and it still has to be reproducible

This is the closest thing in the course to what a client asks for: here is a problem, show me
where, and show me why I should believe you.

CE 414 · Week 13 — Final Project Introduction

What past projects looked like

Titles from earlier years, to calibrate scope:

  • Where should BYU-approved apartments go?
  • Best fly-fishing access on Utah rivers
  • Light-rail corridor siting
  • A visitor center for a state park
  • "Hipster hotspots" — coffee, bikes, and vintage
  • Center-pivot irrigation from NDVI
  • Volume of a Hawaiian volcano

Each was one clear question, one study area, one model.

CE 414 · Week 13 — Final Project Introduction

Requirements — the team

  1. Form a team of one or two people
  2. Identify a problem together and pitch it to the instructor
  3. Once the idea is approved, split the work: data collection, analysis, writing, presentation

A team of two is not two half-projects. Both of you should be able to explain every step of
the model.

CE 414 · Week 13 — Final Project Introduction

Requirements — the project

Every project must:

  1. Tackle a new idea or problem using GIS and spatial analysis
  2. Use both raster and vector data
  3. Be built as a ModelBuilder geoprocessing model
  4. Match the scope and scale of the ModelBuilder lab assignments
  5. Introduce at least two tools we have not used in a lab this semester
  6. Expose a tool interface — inputs, outputs, and parameters — so someone else can run it

And one house rule: the words "utilize" and "in order to" do not appear in your report.
Use and to work fine.

CE 414 · Week 13 — Final Project Introduction

What "lab-sized" actually means

A project the size of a lab has:

  • One decision question, with explicit criteria and thresholds
  • One study area, in a projected coordinate system you chose on purpose
  • A model of roughly 6–15 tools that reruns from raw inputs without hand repair
  • Documented data — source, vintage, license, fitness for the question
  • At least one validation or sensitivity check
  • One professional map and a short report
CE 414 · Week 13 — Final Project Introduction

Is this project the right size?

For each idea, decide: too small, about right, or too big.

  1. Map every Walmart in Utah
  2. Find the best three sites for an EV charging hub in Utah County, given traffic, grid access, and land use
  3. Model wildfire risk for the entire western United States at 10 m resolution
  4. Estimate how many people live within a 10-minute walk of a TRAX station, and which stations are underserved
CE 414 · Week 13 — Final Project Introduction

Choosing a problem — three questions

1. Can I say the question in one sentence?
"Where in Utah County should a new fire station go so that the most homes are within 5 minutes?"

2. Does the data exist, and can I get it this week?
Check Utah SGID, USGS, Census, and Living Atlas before you pitch. If a layer would need to be
digitized by hand, that is your whole project.

3. What would a wrong answer look like?
If you cannot describe a way to check the result, the model is a picture, not an analysis.

CE 414 · Week 13 — Final Project Introduction

The data-feasibility check

Before your proposal meeting, fill this in for every layer you plan to use:

Layer Source and URL Vintage Format CRS Raster or vector License
e.g. Roads Utah SGID 2025 Shapefile UTM 12N Vector Public

If any row is blank, you are not ready to pitch.

CE 414 · Week 13 — Final Project Introduction

Deliverable 1 — the proposal meeting

Come ready to discuss, in this order:

  1. The problem, in one sentence, and why it matters to someone
  2. Data needs — the feasibility table from the previous slide
  3. Proposed analysis — a sketch of the model on paper is ideal
  4. Division of labor, if you are a team of two
  5. Proposed schedule against the milestones on the next slide

Leave the meeting with a yes, a no, or a "yes if you change X."

CE 414 · Week 13 — Final Project Introduction

Suggested milestones

Week Milestone
13 Project introduced; start scouting data; feasibility table
14 Proposal meeting by Friday, idea approved; model runs on real data
15 No class: validation done, report written, presentation video posted

Data problems should surface in Week 13, not Week 15. That is the point of the order.

CE 414 · Week 13 — Final Project Introduction

Deliverable 2 — the presentation

  • An eight-minute video; post its link on the class Google document by Wednesday of Week 15
  • The question, the map, the model, what you learned; then watch ten classmates' videos
  • Lead with the map. Show the model. Explain one decision you had to make.

Past decks, for calibration:
2018 ·
2019 ·
2020 ·
2021 ·
2022 ·
2023 ·
2024 ·
2025

CE 414 · Week 13 — Final Project Introduction

The tool interface

Requirement 6: your model opens like any other geoprocessing tool.

  • Inputs and outputs marked as parameters — the "P"
  • Sensible labels, not rivers_Project_Buffer_2
  • Key thresholds exposed as parameters: distance, density, class breaks
  • Metadata filled in — what it does, needs, and makes

The test: a classmate can run it on a different county without opening the model.

CE 414 · Week 13 — Final Project Introduction

How you are scored — by your classmates

Everyone in the room scores every other team, 1 to 5 in each category:

Category Points
Problem description — clarity and completeness 5
Final map — quality and completeness 5
Explanation of the model and workflow 5
Meets the basic requirements: raster, vector, new tools, ModelBuilder 5
Presentation — interest, cleverness, fun factor 5
Total 25
CE 414 · Week 13 — Final Project Introduction

What separates a good project from a great one

Good: the model runs, the map is clean, the criteria are stated.

