Why this gallery exists¶
The SDS320 Project gallery collects student projects from different course years. It is designed to help you see what an independent Spatial Data Science project can look like in practice.
Each project starts from a research question and develops a workflow that connects suitable spatial data with analytical methods, visualisation, interpretation and documentation. The projects therefore provide concrete examples of how the ideas introduced throughout SDS320 can come together within one semester.
The gallery is particularly useful when you are still defining your own project. Previous projects can help you judge what is feasible, how narrowly a research question can be framed, which datasets may be useful, and how much methodological complexity can reasonably fit into the available time.
Where a public project repository is available, you can also explore how the project was organised and documented.
How to use the gallery¶
Start with Browse student projects, which lets you look across available projects by year, theme, or method. From there, open individual project repositories to see how a question became a working analysis: what the code looks like, how the repository is organized, what figures and maps were produced, and how the student described their own limitations.
Browsing a handful of projects before you fix your own topic is often more useful than reading the handbook alone. It gives you a sense of what a feasible, well-scoped SDS320 project actually looks like in practice.
What the gallery is not¶
This is not a list of ideal or perfect solutions, and it is not meant to be copied. Every project here reflects one student’s scope, time constraints, data access, and skill level at the time. Some projects are more technically ambitious than others; some are narrower but very carefully documented. Both are legitimate outcomes of the course.
Treat every project as one example of real student work, with its own trade-offs, not as a template to reproduce.
Project years¶
Use the gallery index to browse projects across course years:
For current students¶
At the end of your SDS320 project, you will prepare a short showcase entry containing:
your project title,
research question,
a 2–3 sentence summary,
main data sources,
main methods,
3–5 keywords,
one representative squared figure (png, jpg, <1 MB),
one limitation or lesson learned,
optional: link to your public GitHub or GitLab repository.
Preparing this material is part of course engagement because it asks you to communicate your project concisely to a broader audience.
Sharing your project¶
All SDS320 projects will be represented in the public Project Gallery using the submitted showcase information. Project entries are presented without student names so that the gallery focuses on the project itself rather than on individual students.
Sharing a link to your public GitHub or GitLab repository is optional. If you would like readers to explore your full project workflow, you can provide a public repository link together with your showcase information. Before sharing it, make sure that the repository and representative figure are suitable for public access and do not contain personal, sensitive or private information.
If you prefer not to share your repository publicly, simply omit the link. Your project will still appear in the gallery as a standalone project card, and this choice has no effect on your course grade.
Key message¶
The Project gallery is a living archive. It grows a little each year as new cohorts complete their projects, and it will look different, and hopefully richer, a few years from now than it does today. If you are looking at an early version of this gallery that only includes a template (2026), consider yourself a pioneer taking the first step into a world of unknown possibilities.