This course focuses on both the theoretical and practical issues related to the development of geographic databases and the extraction of knowledge from geographic data collections. Special attention will be given to recent technological developments and research directions. A series of Lab Sessions will run in parallel, using commercial and open source s/w tools, such as PostgreSQL/PostGIS DBMS, Oracle Spatial DBMS, MongoDB, Protégé, Quantum GIS s/w, WEKA Data Mining s/w, and other prototype s/w packages.