Great:

  • Criteria are justified — a source, a standard, or an argument
  • A sensitivity check: change one threshold, show what moves
  • The report says what the analysis cannot tell you
  • The map answers the question in five seconds

That is the difference between a result and a recommendation.

CE 414 · Week 13 — Final Project Introduction

Common ways projects go wrong

  • The data was not there. Pitched on a dataset that turned out to be a PDF, a paywall, or a 2009 snapshot
  • Geographic coordinates. Buffers in degrees; areas in "square degrees"
  • The model only runs once. Hard-coded paths, intermediate layers deleted by hand
  • Ten criteria, no weights. Everything matters equally, so nothing does
  • The map is the last thing made. Cartography at 2 a.m. looks like cartography at 2 a.m.
CE 414 · Week 13 — Final Project Introduction

Final Thoughts

Quiz: Ready to Pitch? Five calls you have to make before you propose: is the idea the right size, does it meet the requirements, and could you defend the result? Scan the code, or open the link under it.

  • Not graded, nothing recorded: a quick check that the assignment makes sense
  • Item 4 is the proposal meeting in miniature — bring the feasibility table

Before next class

  • Read the Final Project page on the course site
  • Start your data-feasibility table — one row per layer
  • Book a proposal meeting: office hours
  • Quiz 11 (Chapter 14, Data Standards and Data Quality), open book, due Saturday 11:59 pm — Thursday is Thanksgiving, no class

center

byu-hydroinformatics.github.io/ce414-gis-applications/quizzes/final-project/

CE 414 · Week 13 — Final Project Introduction

This deck replaces the one-page Learning Suite "Final Project" page. Everything on the requirements, expectations, and deliverables slides comes from that page; the milestone calendar, the "what a lab-sized project looks like" slide, the pitfalls, and the proposal checklist are additions meant to make the expectations concrete. Adjust anything marked TODO before presenting.

stamp:begin

stamp:end

Frame it as the capstone: every lab so far handed students a question and a recipe. Now they write the recipe. The cookie model from Week 2 is a deliberate callback.

TODO(graphic): a simple three-column "question / data / recipe" figure with the first two crossed out

Source: the course's Final Projects archive (2012 onward) and past presentation decks. TODO(instructor): add two or three strong 2023-2025 projects here.

TODO(instructor): the plan asks for explicit individual-accountability language for teams of two — e.g. a short "who did what" statement in the report. Decide and add here.

Item 7 on the original page ("same length and size as our previous labs") is folded into item 4 and made concrete on the next slide. TODO(instructor): the plan questions whether "two new tools" encourages novelty for its own sake — keep, reword, or drop.

Say it out loud: three study areas, a web app, or a month of data cleaning is a thesis, not a project. The 6-15 tool range is a guideline drawn from the lab models, not a rule.

A: too small — no analysis, just a display. B: about right. C: too big — data volume and validation are out of reach in four weeks. D: about right, and a good example of a network question that is still doable with buffers and raster density.

TODO(graphic): a decision-tree figure for these three questions

This table is the single most useful thing a team can bring to the meeting. Most failed projects failed on a data row, not on the analysis.

TODO(instructor): confirm how meetings are booked — office hours link, sign-up sheet, or in-class.

TODO(instructor): verify against the Learning Suite calendar. The living plan recommends introducing the project by Week 8 or 9 in future offerings so the milestones can spread out.

October 9, 2026: presentations are video only (no class in Week 15). Deck links 2018-2025 are the ones on the Learning Suite Final Project page.

Callback to ModelBuilder Part B (parameters, metadata, "Going forward: build a tool interface").

Source: the course's peer scoresheet. TODO(instructor): state how the peer score combines with the instructor's grade of the report and model, and the project's weight in the course.

Every one of these has happened. Say so.

Five minutes, in pairs, then a show of hands on the first item. The trailhead map is what usually splits the room: half call it "about right" because it has a study area, a real dataset and a map at the end, and the other half see that nothing is being decided. That argument is the whole scope lesson, so let it run a minute before settling it. The all-vector siting plan is the runner-up - teams forget the raster half of the requirement until the model is half built. If the room has no signal, put the URL on the board and read the items aloud; each one works as a show of hands.

Conversion notes (2026-09-03): built from the Learning Suite "Final Project" page (one page, exported to PDF Sept 2, 2026) and the peer scoresheet in Final Projects/scoresheet.docx. No slide deck existed before. Additions beyond the source, all marked TODO(instructor) where they need a decision: the "lab-sized" criteria slide (replaces the vague "same length and size as previous labs"), the size-judgment quiz, the three choosing questions, the data-feasibility table, the milestone calendar (week numbers, unverified), the tool-interface slide, the good-vs-great slide, and the pitfalls slide. Images reuse course example maps from Labs 1, 9 (student names redacted), and 10, and the ModelBuilder B RiversDemo captures. Open items: 2023-2025 examples and deck links, presentation length, how peer scores combine with the instructor grade, team accountability wording, whether to keep the "two new tools" rule, meeting booking method.