Designing field data collection methods for developing a university enterprise GIS database: An assessment of the California State University, Fullerton tree inventory

Enterprise geographic information systems have become increasingly popular on university campuses in the last decade because of their ability to facilitate the acquisition, storage, and dissemination of spatial data. These systems, however, require considerable investment of financial, technological, and personnel resources to establish. One of the most significant obstacles to establishing an enterprise GIS on a university campus is the extensive amount of time and effort required for collecting spatial data to develop the enterprise GIS database. There are dozens of feature sets that can be included in a university's enterprise GIS, many of which contain hundreds or thousands of features for which data must be collected through a fieldwork based inventory.;This thesis assesses the tree inventory field data collection methodology developed by California State University, Fullerton to acquire data for the campus's enterprise GIS. Each aspect of the data collection methodology will be thoroughly documented to explain how it was developed and describe the advantages and disadvantages of the individual methods that were tested and utilized. The extent to which each aspect of the tree inventory data collection methodology can be drawn on for reference in designing future methods of data acquisition will then be comprehensively assessed. Based on this assessment, a structured framework for developing future field data collection methodologies will be constructed that should help universities increase the efficiency with which they can acquire spatial data and develop an enterprise GIS.