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.     

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.     

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.     

Geolibraries: geographers, librarians and spatial collaboration

Geography, GIS and GIScience are closely aligned with the emergence of 'geolibraries'. Geolibraries are also coincident with the metaphor of 'Digital Earth'. The growth in these areas of research and practice can be traced to collaborations among multiple disciplines. Geography and library science stand out as interesting partners. At first glance it may seem that it would be difficult to find common ground for such collaboration. The reality is that the two communities have been closer for longer than most may think. Such collaboration does, however, face unique challenges in a Canadian context, and collaborations thus far have been more successful in the United States. This paper reviews issues at the intersection of GIS and libraries and offers suggestions for further spatial collaboration in Canada within the context of geolibraries and GIScience .     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Latent trajectory models for space‐time analysis: An application in deciphering spatial panel data

This article introduces latent trajectory models (LTMs), an approach often employed in social sciences to handle longitudinal data, to the arena of GIScience, particularly space‐time analysis. Using the space‐time data collected at county level for the whole United States through webpage search on the keyword “climate change,” we show that LTMs, when combined with eigenvector filtering of spatial dependence in data, are very useful in unveiling temporal trends hidden in such data: the webpage‐data derived popularity measure for climate change has been increasing from December 2011 to March 2013, but the increase rate has been slowing down. In addition, LTMs help reveal potential mechanisms behind observed space‐time trajectories through linking the webpage‐data derived popularity measure about climate change to a set of socio‐demographic covariates. Our analysis shows that controlling for population density, greater drought exposure, higher percent of people who are 16 years old or above, and higher household income are positively predictive of the trajectory slopes. Higher percentages of Republicans and number of hot days in summer are negatively related to the trajectory slopes. Implications of these results are examined, concluding with consideration of the potential utility of LTMs in space‐time analysis and more generally in GIScience.     

Statistical Perspectives on Geographic Information Science

Statistical geometry applies probabilistic methods to geometric forms. In the early days of the quantitative revolution statistical geometry appeared to provide a useful framework for geographic research, but its value appeared to decline in the 1970s and 1980s. Geographic information science (GIScience) addresses the fundamental issues underlying the geographic information technologies, and statistical geometry has proven valuable in a number of respects. Several classical results from statistical geometry are useful in the design of geographic information systems, and in understanding and modeling uncertainty in geographic information, and several statistical principles are observed to be generally applicable to geographic information. Modeling uncertainty in area-class maps has proven particularly difficult, and seven possible models are discussed. Statistical geometry provides an important link between the early work of the quantitative revolution in geography and modern research in GIScience.     

Editorial: Geography and the ‘European Year of Citizenship through Education’

The paper introduces a library of video podcasts (vodcasts) used to support the learning and teaching of geographical methods and techniques relating to physical geography and GIScience in particular. While the notion of video learning is not new, the accessibility of the multimedia snippets via lightweight mp4 players in a field context allows a geographical freedom to learning that goes beyond previous classroom-based work. Evaluation, conducted through the use of reflective diaries and focus groups, identified that all students thought the podcast reference library was a valuable learning resource, of particular appeal to students with a visual approach to learning.     

GIS在时间地理学中的应用初探

时间地理学是一种富有应用前景的面向微观人文现象的研究方法,但相对落后的研究手段迟滞了它的发展。通过考察时间地理学的研究对象、研究方法及其理论基础,结合时态地理信息系统近年来在时空表达与分析方面的进展,本文详细阐述了地理信息系统技术在时间地理学中的应用思路,并认为两者的结合将促使时间地理学在数据处理、时空分析、结果表达与深化等方面得到进一步的发展。     

