Waldo Rudolph Tobler was an American-Swiss geographer and cartographer. Tobler is regarded as one of the most influential geographers and cartographers of the late 20th century and early 21st century. He is most well known for coining what has come to be referred to as Tobler's first law of geography. He also coined what has come to be referred to as Tobler's second law of geography.
A GIS software program is a computer program to support the use of a geographic information system, providing the ability to create, store, manage, query, analyze, and visualize geographic data, that is, data representing phenomena for which location is important. The GIS software industry encompasses a broad range of commercial and open-source products that provide some or all of these capabilities within various information technology architectures.
Michael Frank Goodchild is a British-American geographer. He is an Emeritus Professor of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara. After nineteen years at the University of Western Ontario, including three years as chair, he moved to Santa Barbara in 1988, as part of the establishment of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis, which he directed for over 20 years. In 2008, he founded the UCSB Center for Spatial Studies.
The First Law of Geography, according to Waldo Tobler, is "everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things." This first law is the foundation of the fundamental concepts of spatial dependence and spatial autocorrelation and is utilized specifically for the inverse distance weighting method for spatial interpolation and to support the regionalized variable theory for kriging. The first law of geography is the fundamental assumption used in all spatial analysis.
In geography, the quantitative revolution (QR) was a paradigm shift that sought to develop a more rigorous and systematic methodology for the discipline. It came as a response to the inadequacy of regional geography to explain general spatial dynamics. The main claim for the quantitative revolution is that it led to a shift from a descriptive (idiographic) geography to an empirical law-making (nomothetic) geography. The quantitative revolution occurred during the 1950s and 1960s and marked a rapid change in the method behind geographical research, from regional geography into a spatial science.
Health geography is the application of geographical information, perspectives, and methods to the study of health, disease, and health care. Medical geography, a sub-discipline of, or sister field of health geography, focuses on understanding spatial patterns of health and disease in relation to the natural and social environment. Conventionally, there are two primary areas of research within medical geography: the first deals with the spatial distribution and determinants of morbidity and mortality, while the second deals with health planning, help-seeking behavior, and the provision of health services.
Spatial analysis is any of the formal techniques which studies entities using their topological, geometric, or geographic properties. Spatial analysis includes a variety of techniques using different analytic approaches, especially spatial statistics. It may be applied in fields as diverse as astronomy, with its studies of the placement of galaxies in the cosmos, or to chip fabrication engineering, with its use of "place and route" algorithms to build complex wiring structures. In a more restricted sense, spatial analysis is geospatial analysis, the technique applied to structures at the human scale, most notably in the analysis of geographic data. It may also be applied to genomics, as in transcriptomics data.
The modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP) is a source of statistical bias that can significantly impact the results of statistical hypothesis tests. MAUP affects results when point-based measures of spatial phenomena are aggregated into spatial partitions or areal units as in, for example, population density or illness rates. The resulting summary values are influenced by both the shape and scale of the aggregation unit.
Critical geography is theoretically informed geographical scholarship that promotes social justice, liberation, and leftist politics. Critical geography is also used as an umbrella term for Marxist, feminist, postmodern, poststructural, queer, left-wing, and activist geography.
Geography is the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding of Earth and its human and natural complexities—not merely where objects are, but also how they have changed and come to be. While geography is specific to Earth, many concepts can be applied more broadly to other celestial bodies in the field of planetary science. Geography has been called "a bridge between natural science and social science disciplines."
A boundary problem in analysis is a phenomenon in which geographical patterns are differentiated by the shape and arrangement of boundaries that are drawn for administrative or measurement purposes. The boundary problem occurs because of the loss of neighbors in analyses that depend on the values of the neighbors. While geographic phenomena are measured and analyzed within a specific unit, identical spatial data can appear either dispersed or clustered depending on the boundary placed around the data. In analysis with point data, dispersion is evaluated as dependent of the boundary. In analysis with areal data, statistics should be interpreted based upon the boundary.
Quantitative geography is a subfield and methodological approach to geography that develops, tests, and uses scientific, mathematical, and statistical methods to analyze and model geographic phenomena and patterns. It aims to explain and predict the distribution and dynamics of human and physical geography through the collection and analysis of quantifiable data. The approach quantitative geographers take is generally in line with the scientific method, where a falsifiable hypothesis is generated, and then tested through observational studies. This has received criticism, and in recent years, quantitative geography has moved to include systematic model creation and understanding the limits of their models. This approach is used to study a wide range of topics, including population demographics, urbanization, environmental patterns, and the spatial distribution of economic activity. The methods of quantitative geography are often contrasted by those employed by qualitative geography, which is more focused on observing and recording characteristics of geographic place. However, there is increasing interest in using combinations of both qualitative and quantitative methods through mixed-methods research to better understand and contextualize geographic phenomena.
Mei-Po Kwan is a geographer known for her research contributions in Geographic Information Science, and human geography, particularly as they apply to time geography and human mobility. She is the Choh-Ming Li Professor of Geography and Resource Management at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), Director of the Institute of Space and Earth Information Science (ISEIS) of CUHK, Director of the Institute of Future Cities of CUHK, and Head of Chung Chi College of CUHK.
Concepts and Techniques in Modern Geography (CATMOG), is a series of 59 short publications, each focused on an individual method or theory in geography.
Technical geography is the branch of geography that involves using, studying, and creating tools to obtain, analyze, interpret, understand, and communicate spatial information.
Spatial neural networks (SNNs) constitute a supercategory of tailored neural networks (NNs) for representing and predicting geographic phenomena. They generally improve both the statistical accuracy and reliability of the a-spatial/classic NNs whenever they handle geo-spatial datasets, and also of the other spatial (statistical) models whenever the geo-spatial datasets' variables depict non-linear relations.
Qualitative geography is a subfield and methodological approach to geography focusing on nominal data, descriptive information, and the subjective and interpretive aspects of how humans experience and perceive the world. Often, it is concerned with understanding the lived experiences of individuals and groups and the social, cultural, and political contexts in which those experiences occur. Thus, qualitative geography is traditionally placed under the branch of human geography; however, technical geographers are increasingly directing their methods toward interpreting, visualizing, and understanding qualitative datasets, and physical geographers employ nominal qualitative data as well as quanitative. Furthermore, there is increased interest in applying approaches and methods that are generally viewed as more qualitative in nature to physical geography, such as in critical physical geography. While qualitative geography is often viewed as the opposite of quantitative geography, the two sets of techniques are increasingly used to complement each other. Qualitative research can be employed in the scientific process to start the observation process, determine variables to include in research, validate results, and contextualize the results of quantitative research through mixed-methods approaches.
Arthur Getis was an American geographer known for his significant contributions to spatial statistics and geographic information science (GIScience). With a career spanning over four decades, Getis authored more than one hundred peer-reviewed papers and book chapters, greatly influencing GIScience and geography as a whole. The Getis-Ord family of statistics, one of the most commonly used in spatial analysis, is based on his and J. Keith Ord's work and is still widely used in the creation of hot spot maps.
The Scientific Geography Series is a series of small books that each focus on a specific geographic concept from a scientific framework.
Duane Francis Marble was an American geographer known for his significant contributions to quantitative geography and geographic information science (GIScience). Marble had a 40-year career as a professor at multiple institutions, retiring from the Ohio State University and holding a courtesy appointment as Professor of Geosciences at Oregon State University afterward. His early work was highly influential in computer cartography and is regarded as a significant contributor to the quantitative revolution in geography. His work on constructing a "Model Curricula" in GIScience is listed as the starting foundation built upon by the Geographic Information Science and Technology Body of Knowledge.
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