Our GIS is too small

GIScience and GISystems have been successful in tackling many geographical problems over the last 30 years. But technologies and associated theory can become limiting if they end up defining how we see the world and what we believe are worthy and tractable research problems. This paper explores some of the limitations currently impacting GISystems and GIScience from the perspective of technology and community, contrasting GIScience with other informatics communities and their practices. It explores several themes: (i) GIScience and the informatics revolution; (ii) the lack of a community‐owned innovation platform for GIScience research; (iii) the computational limitations imposed by desktop computing and the inability to scale up analysis; (iv) the continued failure to support the temporal dimension, and especially dynamic processes and models with feedbacks; (v) the challenge of embracing a wider and more heterogeneous view of geographical representation and analysis; and (vi) the urgent need to foster an active software development community to redress some of these shortcomings. A brief discussion then summarizes the issues and suggests that GIScience needs to work harder as a community to become more relevant to the broader geographic field and meet a bigger set of representation, analysis, and modelling needs.     

Reimagining GIScience for relational spaces

A mismatch between largely absolute Newtonian models of space in GIScience and the relational spaces of critical human geography has contributed to mutual disinterest between the fields. Critical GIS has offered an intellectual critique of GIScience without substantially altering how particular key geographical concepts are expressed in data structures. Although keystone ideas in GIScience such as Tobler's “First Law” and the modifiable areal unit problem speak to enduring concerns of human geography, they have drawn little interest from that field. Here, we suggest one way to reformulate the computational approach to the region for relational space, so that regions emerge not through proximity in an absolute space or similarities in intensive properties, but according to their similarities in relations. We show how this might operate theoretically and empirically, working through three illustrative examples. Our approach gestures toward reformulating key terms in GIScience like distance, proximity, networks, and spatial building blocks such as the polygon. Re‐engaging the challenges of representing geographical concepts computationally can yield new kinds of GIS and GIScience resonant with theoretical ideas in human geography, and also lead to critical human geographic practices less antagonistic to computation.     

Geography and geographic information science: An evolving relationship

GISystems have strong and longstanding roots in Geography, stemming from early developments in the 1960s and 1970s that defined a first phase of their relationship. But as the uses and sophistication of geospatial technology have grown and spread across virtually all areas of the academy, reducing Geography's claim to ownership, that relationship to Geography has evolved in new directions, forming a second phase. The critiques of the early 1990s have led to research into the societal context and social implications of GISystems that remains largely centred in Geography; techniques for the analysis of data embedded in space and time remain strongly associated with Geography; and rigorous principles have been discovered under the umbrella of GIScience that are widely recognized within and outside Geography. Today the relationship has entered a third phase, defined by the new opportunities that are being created by the growth of data science, by new sensors, and by new areas of application, suggesting that the relationship between Geography and GIScience will continue to evolve in interesting and exciting ways.     

Operating anew: Queering GIS with good enough software

In the last decade, conversations around queering of GIScience emerged. Drawing on literature from feminist and queer critical GIS, with special attention to the under‐examined political economy of GIS, I suggest that the critical project of queering all of GIS, both GIScience and GISystems, requires not just recognition of the labour and lives of queers and research in geographies of sexualities. Based upon a queer feminist political economic critique and evidenced in my teaching critical GIS at two elite liberal arts colleges, I argue that the “status quo” between ESRI and geography as a field must be interrupted. Extending a critical GIS focus beyond data structures and data ethics, I argue that geographic researchers and instructors have a responsibility in queering our choice and production of software, algorithms, and code alike. I call this production and choice of democratic, accessible, and useful software by, for, and about the needs of its users, good enough software.     

文物裂隙趋势预测模型研究

露天不可移动文物常年遭受风化侵蚀和人为破坏,保存环境十分恶劣,掌握文物健康状况并进行趋势预测,是"预防性"文物保护工作的重要内容。文物健康监测数据具有不确定性和贫信息性,传统概率统计方法和模糊数学方法不能满足预测要求。针对文物裂隙数据的特点,以陕西唐顺陵天禄石刻为研究对象,提出了采用灰色系统理论来预测文物裂隙发展趋势,建立了裂隙GM((1,1)模型和Verhulst模型,分别确定了灰色模型的灰色作用量和发展系数,并且对唐顺陵石刻文物的裂隙进行了预测。实验用前12个月的裂隙月均值,对随后的7个月的裂隙进行了定量预测,发现天禄石刻的裂隙有缓慢增大的趋势。与同期真实裂隙监测值相比,GM((1,1)模型和Verhulst模型预测值的平均相对误差满足裂隙预测精度要求。研究结果为文物健康趋势研究提供了定量分析的理论依据。     

1989～2008年《文物保护与考古科学》期刊载文初步统计与分析

运用文献计量学的原理和方法,对《文物保护与考古科学》1989 ～ 2008年刊载论文的载文量、载文选题、篇密度率、高产作者的分布、论文的地域分布、论文的机构分布进行了定量分析.这为文物保护领域科研活动、学科建设和信息交流等方面提供了量化的参考数据.     

