Progress In Spatial Analysis

Space is increasingly recognized as a legitimate factor that influences many processes and conceptual frameworks, including notions of spatial coherence and spatial heterogeneity that have been demonstrated to provide substance to both theory and explanation. The potential and relevance of spatial analysis is increasingly understood by an expanding sphere of cogent disciplines that have adopted the tools of spatial analysis. This book brings together major new developments in spatial analysis techniques, including spatial statistics, econometrics, and spatial visualization, and applications to fields such as regional studies, transportation and land use, political and economic geography, population and health. Establishing connections to existing and emerging lines of research, the book also serves as a survey of the field of spatial analysis and its links with related areas.

This book examines current trends and developments in the methods and applications of geospatial analysis and highlights future development prospects. It provides a comprehensive discussion of remote sensing- and geographical information system (GIS)-based data processing techniques, current practices, theories, models, and applications of geospatial analysis. Data acquisition and processing techniques such as remote sensing image selections, classifications, accuracy assessments, models of GIS data, and spatial modeling processes are the focus of the first part of the book. In the second part, theories and methods related to fuzzy sets, spatial weights and prominence, geographically weighted regression, weight of evidence, Markov-cellular automata, artificial neural network, agent-based simulation, multi-criteria evaluation, analytic hierarchy process, and a GIS network model are included. Part three presents selected best practices in geospatial analysis. The chapters, all by expert authors, are arranged so that readers who are new to the field will gain an overview and important insights. Those readers who are already practitioners will gain from the advanced and updated materials and state-of-the-art developments in geospatial analysis.

Since the first symposium in 1984 the International Symposia on Spatial Data Handling (SDH) has become a major resource for recent advances in GIS research. The International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling is regarded as a premier international research forum for GIS. All papers are fully reviewed by an international program committee composed of experts in the field.

In recent years, spatial analysis has become an increasingly active field, as evidenced by the establishment of educational and research programs at many universities. Its popularity is due mainly to new technologies and the development of spatial data infrastructures. This book illustrates some recent developments in spatial analysis, behavioural modelling, and computational intelligence. World renown spatial analysts explain and demonstrate their new and insightful models and methods. The applications are in areas of societal interest such as the spread of infectious diseases, migration behaviour, and retail and agricultural location strategies. In addition, there is emphasis on the uses of new technologoies for the analysis of spatial data through the application of neural network concepts.

Advanced visual analysis and problem solving has been conducted successfully for millennia. The Pythagorean Theorem was proven using visual means more than 2000 years ago. In the 19th century, John Snow stopped a cholera epidemic in London by proposing that a specific water pump be shut down. He discovered that pump by visually correlating data on a city map. The goal of this book is to present the current trends in visual and spatial analysis for data mining, reasoning, problem solving and decision-making. This is the first book to focus on visual decision making and problem solving in general with specific applications in the geospatial domain - combining theory with real-world practice. The book is unique in its integration of modern symbolic and visual approaches to decision making and problem solving. As such, it ties together much of the monograph and textbook literature in these emerging areas. This book contains 21 chapters that have been grouped into five parts: (1) visual problem solving and decision making, (2) visual and heterogeneous reasoning, (3) visual correlation, (4) visual and spatial data mining, and (5) visual and spatial problem solving in geospatial domains. Each chapter ends with a summary and exercises. The book is intended for professionals and graduate students in computer science, applied mathematics, imaging science and Geospatial Information Systems (GIS). In addition to being a state-of-the-art research compilation, this book can be used a text for advanced courses on the subjects such as modeling, computer graphics, visualization, image processing, data mining, GIS, and algorithm analysis.

While traditional apsects of GIS have been growing rapidly in recent years, new developments have focused on the geographic information service and delivery, which will realise the benefits of spatial information to the community. The analysis and application of spatial information for decision support systems is an important development in realising these benefits. This book is a collection of peer-reviewed articles presented at the ISPRS Workshop on Spatial Analysis and Decision Making in Hong Kong in 2003. It covers topics such as image-based spatial analysis and decision making; 3-D modelling and analysis; general spatial analysis methodology; web- and mobile-based analysis; knowledge-based systems; integrated systems; visualisation and representation methodology, and some application systems.

The role open-source geospatial software plays in data handling within the spatial information technology industry is the overarching theme of the book. It also examines new tools and applications for those already using OS approaches to software development.