Teaching creative geovisualization: Imagining the creative in/of GIS

Creative geovisualization is situated at the intersection of geography, arts, and digital humanities with a particular emphasis on visualization and mapping that preserves, represents, and generates more authentic, contextual, and nuanced meanings of space and people with an artistic and humanistic perspective and approach. This is a creative expansion in critical GIS practices and a new alternative to traditionally science-rooted approaches to GIS and mapping. Reflecting the experience of teaching a “creative geovisualization” course in an interdisciplinary curriculum, I demonstrate how critical and creative scholarship with mapping and geovisualization is introduced in the classroom and is illuminated in the students' creative practices. The class encompasses key epistemological and methodological groundings of creative geovisualization—including non-representational theories; critical cartography and GIS; the convergence of geography, arts, and humanities; psychogeography; and qualitative and affective geovisualization. Empirical examples of students' works illustrate the blending of different modes of creative engagements with GIS and geovisualization and specific ways to work with various forms of embodied, relational, interpretive, and expressive geographies. GIS and mapping become creative as they continue evolving in process, and it is time that we deeply (re-)imagine “the creative” in/of GIS in critical GIS pedagogies.     

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.     

Fragments from many pasts: layering the toponymic tapestry of Milan

In the recent literature on the cultural politics of naming, toponyms and street names are increasingly read within the wider social–historical context upon which naming is contingent. In this perspective, naming is often seen as an act of power and a way to inscribe an ideological discourse into the landscape. In this article, we analyze the street names currently inscribed in the historical center of the Italian city of Milan, Italy as a reflection of its long and contested social and political history. Fragments of all the different toponymic regimes and hegemonic discourses that took over one after the other over time have remained inscribed in Milan’s street network, originating a complex tapestry in which different pasts revive and conflicting ideologies co-exist. In this context, we examine the role Geographical Information Science (GIScience) methods and technologies play in quantifying, revealing, and visualizing the spatial patterns of downtown Milan’s toponymic texture at the urban scale and at the scale of the six historical neighborhoods.     

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.     

Illuminating spaces in the classroom with qualitative GIS

As social and postmodern ontologies continue to shape our definition of space, undergraduate instructors have struggled to incorporate these paradigms in the geography classroom. Recent research suggests that practical applications using field work, qualitative research, and geographic information science can augment students’ understanding of these spatial ontologies. Qualitative GIS holds promise as a means to integrate these methods in geographic education, yet there are no signs to date that the methodology has transitioned from research to teaching. This paper details our attempt to incorporate qualitative GIS into an undergraduate urban field studies course in lieu of a strictly lab-based GIS assignment. We outline our approach before discussing students’ engagement with the assignment in greater depth. Drawing from field experiences and deliverables across four terms, we argue that teaching from a qualitative GIS framework can effectively communicate the fundamentals of modern spatial theory and geographic research methods to students as they investigate problems in the field. We also note recurring challenges to mixed-methods teaching for students unfamiliar with the new methods presented. We close by discussing avenues for instructors in different circumstances, e.g. personal skills sets and class characteristics, to consider qualitative GIS in their classrooms.     

Teaching introductory GIS programming to geographers using an open source Python approach

Computer programming is not commonly taught to geographers as a part of geographic information system (GIS) courses, but the advent of NeoGeography, big data and open GIS means that programming skills are becoming more important. To encourage the teaching of programming to geographers, this paper outlines a course based around a series of laboratories that aims to provide an introduction to programming. Methods for teaching and assessment are recommended. These laboratories use core spatial concepts that are relevant for all areas of geographic study, and use an open source Python approach that has wider logistical and pedagogical benefits.     

Modelling small-arms projectile distribution on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century battlefield sites

The application of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technologies to archaeological investigations continues to provide new perspectives on historical events. Applied to battlefield archaeology, GIS analysis offers an efficient means of predicting potential artefact distribution across a conflict landscape. The approach proposed in this piece allows a user to test historical engagement scenarios within a desktop computing environment utilizing a customized GIS application. The study was intended to develop a framework that allowed for the input of quantifiable parameters in order to illustrate potential artefact patterning. The framework consists of two components, the trajectory model and the methodology for implementing it. Using this coarse-grained approach, it is our contention that small-arms projectile distribution can be estimated for a single engagement, and in doing so provide a more comprehensive view of potential artefact patterning than using KOCOA (Key Terrain, Observation and Fields of Fire, Concealment and Cover, Obstacles, Avenues of Approach/Withdrawal) terrain analysis or historic research alone. As an initial example to illustrate the efficacy of our model, this study uses data and parameters from the 1777 Battle of Ridgefield, Connecticut landscape as a test case.