A. Initial Project Setup

An important part of any effective analysis is good file management. If this is done properly initially, and maintained over the life of the monitoring campaign.

ETAL Recommendation for IPC

ETAL recommends that IPC:
  • institutes an internally consistent file management and naming convention for the data preparation and DEM creation steps
  • uses the GCD project management for change detection analyses and maintains one project in which surveys are added each year for each study reach
To facilitate the organization and management of the files of a geomorphic change detection study the GCD software provides a set structure for storing the DEM, associated rasters (slope, surface roughness, point density, etc.), error surfaces, and analysis results within a project. Projects in GCD consist of a folder and a project file, and the project is intend to house repeat surveys and analyses through time for a single study reach. The folder structure is linked to and managed by the  automatically generated *.gcd file when a user starts a project:


Starting new project in GCD 6

As a user progresses through the various steps of a project new folders are created in the same folder as the *.gcd file, and the sub-folders and files are populated within the project folders. For more information about creating a new GCD project or the other commands in the Project drop-down menu shown above, click here.

As eluded to in the 1. File Menu command reference, MBES tools will eventually institute a simliar project managment structure consistent and cross-compatible with GCD's project management. 



The advantage of migrating to a project structure will be the ability to navigate through MBES tools back through an organized list of analyses that have been completed and browse their metadata and results.