Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in International Relations

Abstract

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are being applied with increasing frequency, and with increasing sophistication, in international relations and in political science more generally. Their benefits have been impressive: analyses that simply would not have been possible without GIS are now being completed, and the spatial component of international politics—long considered central but rarely incorporated analytically—has been given new emphasis. However, new methods face new challenges, and to apply GIS successfully, two specific issues need to be addressed: measurement validity and selection bias. Both relate to the challenge of conceptualizing nonspatial phenomena with the spatial tools of GIS. Significant measurement error can occur when the concepts that are coded as spatial variables are not, in fact, validly measured by the default data structure of GIS, and selection bias can arise when GIS systematically excludes certain types of units. Because these potential problems are hidden by the technical details of the method, GIS data sets and analyses can sometimes appear to overcome these challenges when, in fact, they fail to do so. Once these issues come to light, however, potential solutions become apparent—including some in existing applications in international relations and in other fields.

Low cost air quality monitoring

“…The authors' focus was on map visualization of AQ information and spatial resolution. The system implemented main-memory database and spatial database for fast processing [36], of AQ data and real -time map visualization with geographic information system (GIS) technology [8]. But, little attention was paid on data collection, so data accuracy is an issue.…”

Advancing Conflict Research Through Computational Approaches

“…Analogous to social network analysis that enhances conflict studies by integrating network dynamics, geographic information systems (GIS) offer techniques for refining these studies through the incorporation of spatial data into the analysis (Branch, 2016). Although spatial relationships have often been analyzed in a general way in qualitative conflict research, the recent advances in computing power and the increasing availability of disaggregated and high-resolution spatial data have enabled more sophisticated and quantitative studies (Stephenne et al, 2009;Gleditsch and Weidmann, 2012).…”

Measuring the landscape of civil war

“…Scholars have also noted discrepancies in the spatial accuracy of datasets: Eck (2012) finds UCDP-GED outperforms ACLED while Weidman (2015) demonstrates that both UCDP-GED and ACLED are highly inaccurate compared to US military records from Afghanistan. Branch (2016) also notes that georeferencing can introduce unrecognized problems with selection bias because it poorly captures non-spatial concepts that are then excluded or misrepresented in later analyses.…”