1 - Intro to GIS for the Social Sciences

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1 - Intro to GIS for the Social Sciences

• RESM 493r

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Goal

• Apply GIS techniques to social science and
  business research
• Explore spatial and quantitative analysis methods
  
• Examine problems in business and marketing,
  community planning and development, health care,
  crime analysis, environmental justice,
  recreation, and other applications
• Explore the significance of spatial thinking in
  social science research and analysis.

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Learning objectives

• Explain how place and space are important and can
  be analyzed with GIS in various social science
  fields.
• Find and download appropriate census data for use
  with political boundaries.
• Perform business and marketing space based
  analyses.
• Analyze the patterns of features and use models
  to make predictions about future conditions.

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Today

• Into to GIS for social sciences
• Hazards of place model

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GIS use in the social sciences

• An analytical tool for social sciences
• Not new, but only recently has it gained wider
  recognition
• Due to availability and easy to use software
• Applied in various social science disciplines
• Is a continuously evolving technology

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Examples

• Mapping crime statistics
• Social inequality
• Environmental justice

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Understanding the G in GIS

• Knowing exact location is an important part of
  the GIS process
• Information about people and places is location
  based.
• Street address, zip or area code, census block,
  x,y coordinates, latitude and longitude, etc
• scientific basis for mapping scale (level of
  spatial detail - privacy and ethical issues),
  coordinates, control datums.

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Understanding the G in GIS

• Not all social science research use spatial
  analysis
• focus on social, economic, cultural and survey
  data without spatial questions
• E.g. Do educated or wealthier pregnant women
  receive higher quality prenatal care?
• Alternatively
• Where are the prenatal clinics located relative
  to available public transportation, child care
  etc ? ? causative relationships.

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Understanding the G in GIS

• Not all data is geographic e.g. data on
  perceptions, desires, social ties, ideas or
  interactions.
• Use of cartograms - to represent social
  relationships
• Data variability in time and space
• Most data are static snapshot in time.
• Difficult to map changes or trends in data
• Many things are dynamic
• Choice of variables to be used. E.g. Mapping
  individuals over time - home address or place of
  employment or where the person is likely to be
  at a particular time of the day or week.

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Understanding the G in GIS

• Computers allow us to transform static data into
  dynamic data Animation
• Difficult and expensive to collect and update
  temporal scale (real time) data
• Fortunately, only a few social science
  applications use this kind of data
• Representation issues
• Privacy and ethical issues
• Lumping (grouping) or degrading to mask
  individual data points

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Understanding the I in GIS

• Information relates to software database
• Databases are specialized software programs
  designed for storage, organization and retrieval
  of information.
• Most GIS can interact with any database system
• May involve some transformation and translations
• Most data are now available in GIS ready formats
  e.g USCensus, local and state agencies, private
  companies and universities
• Primary data surveys, interviews, and
  observations
• locational information and coding and formatting

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Extending the I in GIS

• Multimedia capabilities of computers
• Allows the incorporation of video, audio, photos
  and text
• Oral history, narratives and interviews,
• Data is stored in a raw form
• Can be used for further and different analysis
• Dynamically linked to a map location

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Understanding the S in GIS

• System component
• Hardware, software and people
• GIS setup involves costs and training
• Issues of data structure, format and
  compatibility Interoperability
• High costs and training may warrant
  subcontracting to GIS specialists.

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Understanding the S in GIS

• GIS data model is based on discrete data
  categories of points, lines and polygons that are
  in space
• Assumes all data can be linked to a specific
  discrete location
• Assumes that lines can be drawn to delineate
  boundaries between data categories
• Many data sets are not clearly defined
• E.g degraded
• Efforts to develop fuzzy GIS systems less
  defined locations and boundaries

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Qualitative Research Methods

• Integrating qualitative research and GIS
• Qualitative research forms
• Sociospatial grounded theory
• Participant observation
• Ethnography
• Oral histories

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Qualitative Research Methods

• Inductive Approach
• Grounded Theory and GIS
• Sociospatial Grounded Theory
• Determine topic of interest
• Determine geographic location of interest
• Collect data (qualitative, spatially linked
  social data)
• Geocode the data
• Ground truth the data
• Analyze the data, look for spatial and social
  patterns
• General theory (spatial and social)

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Integrating GIS Field Research

• GIS software in the field
• Entering data in the field.
• Consider climate conditions, access to power or
  recharge the computer and storage space
• Base maps of study area
• Hard copy maps
• Mark some reference points
• Ground truth of map data
• Verification and ground truthing
• Use of aerial photos
• Elicit help from local people
• Cultural perceptions of technology
• How technology is viewed by people in the study
  area e.g. Amish community
• Alternative methods
• Access to Results
• Who will read the report
• Public access