The poverty of GIS theory: Continuing the debates around the political economy of GISystems

Over the past several decades, GISystems and GIScience have become established and valorized within the field of geography and geographic education. With the recent explosion in daily use of devices producing spatial data, such as smartphones, has come a renewed call to broaden the purview of Critical GIS beyond the desktop and towards these new systems of capitalist accumulation. In this viewpoint, we argue that any re‐examination of the role of Critical GIS must also consider the political economy of geography and geographic education in which GISystems are used for research and taught. We explicate three registers at which GISystems function within geography: that of the individual educator, that of the GIS user, and that of the military‐industrial complex in which GISystems were and are developed.     

Geographical and Temporal Weighted Regression (GTWR)

Both space and time are fundamental in human activities as well as in various physical processes. Spatiotemporal analysis and modeling has long been a major concern of geographical information science (GIScience), environmental science, hydrology, epidemiology, and other research areas. Although the importance of incorporating the temporal dimension into spatial analysis and modeling has been well recognized, challenges still exist given the complexity of spatiotemporal models. Of particular interest in this article is the spatiotemporal modeling of local nonstationary processes. Specifically, an extension of geographically weighted regression (GWR), geographical and temporal weighted regression (GTWR), is developed in order to account for local effects in both space and time. An efficient model calibration approach is proposed for this statistical technique. Using a 19‐year set of house price data in London from 1980 to 1998, empirical results from the application of GTWR to hedonic house price modeling demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method and its superiority to the traditional GWR approach, highlighting the importance of temporally explicit spatial modeling.     

SEEING SPATIAL STRUCTURES: ON THE ROLE OF VISUAL MATERIAL IN THE MAKING OF THE EARLY QUANTITATIVE REVOLUTION IN GEOGRAPHY

This article examines the role that visual material played in the early years of the quantitative revolution in Anglophone geography. It is part of a larger project that attempts to write a history of geography's scopic regimes in the twentieth century and draws on post‐positivist approaches to the history of science. It is argued that there are a number of strategic as well as theoretical reasons for such a reliance on images in the quantitative revolution. Some reasons are unique to the quantitative revolution in geography, some resemble a more general way in which paradigm shifts take place in science and some are located outside of academia. This article is primarily interested in the internal view on the geography of the quantitative revolution and its rationalities. The paper departs from Christaller's hexagon, as one of the most influential and iconic. It then broadens the view to include a much wider range of visual material, arguing for some more general observations on the use of images in geography during the early quantitative revolution. It is argued that there was a significant shift of forms and functions of visual material. Overall, it is argued, visual material gained in importance and while geography was getting “thinner” and more abstract, its role in making visual arguments became stronger. From being merely an aid for seeing, visual material became a prime carrier of knowledge.     

Depleted uranium

Abstract

This paper presents a quantitative and qualitative biographical analysis of Nobel prize laureates in physics over the first hundred years of the award. For the quantitative analysis a set of data has been collected from the laureates' biographies, which is used to characterise their education and professional careers. Such an analysis of the biographies of Nobel laureates provides interesting information about the structure and politics of scientific research. Statistical evaluation of the data is of interest from the viewpoint of research and educational policy, and may also be useful for further science historical analysis. In the qualitative analysis, special features of the laureates' biographies are highlighted, with the aim of providing insights into their scientific motivations and the development of their careers.     

Australian Geographers and Geographical Information Science

Geographical Information Science (GIScience) has become an important sub‐discipline for North American geographers but in Australia few geographers are engaged in this ‘research in GIS’ area. Australian geographers seem more concerned with ‘research using GIS’ which has become absorbed into the geographical tradition of thinking and communicating with diagrams, images, and maps. The breakdown of disciplinary boundaries in Australia makes it difficult to be sure, but most of those engaged in GIScience in Australia seem to identify with disciplines other than geography.     

Big Code

Big data, the “new oil” of the modern data science era, has attracted much attention in the GIScience community. However, we have ignored the role of code in enabling the big data revolution in this modern gold rush. Instead, what attention code has received has focused on computational efficiency and scalability issues. In contrast, we have missed the opportunities that the more transformative aspects of code afford as ways to organize our science. These “big code” practices hold the potential for addressing some ill effects of big data that have been rightly criticized, such as algorithmic bias, lack of representation, gatekeeping, and issues of power imbalances in our communities. In this article, I consider areas where lessons from the open source community can help us evolve a more inclusive, generative, and expansive GIScience. These concern best practices for codes of conduct, data pipelines and reproducibility, refactoring our attribution and reward systems, and a reinvention of our pedagogy.     

Critical GIScience in Canada in the new millennium

Critical GIS (CGIS) is an approach to evaluating GIS technology that draws upon multiple intellectual tool kits—from geography, social theory and computing science. While its roots are in the battles between human geographers and GIScientists in the 1990s, CGIS has emerged as an independent, constructive approach to enhancing the power and appeal of GIS. CGIS is also beginning to gain acceptance as a legitimate component of the broad tent that is GIScience. This short article reviews the emergence of CGIS, discusses its influence on the discipline of GIScience and finally explores the state of CGIS in Canada.     

