Institutional Opportunities and Constraints · Metrics of distance on the plane and globe. Travel...

Institutional Opportunities and Constraints

Michael F. Goodchild

A conceptual framework

■ Nomothetic science– knowledge that is true everywhere in space

and time■ Idiographic science

– the study of the unique– new planets– liquid lakes of Antarctica– descriptive, anectodal can be pejorative

the natural, social world

abstracted knowledge

nomothetic science

planning, decision making

A spatial turn in science■ Adding space to theory

– the New Economic Geography• space impeding flows of information, operation of

markets• transport costs

– Spatial Ecology• a heterogeneous resource base• space impeding interactions, breeding• metapopulations

■ Reasoning from spatial data– cross-sectional– new tools to overcome methodological problems– impacts in all social, environmental disciplines

A growing literatureSpatially Integrated Social Science (Goodchild and Janelle, OUP, 2004)

The drivers■ New technologies, new data

– geographic information systems (GIS)– remote sensing– positioning (GPS)– delivery mechanisms

■ Place-based analysis■ Applications of science in policy,

decision making

Definitions of neighborhood based on human spatial behavior. Formal and functional regions and concepts of territory. Models of region design and political districting. The modifiable areal unit problem and the ecological fallacy. Techniques of areal interpolation. Metrics of fragmentation and shape.

4. Neighborhood and Region

Linear networks for transportation, communication, and social interaction. Network metrics. Models of network development and design. Small worlds and degrees of separation. Representation of networks in spatial databases. Models of network flow assignment.

3. Network

Metrics of distance on the plane and globe. Travel cost, travel time, and impacts on interaction and spatial behavior by humans and other organisms. Distance decay and spatial interaction models. Buffers. Weights matrices and their applications in spatial analysis and modeling. Geodesics, potential fields, and optimum paths.

2. Distance

Places abstracted as points, lines, and areas, and represented as points, polylines, and polygons. Rasters and grid cells. Mathematical approximations to the geoid, map projections, coordinate systems. Measurement and tracking of location: GPS. Location in human discourse: placenames, prepositions, and movement verbs. Positional accuracy. The characteristics or attributes of places: scales of measurement. Concepts of land ownership in different cultures, administrative hierarchies, postcodes, linear referencing.

1. Location

Table 1 – Eight Foundation Concepts in Spatial Thinking for STEM Disciplines

Discrete objects and continuous fields as fundamental conceptualizations of space and as the basis for models of process. The dichotomy as an underpinning of methods of representation and analysis. Spatial correlation. Concepts of uncertainty in both conceptualizations.

8. Objects and Fields

Metrics of spatial dependence: Moran and Geary indices. Geostatistics as a theoretical framework for spatial data. Spatial interpolation. Statistical inference in the presence of spatial dependence; explicit models of spatial dependence. Analysis of point patterns and cluster detection. The role of spatial dependence in uncertainty.

7. Spatial Dependence

Heterogeneity as a fundamental characteristic of spatial data. First-order effects, non-stationarity, and uncontrolled variance. Implications of spatial heterogeneity for sampling and statistical inference. Place-based analysis, local indicators of spatial association, and geographically weighted regression.

6. Spatial Heterogeneity

Level of detail in spatial data sets. Definitions of scale: extent and resolution. Scale-related concepts: self-similarity (fractals), generalization and down-scaling, line and surface smoothing, recursive subdivision, variance decomposition, and multi-level analysis. The role of scale in process.

5. Scale

“By understanding how life unfolds through space – in the design of cities, in the spread of disease, in the workings of the economy, in the movement of popular culture, in the location of businesses, in the use of the lands and forests – we see how all of the parts come together to create the world we share.

Returning to geography is part of Harvard’s commitment to responding to the challenges humanity faces globally and locally.”

