Inductive Visualization: A Humanistic Alternative to GIS

Knowles, Anne Kelly; Westerveld, Levi; Strom, Laura

doi:10.1080/2373566x.2015.1108831

Cited by 64 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…Despite the prevailing understanding that space and time are ubiquitous and essential to all scales of geography as well as to exciting new areas of research, such as Big Data, Internet of Things, smart and connected communities, and self‐driving cars (Yaun ), geographers have long observed that GIS handles time poorly (Langran ; Peuquet ; Gregory ; Lammes and others ), precisely because time is not just one attribute among many. Mathematical, regular time has its own properties, as does any mathematical space, and experiential time is as multidimensional and subtle as perceived space (Knowles and others ). The complexities naturally multiply if a geographical feature's location, shape, or attributes change over time, which is all too common.…”

Section: Time And/or Space‐time?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating the Geographic in GIS

Guan

Wilson

Knowles

2019

Geographical Review

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Despite several decades of discussion and debate around the role of GIS in the discipline of Geography, it would be a stretch to argue that GIS has not irreversibly altered the discipline, both in the scope of research and teaching as well as in the wider imagination of a general public. However, it remains a challenge to incorporate the range of geographic knowledge, born of a diversity of modalities, into operational insights and analytical pre‐conditions in a GIS. To be certain, some irreconcilability between GIS and geographical inquiry is to be expected, epistemologically speaking. In what follows, we consider what might be meant by a shift to geographic analysis as scholars from disciplines in the humanities and social sciences turn to GIS as a method of observation, interpretation, analysis, and representation. In this context, we engage in a thought experiment and offer some commentary, fixing the notion of information system, while opening the geographic in GIS to more variable understanding. The point is to pursue greater development of GIS theory and method, encompassing, while not reducing, scientific, social scientific, and humanities research.

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Section: Time And/or Space‐time?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating the Geographic in GIS

Guan

Wilson

Knowles

2019

Geographical Review

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“…With a somewhat broader perspective (i.e., with the objective of providing an analytical and conceptual framework) we have the idea of geo‐narratives as developed by Kwan and Ding (), as a distinctive qualitative GIS approach, and Mennis, Mason, and Cao's (2013) work on combining qualitative and quantitative data and methodologies within the context of GIS, using visualization as the means of inquiry. For a more explicitly cartographic perspective, see the idea of deep mapping and spatial narratives (Bodenhamer, Corrigan, & Harris, ), inductive visualization (Knowles, Westerveld, & Strom, ), and, from an ethnographic perspective, Kawano, Munaim, Goto, Shobugawa, and Naito () look at how “rich media”—maps, photography, video composition, big data, and interactive web platforms—can serve as representations to communicate the study of spaces and urban life.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The limits of GIS: Towards a GIS of place

Giordano

Cole

2018

Transactions in GIS

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In this article we reflect back on our decade-long collaboration on the geographies of the Holocaust to argue for a GIS of place. Our previous work on ghettoization in Budapest and on the spatio-temporal patterns of Jewish persecution in Italy had a marked spatial dimension, both in the research questions we set out to answer and the methods we used, which were largely quantitative. During the course of our research, we progressively came to realize that a spatial perspective favors the voice of the perpetrator and that to fully comprehend and understand the geography of the Holocaust, we needed to engage with the voice of the victim, extend the set of methods and tools used, and broaden our epistemology. While proposing a fully-fledged model of a qualitative GIS of the places and spaces of the Holocaust is beyond the scope of this article, we: (a) argue for the integration of social network analysis, corpus linguistics, and spatio-temporal methods and for a mixed-methods analytical approach and (b) note how the topological and relational foundations we identify as fundamental to a GIS of place parallel the longstanding call for an "integrated history" of the Holocaust. | I N TR ODU C TI ONReflecting on the limits of GIS is not a new exercise. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, both the representation model of GIS and its worldview-who did GIS benefit?-came under scrutiny by geographers writing under the broad umbrella of "critical GIS." (See Schuurman (2000) and, more recently, O'Sullivan (2006) andThatcher et al. (2016) for a summary and an historical overview of the debate.) Early NCGIA Technical Papers from this period explored topics that include the language of spatial relation, cognitive science and GIS, and public participation GIS, while seminal works by Pickles (1995) and others (Curry, 1998;Obermeyer, 1995;Sheppard, 1995) questioned the ideological foundations of the field.As a response from within the field, several academic GIS authors-for the debate barely registered outside of universities-attempted to re-envision GIS from alternative perspectives, including Kwan (2002) from a feminist one.Especially relevant to our objectives in this article is the discourse around qualitative GIS (Cope & Elwood, 2009)which is largely internal to geography-and, in a much broader context, the increased use of computational technologies and big data methods in the digital humanities and the spatial humanities (The challenge is how to map and represent the times and places of the testimonies, and to do it at scale (for all of Budapest, for example): how do we build a GIS of place by interrogating not one or two but 2,000 testimonies and narratives? Scaling up is not at all an issue for traditional GIS-it is easy to georeference 3,000 addresses on a map of Budapest, or to map the place of arrest for 6,000 Jewish victims of the Holocaust in Italy-but it is likely to be the greatest conceptual and technical challenge for building a GIS of the places of the Holocaust. For a possible way of thinking about how to deal wit...

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“…In particular, as Knowles et al . () pointed out, it is not easy to represent time relevant to humanities (e.g. spatial practice and people's lived experience of place) with GIS.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, GIS usage in the humanities still lags behind compared to its application in the physical and social sciences field and has been disparate, uncoordinated, and largely project and application driven (Harris et al, 2011). In particular, as Knowles et al (2015) pointed out, it is not easy to represent time relevant to humanities (e.g. spatial practice and people's lived experience of place) with GIS.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Competing space and place identity with landscape change analysis using Web GIS through Singapore historical maps (1828–2015)

Kim

Pow

Wang

et al. 2018

Singap J Trop Geogr

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The investigation of historical maps is fundamental to understanding the dynamics of landscape changes. In this study, we propose Web GIS tools as a way to compare historical maps efficiently for knowledge production. A key impetus of this article is to contribute to the ongoing efforts to broaden the appeal of ‘mixed‐methods research’ by bridging the epistemological and methodological gaps between GIS and qualitative methodologies in knowledge production. This article proposes a new visualization method for historical landscape change analysis by comparing multiple maps simultaneously with the mash‐up of Web GIS. Based on the analysis of exterior facts represented on the maps, four developmental footprints were investigated, namely, surviving place identity, disappeared place identity replaced by new identity, waning place identity overlapped with new identity, and waning identity by disconnected spatial relationships. To this end, the study argues that Web GIS applications have more potential in spatial knowledge production than traditional desktop GIS.

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Inductive Visualization: A Humanistic Alternative to GIS

Cited by 64 publications

References 51 publications

Evaluating the Geographic in GIS

Evaluating the Geographic in GIS

The limits of GIS: Towards a GIS of place

Competing space and place identity with landscape change analysis using Web GIS through Singapore historical maps (1828–2015)

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