Qualitative GIS: An Open Framework Using SpatiaLite and Open Source GIS

Abstract

Qualitative GIS is a relatively new methodological approach for analyzing and visualizing qualitative data within a geographic context. Qualitative data can take many forms, including interviews, documents, photographs, and audio and video clips. Content analysis for example, is an effective qualitative method for analyzing text-based data. We argue that basic concepts, (i.e. how to store data, data requirements, visualization techniques, and modes of analysis) within qualitative GIS have not been adequately defined, rendering difficult the replication of work performed and hindering the development of incremental knowledge in the field. Database management systems provide a means for storing, managing, and analyzing qualitative GIS data. A standardized and well-designed open source database system provides a mechanism for qualitative GIS projects, ensuring consistency and project replication. Qualitative GIS data stored in a database allows for additional visualization options, such as geographic word clouds. To demonstrate the concepts we performed content analysis on Master Transportation Plans from Calgary and Montreal using SpatiaLite, an open source database system. We developed Structured Query Language (SQL) queries to generate and populate groups and theme tables within the SpatiaLite database. We present our database design and queries in the hopes that they will help others conducting qualitative GIS research.

Reviewing qualitative GIS research—Toward a wider usage of open‐source GIS and reproducible research practices

“…Second, adding links to files stored on disk or URLs is equally possible (e.g., see https://docs.qgis.org/2.18/en/docs/training_manual/create_vector_data/actions.html; QGIS is especially well documented and offers further online tutorials). Third, we could easily extend QGIS with qualitative GIS applications by building a new plug‐in (Sherman, ) as, for example, shown by Garnett and Kanaroglou (). Then again, one can share the plug‐in with the community (https://plugins.qgis.org/plugins/).…”

“…Despite this general agreement, the epistemological positions of qualitative GIS users are diverse: While some scholars have an entirely critical stance toward qualitative GIS and use it as a lens to understand societal and cultural dynamics, others have embraced qualitative GIS as a method and an application to collect and analyze data in research projects that have no links to social and/or critical theory (Pickles, ; Thatcher & Imaoka, ). Overall, qualitative GIS are used in different sub‐disciplines of geography with differences in terms of research objects, study regions, qualitative methodology, software type, and analysis approaches (Garnett & Kanaroglou, ). Given the heterogeneity of the research in which qualitative GIS have been used in the past three decades, a comprehensive literature review is required to better understand the use and the positionalities within GIS research that have a specific link to qualitative methods and data.…”

Human Geography With Open Gis as a Transformative Introductory Higher Education Course

“…GIS curricula are not only missing critical human geography perspectives; they are also often missing more pragmatic geographic information science (GIScience) topics of alternative (open-source) software and data options, open standards, ethics, metadata, error, and uncertainty (Holler, 2019;Wikle and Fagin, 2014). Open source GIS presents opportunities to destabilize mainstream representations of GIS as commercial and infallible, investigate the history and social context of GIS development, expand access to GIS by marginal social groups or grassroots movements, encounter data errors and software bugs and participate in fixing them, and develop open GIS for critical and qualitative human geography research (Cope and Elwood, 2009;Garnett and Kanaroglou, 2016;Rey, 2009;Sieber, 2004;Sui, 2014).…”

“…Open-source GIS enables critical GIS scholars to move beyond the opaqueness of black-boxed proprietary software to know GIS more intimately as a research subject (Schuurman and Pratt, 2002). The ethos of free source code access and (re)distribution implies that open GIS can be applied and repurposed without the restrictions of expensive licenses or rigidly encoded modes of knowledge representation and decision-making, alleviating concerns amongst critical GIS scholars working with qualitative data (Cope and Elwood, 2009;Garnett and Kanaroglou, 2016) and in contexts of international development (Dunn et al, 1997) and grassroots urban movements (Elwood, 2001).…”

“Power to the people”: Contesting urban poverty and power inequities through open GIS

“…There are thus mature and robust software alternatives to proprietary GIS (Moreno‐Sanchez ). FOSS4G has been successfully utilized in citizen science (De Reyna and Simoes ), environmental conservation (Chen et al ; Shao et al ), qualitative GIS (Garnett and Kanaroglou ), and community participation (Hall et al ), including the usage of web 2.0 (Singh and Singh ).…”