The events and players: 1948■ Neil Smith, 1987. “Academic war over the field of

geography: the elimination of geography at Harvard, 1947-1951”. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 77(2): 155-172.– personalities

• Whittlesey, Ullman, Ackerman, Bowman– general weakness in the discipline– financial

■ Gottmann, 1982: “a terrible blow…to American geography…(from which) it has never completely recovered”

Early GIS

■ Harvard Laboratory for Computer Graphics– Howard Fisher– SYMAP, 1967

William Warntz, 1967-1971

■ Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis

■ Harvard Papers in Theoretical Geography– Bunge’s Theoretical Geography (1962)

■ Weak links to software development– very little data available– computing still rudimentary

Software development

■ CALFORM, SYMVU (1970)■ ODYSSEY (1977)

– a full-featured GIS– father of ARC/INFO

■ Brian JL Berry director until 1981

1985■ GIS well established

– a nascent software industry– texts

• Burrough, Principles of GIS• MacDougall, Computer Programming for Spatial

Problems– a scattering of courses

• UWO circa 1976– various things could be achieved by computer

processing of spatial data• measurement• production and editing• map-making

…but some big questions

■ What to teach?– training in software?– education in principles?

• what were those principles?

■ What to research?– algorithms and data structures to do it

"faster, better, cheaper"

CAG 1985 Trois Rivieres

■ Session on teaching GIS– Poiker, Maher, Goodchild, …– "GIS in Undergraduate Geography: A

Contemporary Dilemma"• what are the foundations for an education in

GIS?• what are the basic principles?• The Operational Geographer 8: 34-38

The analogy to statistics■ A branch of mathematics dating from well

before the advent of computers or calculators– theory, numerical analysis predated computation

■ Where is the equivalent theoretical framework for GIS?– computation predated the development of theory

■ GIS is to x as the statistical packages are to statistics– what is x?

■ "A spatial analytic perspective on GIS", IJGIS 1: 327-334, 1988

www.gis.harvard.edu

Much progress

■ Since Terry Jordan described GIS as “easily justified but non-intellectual expertise” (1988)– and Ron Abler called it “simultaneously the

microscope, the telescope, and the Xerox machine of geographical analysis and synthesis” (1987)

■ But has Harvard got it right this time?

Essential requirements

■ Technical services (CGA)■ Teaching

– more than training courses– spatial thinking in core curriculum

■ Intellectual core– academic positions– how to introduce a member of a new

discipline into an existing organizational unit?

What is UCSB up to?■ the Alexandria Digital Library, developed between 1994 and 2004 with funding from the National

Science Foundation (NSF) as a mechanism for remote access to the university’s outstanding map and imagery collection, and now an operational part of the Davidson Library;

■ a focus in spatial cognition that links researchers in Psychology, Geography, Anthropology, and the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education;

■ the extensive use of geographic information systems (GIS) software in projects that range from archaeology and religious studies to environmental restoration and the evolution of mountain belts, with strong links to ESRI, the world’s leading vendor of GIS software;

■ research on image processing and analysis in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science, with applications ranging from satellite images of Earth to bioinformatics;

■ the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, which uses and promotes spatial methods in ecology;

■ the Allosphere, a large-scale fully immersive environment and instrument for research and visualization in science, engineering, and art;

■ the Sage Center for the Study of the Mind, with its interests in fMRI;■ the Center for the Analysis of Sacred Space, which examines the role of space in religions;■ the Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science, an NSF-funded project to develop research

infrastructure in support of spatial methods across the social sciences;■ research on new numerical methods that simulate the complexity of both social and physical

interactions in space and time;■ the Center for Nanotechnology in Society, in which spatial visualization plays a key role in tracking the

globalization of nanotechnology research, development, and commercialization;■ the lead site of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis, since 1988 a world leader

in GIS research and outreach;■ the national center for academic distribution of imagery from the French SPOT satellite; and■ one of the nation’s top departments of geography.

spatial.UCSB■ A new component of NCGIA/CSISS■ Major campus funding for 3 years from 7/07■ Building campus infrastructure

– curriculum– services– Web site– seminars

■ Opening in December 2007

Pulling the spatial threads together

■ Many complementary activities at UCSB with a spatial theme– Alexandria Digital Library– National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis

• Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science– spatial databases, image processing– spatial cognition– GIS courses in Bren, Geography– Four Eyes Lab– Digital Media– fMRI

■ A focus could make the whole more than the sum of the parts