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Local Sources of Data

• Oral History Interviews
• GIS and oral history
• Participant Observation
• Researcher actively participates in the issue and
  topic under study
• Researcher record their experiences (social,
  environmental and personal sentiments)

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News as Data Source

• Background data or actual data
• Newspapers, magazine, TV and online formats
• Content Analysis Approach
• Analyze events in time, location, time of
  occurrence etc
• Identify patterns in news stories
• Information can be used for decision making

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Ethnography and GIS

• Detailed description of a problem or issue
• Telling people stories the way the people want
  the stories told (Earl Babbie, 2003)
• Recorded conversations
• GIS integrates contextualized or environmentally
  situate the stories over time
• Key elements/variables from stories can be used
  for analysis

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Public Particiaption and GIS

• Local peoples ideas, thoughts and actions are
  solicited to be part of the planning process.
• Community meetings, stage hearings to solicit
  community input, focus groups, surveys, key
  informant interviews, needs assessments etc
• Disadvantage very few people (general public)
  understand GIS
• PPGIS allows people to see the data and its
  physical, environmental or social context now or
  in future
• Use of GIS as means of idea portrayal can give
  planners of community desires

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Sociospatial Research

• Enhances analysis by providing additional
  insights and information not previously
  considered
• understand social context and characterstics
• Outline
• Explore GIS as a tool for the integration and
  analysis of social science data
• Role of GIS in research
• Applications

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GIS in the social science

• Does not have a long history in the social
  science
• Its value is beginning to be recognized

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Why is GIS a good tool for the social scientist?

• Allows for the integration and comparison of
  contextual data from social as well as
  environmental or physical standpoint

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Social science researcher

• Almost all of their data have an associcated
  geographic point of location
• Researchers need to identify where the
  differences, similarities, correlations, and
  interactions exist
• GIS can accommodate both qualitative and
  quantitative variables into a study

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Inductive vs deductive approaches to research

• GIS can be helpful to both
• Inductive hypotheses emerge from the data, no
  preconceived notions
• Deductive more traditional approach of lit
  review, generate framework, create hypoth, test
  the hypoth by collecting data

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Hazards of place model
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Example Hazards-of-Place Model of Vulnerability
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Example Hazards-of-Place Model of Vulnerability
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Example Hazards-of-Place Model of Vulnerability
Step 1 Determining Biophysical Vulnerability
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Example Hazards-of-Place Model of Vulnerability
Step 1 Determining Biophysical Vulnerability
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Example Hazards-of-Place Model of Vulnerability
Step 1 Determining Biophysical Vulnerability
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Example Hazards-of-Place Model of Vulnerability
Step 1 Determining Biophysical Vulnerability
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Example Hazards-of-Place Model of Vulnerability
Step 2 Defining Social Vulnerability
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Example Hazards-of-Place Model of Vulnerability
Step 2 Defining Social Vulnerability
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Example Hazards-of-Place Model of Vulnerability
Step 3 The Vulnerability of Places
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Combining Tables(application of Census data or
other demographic information with spatial layers)
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Tables

• Descriptive information about features
• Each feature class has an associated table
• One row for each geographic feature

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Understanding table anatomy

• Basic table properties
• Records/rows and fields/columns
• Column types can store numbers, text, dates
• Unique column names

Columns (fields)
Attributevalues
Rows(records)
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Table manipulation

• Open table in ArcMap or preview in ArcCatalog
• Sort ascending or descending
• Freeze/Unfreeze columns
• Statistics
• In ArcMap
• Select records
• Modify table values

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Associating tables

• Can store attributes in feature table or separate
  table
• Associate tables with common column key values
• Must be same data field types
• Must know table relationships (cardinality)

Additional attribute table
Feature attribute table
Example Associating county attribute table with
separate table of poverty estimates by county for
WV
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Table relationships

• How many A objects are related to B objects?
• Types of cardinality
• One-to-one, one-to-many or many-to-one, and
  many-to-many
• Must know cardinality before connecting tables

One parcel has one owner
One parcel has many owners
Many parcels have one owner
Many parcels have many owners
or
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Joins and relates

• Two methods to associate tables in ArcMap based
  on a common field
• Join appends the attributes from one onto the
  other
• Label or symbolize features
  using joined
  attributes
• Relate defines a relationship between two tables

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Connecting tables with joins

• Appends the attributes of two tables
• Assumes one-to-one or many-to-one cardinality

WV_Poverty98
County Attributes (before Join)
One-to-one
County Attributes with joined poverty data
(virtual table after Join)
c
c
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Connecting tables with relates

• Define relationship between two tables
• Tables remain independent
• Additional cardinality choices
• One-to-many
• Discovers any related rows

2) Open related table
1) Make selection
Example Relate WV county attributes to table of
coal production statistics for 1986 - 1998