GIS and Critical Thinking: The Role of Spatial Concepts

1. GIS and Critical Thinking: The Role of Spatial Concepts Michael F. Goodchild University of California Santa Barbara

2. Geographic information science • The science behind the systems • The systematic study of the nature of geographic information • The set of disciplines that study geographic information • cartography, surveying, photogrammetry, geodesy • computer science, cognitive psychology, operations research, economics, … • The set of issues that arise during use of GIS • that are prompted by GIS • what GIS users think about • what makes spatial special

3. 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

4. A growing literature Spatially Integrated Social Science (Goodchild and Janelle, OUP, 2004)

5. The drivers • New technologies, new data • geographic information systems (GIS) • remote sensing • positioning (GPS) • using location to integrate • providing spatial context • delivery mechanisms • Applications of science in policy, decision making, design

6. planning, decision making nomothetic science abstracted knowledge the natural, social world

7. What fundamental concepts? • How do people organize knowledge about space? • How should we organize the tools? • What does it mean to think spatially? • are people who do fundamentally different? • can one train to be a spatial thinker? • would you know one if you met one?

8. Spatial thinking • Larger than GIS • compare GIScience • What every Google Earth user needs to know • One of Gardner’s seven types of intelligence

9. “1. Linguistic • Children with this kind of intelligence enjoy writing, reading, telling stories or doing crossword puzzles. • 2. Logical-Mathematical • Children with lots of logical intelligence are interested in patterns, categories and relationships. They are drawn to arithmetic problems, strategy games and experiments. • 3. Bodily-Kinesthetic • These kids process knowledge through bodily sensations. They are often athletic, dancers or good at crafts such as sewing or woodworking. • 4. Spatial • These children think in images and pictures. They may be fascinated with mazes or jigsaw puzzles, or spend free time drawing, building with Lego or daydreaming. • 5. Musical • Musical children are always singing or drumming to themselves. They are usually quite aware of sounds others may miss. These kids are often discriminating listeners. • 6. Interpersonal • Children who are leaders among their peers, who are good at communicating and who seem to understand others' feelings and motives possess interpersonal intelligence. • 7. Intrapersonal • These children may be shy. They are very aware of their own feelings and are self-motivated.” Howard Gardner http://www.professorlamp.com/ed/TAG/7_Intelligences.html

10. What is spatial thinking? “Three aspects of spatial ability: • Spatial knowledge • symmetry, orientation, scale, distance decay, etc. • Spatial ways of thinking and acting • using diagramming or graphing, recognizing patterns in data, change over space from change over time, etc. • Spatial capabilities • ability to use tools and technologies such as spreadsheet, graphical, statistical, and GIS software to analyze spatial data” http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11019.html

11. “Spatial thinking tasks • Extracting spatial structures (encoding) • perception and creation of representation • show the spatial or conceptual relationships between elements with respect to reference frame • Performing spatial transformations • Drawing functional inferences • complex spatial reasoning • combining representations and transformations to evaluate or predict situations or events”

12. “The spatially literate student • Knows where, when, how, and why to think spatially • Practices spatial thinking with • broad and deep knowledge of spatial concepts and representations • well-developed spatial capabilities for using supporting tools and technologies • Adopts a critical stance to spatial thinking • can evaluate the quality of spatial data based on source, likely accuracy, reliability • can use spatial data to construct, articulate, and defend a line of reasoning in solving problems and answering questions”

13. Thinking about space • Wayfinding skills • mental maps • Three levels of knowledge • landmark • route • survey

14. Landmark knowledge • Geography as a list of places • no spatial relationships • no adjacency • "if this is Tuesday it must be Belgium“ • which two pairs of US states are adjacent both in space and in alphabetical order? • no spatial context • "how long is this flight?" • no knowledge of intervening places

15. Tract Pop Location Shape 1 3786 x,y 2 2966 x,y 3 5001 x,y 4 4983 x,y 5 4130 x,y 6 3229 x,y 7 4086 x,y 8 3979 x,y What value is location as an explanatory variable?

16. Route knowledge • Sequences of intervening places • no ability to short-cut • no directions, distances • context along the route • distorted context off the route

18. Michael Gastner, Cosma Shalizi, and Mark NewmanUniversity of Michigan http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/

19. Survey knowledge • Full two-dimensional representation • distances • orientations • shortcuts • context • vertical and horizontal

20. Metric space List of places Attribute table Adjacency matrix W matrix of proximities Linear network Point, extended features and attributes Non-metric spaces Cartograms

21. Developing intelligences • Mathematical, verbal, musical • attention throughout K-16 • Spatial • IQ tests • trivia questions Which is further west, San Diego or Reno?

