Читать книгу GIS Research Methods - Steven J. Steinberg - Страница 33

Spatial thinking is the application of geographic principles, such as place, time, and distance. People travel to different places every day. Accomplishing daily tasks requires interacting with spaces, people, and places over a certain period of time. Some of these places are a part of our daily patterns of mobility (such as getting coffee or going to the gym before work), which we could say are a part of our “home range”; other paths we choose to travel may involve going to a new location or place. Home range is a term commonly used to describe animal mobility patterns in the wild, but we humans all have a home range, too. Think about your own daily patterns of mobility and the different places that you visit throughout the course of the day; these would compose your home range. If you were to chart these data points using GIS, you would actually be able to see the spatial patterns of your own home range. Thinking spatially for research methods means being able to conceptualize a research question in light of place, distance, and time.

Spatial thinking is an approach that often has been used by people in environmental resource management, forestry, business marketing, the health field, and social services to accomplish their jobs in a more strategic, efficient, and targeted geographic manner. GIS provides the ability to use a variety of data in a holistic and spatial manner. Any organization, agency, or business can be more efficient and save resources by using a spatial perspective to locate their user needs and existing resources. From a business perspective, this might include locating a business’s markets and supply chains.

Everything exists in time and space and is a certain distance from somewhere. In the research world, the science of collecting, analyzing, and reporting data has often involved a spatial component, even if it was not formally recognized and incorporated into the research process, such as in collecting survey responses. Information regarding location may have been collected as a part of research, but most likely was not used in the most efficient manner. The difference now is that, with GIS software, it is becoming increasingly easy, for example, to map out a variety of responses to survey questions and identify patterns.