The right tools for the job: The case for spatial science tool‐building

Abstract

Do I need to know the precise polygonal geometries of Los Angeles and the University of Southern California (USC) to assert that the latter is within the former? No. My mind contains no such precise geometric model of points and lines, yet I know that USC is in Los Angeles. When humans reason with the real world, they focus on its objects, relations, and processes-rather than starting with geometry-because these are the keys to

A Review of Recent Spatial Accessibility Studies That Benefitted from Advanced Geospatial Information: Multimodal Transportation and Spatiotemporal Disaggregation

“…Voluntary geographic information systems, such as OSM, provide precise network datasets because many users constantly create road segments and reviews. The data are available via the Python package [68,69], meaning that the dataset can easily be combined with nonspatial traffic data and population traffic dynamics [8]. Additionally, GTFS is specifically designed for public transportation and consists of static GTFS and real-time GTFS [70,71].…”

A Generalized Framework for Measuring Pedestrian Accessibility around the World Using Open Data

“…Open source software has many advantages over proprietary software as it is publicly accessible, transparent, reusable, and customizable (Rey, 2009). Open source practices have grown in popularity in research as they improve reproducibility and replicability and bring new opportunities for collaboration (Boeing, 2020b).…”

GIScience II: Newness and imminence

“…Recognizing the risks of overgeneralization, a perusal of recent issues in the International Journal of Geographical Information Science might illustrate the privileging of these new configurations: parallel computing for crime detection, prediction frameworks for parking allocation, multi-criteria analysis for geothermal projects, pattern analysis of Twitter data for sporting events, and so on. This is not to say that progress has not been made in these technical arenas, nor that we should not open our systems, tools, and processes (Boeing, 2020), nor that we should not examine this newness, mundane and ordinary (Leszczynski, 2020), computational and theoretical (O’Sullivan, 2021). Rather, I suggest that prioritizing the technical may disguise the various movements, fixities, and frictions in nature-culture: prioritizing newness may hide more than reveal.…”