22. Naïve geography • Popular misconceptions • Can a GIS be built to honor popular misconceptions? • direct people to drive north from LA to Santa Barbara • no, because such a GIS would violate the basic principles of geometry

23. What fundamental concepts exist in spatial intelligence? • Are they sophisticated and abstract enough to warrant a place in the curriculum? • like mathematics, statistics, language, music • can spatial intelligence gain more respect? • Are they an appropriate basis for improved GIS user interface design? • does the interface need improvement?

24. A complex set of tools • A GIS is capable of virtually any conceivable operation on spatial data • how many conceivable operations are there? • ArcGIS 9.2 toolkit • 510 operations • 10 headings, up to 4 levels of hierarchical organization • headings include: • Analysis, Spatial Analyst, 3D Analyst, Geostatistical Analyst, Spatial Statistics • Data Management, Conversion • Under which heading would you find the routine to convert a shapefile to KML?

25. Map algebra • Local, focal, zonal, global • raster only • is there something equivalent for vector? • van Duersen’s scripting language • c = a + b • Andy Mitchell’s books • ESRI Press

26. Volume 1: • Mapping where things are • Mapping the most and least • Mapping density • Finding what’s inside • Finding what’s nearby • Mapping what’s changed • Volume 2: • Calculating the center, dispersion, and trend • Identifying patterns • Identifying clusters • Analyzing geographic relationships

28. from Lance Waller, Emory University Snow, J. (1949) Snow on Cholera. Oxford University Press. ! Johnson, S. (2006) The Ghost Map. Riverhead

29. 1. Google Earth image 2. 1843 map of London from David Rumsey collection 3. Pump and death locations from my own web site

30. popvssoda.com

31. 1. Location • Defining and measuring location • the impossibility of exact measurement • From infinitesimal point to extended area • Place • how many places are there in the U.S.? • what is the most populous city in the world? • Location as context • Location as common key • mashups • It is important to know where events occur

35. fundrace.huffingtonpost.com

36. 2. Distance, direction • Measurement • plane, globe • buffers • Distance decay • decline of interaction with distance • cost, time impediments • footprints of human behavior

37. The Economist, May 17, 2003 The Economist, May 3, 2003

38. 3. Neighborhood/region/territory • The context of individuals • action space • Homogeneous areas • The reporting zone containing the individual • arbitrarily imposed on a continuous Earth • The ecological fallacy • the modifiable areal unit problem • Competition for space • trade areas, bird territories • functional regions

41. 4. Scale • Level of detail • the inevitability of generalization • Extent • generalizability of results • Methods of upscaling, downscaling • Fractal concepts • Scale is always important • many properties cannot be defined independently of scale • length of a coastline • slope of a topographic surface • land use class

42. Unique to spatial thinking? • Analogs of spatial scale in other domains • Observed properties of spatial data • what makes spatial special?

43. 5. Spatial dependence • “All things are related, but nearby things are more related than distant things” • W.R. Tobler, 1970. A computer movie simulating urban growth in the Detroit region. Economic Geography 46: 234-240 • “nearby things are more similar than distant things” • geostatistics, Moran statistic • the most important property of any spatially distributed phenomenon • Challenges the normal assumptions of statistical tests • independent, randomly chosen samples

44. Source: Mason et al., Atlas of Cancer Mortality for U.S. Counties, NCI, 1975

46. www.csiss.org

48. 6. Spatial heterogeneity • TFL describes a second-order effect • properties of places taken two at a time • a law of spatial dependence • is there a law of places taken one at a time? • Spatial heterogeneity • non-stationarity • uncontrolled variance

49. Practical implications • A state is not a sample of the nation • a country is not a sample of the world • Results of any analysis will depend explicitly on spatial bounds • Classification schemes will differ when devised by local jurisdictions • Figures of the Earth will differ when devised by local surveying agencies • Global standards will always compete with local standards • Strong argument for place-based analysis, local statistics, geographically weighted regression

50. Summary • Working with spatial data is not always simple and intuitive • but it can yield great insights if handled appropriately • There is a substantial body of knowledge that needs to be acquired by anyone working with spatial data • you would never think of doing a t test without taking a course in statistics • why would you consider using a GIS without taking a course in spatial thinking?