Qualitative Landscape Theories and Archaeological Predictive Modelling—A Journey Through No Man’s Land?

An approach to test and interpret geographic information system-based, quantitative archaeological predictive models using techniques from qualitative (experiential) landscape theory is described and demonstrated via a case study. The result is the transformation of statistical output from quantitative predictive models into more archaeologically meaningful interpretations of spatial data.     

Public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS): challenges of implementation in Churchill,Manitoba

Public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS) increasingly are utilized in geographic research, yet researchers rarely are provided with guidance on how to implement PPGIS in an appropriate and effective manner. This article reports on the process of research that explores responses to current and future local tourism development offered by a sample of residents using a modified PPGIS approach called ‘community action geographic information system’ (CAGIS). The conceptual development of CAGIS is reported and the challenges encountered during its implementation in Churchill, Manitoba during 2005–2007 are reviewed. It is suggested that researchers wishing to conduct similar research should undertake thorough preliminary fieldwork to assess the likelihood of finding agreement on a common problem; acquiring adequate resources; establishing collective responsibility for the project's outcome; attaining stakeholder support; developing trust and meaningful relationships; and incorporating indigenous knowledge appropriately. Feedback of results to community members also should be an integral part of the research process. A number of feedback mechanisms are reported, including an interactive weblog, which helped facilitate communication between heterogeneous groups in Churchill. Although ambitions for a truly participatory GIS approach to this project have been set aside, it is held that PPGIS can yield positive outcomes for communities and academia. Sharing this research experience will be useful to others who venture into PPGIS research, especially in northern communities.     

Was the Revolution Tweeted? Social Media and the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia

Tunisia's Internet freedom prior to the “Jasmine Revolution” that overthrew longtime authoritarian leader Zine el‐Abidine Ben Ali has been described as roughly on par with that of China. Despite that, Tunisia's revolution has been described as one of the first “Twitter” or Internet revolutions, in which Internet technologies are said to have played a significant role This article illuminates how Internet technologies were (and weren't) used in challenging the Ben Ali regime. Based on interviews with Tunisian activists in early 2013, the research sheds light on Internet activities bridging street activism and Internet dissent. Whether through Internet or traditional face‐to‐face means, building the capacity to mobilize street protests long before mass mobilization was crucial to Tunisia's successful revolution.     

The Statistical Style of Reasoning and the Invention of Bose‐Einstein Statistics

This paper is a preliminary exploration of the connections between the statistical style of reasoning and the research practices of statistical mechanics in the early period of the long quantum revolution. It suggests that before 1925 the instantiations of the statistical style in physics went through two phases. The first phase consisted of the formulation of the Maxwell‐Boltzmann statistics on the basis of the population‐gas analogy. The second phase was characterized by the generalization of the Maxwell‐Boltzmann statistics through analogies between ideal gas molecules and other microphysical entities, analogies that shaped and were shaped by the rise of quantum theory. Einstein's invention of the Bose‐Einstein statistics started a third phase and created the conditions of possibility for a new classification of microphysical entities according to their different statistics.     

信息技术影响下的区域城市网络:城市研究的新方向

20世纪60年代末以来,西方新技术范式的出现对城市与区域研究产生了很大的影响,关于城市网络的研究成为西方学术界的热点问题。伴随着90年代以来的数字技术革命,信息与创新等概念被广泛纳入到了城市与区域研究框架中,新的范式或概念不断涌现。论文对西方关于信息技术影响下的城市网络研究观点进行了梳理,同时比较了我国学者关于城市网络的研究,并指出了中国今后城市网络研究的重要发展方向。     

All Strings Attached: Negotiating Relationships of Geographic Information Science

Human geography has driven substantive improvements in methodologies and applications of Geographic Information Systems (GISs), yet Indigenous groups continue to experience erasure in geographic representations. GIS ontologies comprise categorised labels that represent lived contexts, and these ontologies are determined through the shared worldviews of those labelling spatial phenomena for entry into GIS databases. Although Western ontologies and spatial representations reflect Western understandings of human experience, they are often inappropriate in Indigenous contexts. In efforts to be represented in courts and land management, Indigenous groups nevertheless need to engage Western spatial representations to ‘claim space’. This paper examines what GISs are and do and shows that GIS technology comes with strings attached to the myriad social contexts that continue to shape the field of GIScience. We show that Intellectual Property Rights Agreements can sever and control these ‘strings’; the agreement between the Yorta Yorta Nation Aboriginal Corporation and university researchers reframes GIS from a technology of erasure to a technology of opportunity that enables Indigenous groups to define their own engagement. The visual and narrative outputs will contribute important understandings of the environmental crisis facing the Murray–Darling Basin and connect older and younger generations through knowledge sharing. We conclude the application of GIScience is never simply technological but always has potential to empower particular communities. Applying GIS technology to new circumstances is an engagement of new relationships in the social praxis of technology transfer, where worldviews meet and negotiations are made over what exists and how we know.