Spatial Search

Two areas have fascinated me for a long time. One is the micro economic theory of consumer behavior, the other one the role of space in economic processes. Usually, the two don't go together very well. In more advanced versions of microeconomic consumer theory its economic actor may face uncertainty, have to allocate resources over time, or have to take into ac count the characteristics of products, but rarely deals with space. He/she inhabits a spaceless point economy. Regional Science, on the other hand, describes and analyzes the spatial structure and development of the econ omy, but either ignores individual decision making altogether or treats it in a rather simplistic way. In this book I try to bring together these two areas of interest of mine. I do this by use of the microeconomic concept of search and placing it in an explicit spatial context. The result, in my opinion, is a theoretical concept with fascinating implications, a broad set of potential implications, and numerous interesting research questions. After reading this book, where I layout the basic idea of spatial search, describe its elements, and discuss some of its implications, I hope the reader will share this opinion. There are still plenty of unanswered research questions in this part of economic theory. Hopefully, this book will stimulate more work along these lines.

This book offers a wide ranging review of the problems associated with the search for the best location for public facilities. Typical examples of public facilities include roads and railways, pipelines and transmission wires, airports, power stations, community clinics, universities and schools. In an attempt to provide a general structure for tackling location problems in the public sector this book offers an approach based upon the notion of spatial search. This book reviews the state of the art of formal procedures in language and style which is comprehensible to the non-specialist, and places the formal procedures into the broader context of planning. The author discusses problems of measurement, and has also reviewed literature on collective decision-making, public participation, efficiency and Etopia. Case studies are included to clarify the general principles.

How do human beings negotiate the spaces in which they live, work, and play? How are firms and institutions, and their spatial behaviors, being affected by processes of economic and societal change? What decisions do they make about their natural and built environment, and how are these decisions acted out? Updating and expanding concepts of decision making and choice behavior on different geographic scales, this major revision of the authors' acclaimed Analytical Behavioral Geography presents theoretical foundations, extensive case studies, and empirical evidence of human behavior in a comprehensive range of physical, social, and economic settings. Generously illustrated with maps, diagrams, and tables, the volume also covers issues of gender, discusses traditionally excluded groups such as the physically and mentally challenged, and addresses the pressing needs of our growing elderly population.

Spatial database management deals with the storage, indexing, and querying of data with spatial features, such as location and geometric extent. Many applications require the efficient management of spatial data, including Geographic Information Systems, Computer Aided Design, and Location Based Services. The goal of this book is to provide the reader with an overview of spatial data management technology, with an emphasis on indexing and search techniques. It first introduces spatial data models and queries and discusses the main issues of extending a database system to support spatial data. It presents indexing approaches for spatial data, with a focus on the R-tree. Query evaluation and optimization techniques for the most popular spatial query types (selections, nearest neighbor search, and spatial joins) are portrayed for data in Euclidean spaces and spatial networks. The book concludes by demonstrating the ample application of spatial data management technology on a wide range of related application domains: management of spatio-temporal data and high-dimensional feature vectors, multi-criteria ranking, data mining and OLAP, privacy-preserving data publishing, and spatial keyword search. Table of Contents: Introduction / Spatial Data / Indexing / Spatial Query Evaluation / Spatial Networks / Applications of Spatial Data Management Technology

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on Spatial and Temporal Databases, SSTD 2003, held at Santorini Island, Greece in July 2003. The 28 revised full papers presented together with a keynote paper were carefully reviewed and selected from 105 submissions. the papers are organized in topical sections on access methods, advanced query processing, data mining and data warehousing, distance-based queries, mobility and moving points management, modeling and languages, similarity processing, systems and implementation issues.

10.2 Summary of Ideas ..................................................... 256 10.2.1 Spatial Behavior As Rules For Decision Making ................................... 258 10.2.2. Cognitive Mapping ......................................................................... 258 10.2.3. Storing Information ................................................. " ...................... 260 10.2.4. Searching ..................................................................................... 260 10.2.5. Learning ........................................................................................ 261 10.2.6. Judging Similarity .......................................................................... 261 10.2.7 Neural Geographic Information Science (NGIS) .................................... 262 REFERENCES ............................................... 265 INDEX ........................ .............. 279 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................... 287 x LIST OF TABLES Table 8.1: The types of similarity comparisons created for the experiment to determine the effect ofx as a first or second common or distinctive feature (Lloyd, Rostkowska-Covington, and Steinke 1996). Table 9.1: Data used to compute the gravity model using regression and a neural network. Data for all variables are scaled so that the highest value equals 0.9 and the lowest value equals 0.1. Table 9.2: Class means for 11 socio-economic and life-cycle variables for the Black, Integrated, and White classes. Table 9.3: Weights for neuron at row 5 and column 1 that learned the blue horizontal rectangle map symbol. LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1: Spatial cognition is a research area of interest for both geography and psychology. Both disciplines are interested in fundamental ideas related to encoding processes, internal representations, and decoding processes. Figure 1.2: The place names on this map of New Orleans depict the propositions used for navigation by local residents. A similar map appeared in the June 30, 1991, edition of The Times-Picayune.

Discussing the concept of mobility at large and that of spatial mobilities in particular, this book makes the case for daily spatial mobilities as a distinct type of mobility and explores this concept from a variety of perspectives. Daily mobilities, such as for commuting, shopping, social ties, information, banking, news, studies, business meetings, etc. are typified by their being two-way mobilities, frequently performed, constituting a major element of our daily routine lives, and inclusive of both corporeal and/or virtual mobilities. Outlining his argument for daily spatial mobility, author Aharon Kellerman focuses on needs and triggers for daily mobilities, on levels of personal mobility and personal autonomy in daily mobilities and on potential mobilities leading to practiced ones. The concept is further explored using three major types of daily mobility, terrestrial, virtual and aerial and three major spatial elements; urban spatial reorganization in the information age, mobility terminals, namely bus, metro, and railway stations as well as airports, and global opportunities through daily mobilities, notably for users of the Internet.

Las infraestructuras de datos espaciales son grandes sistemas de información distribuidos en Internet, basados en estándares abiertos y que permiten compartir y usar datos cuya localización es importante, como carreteras, imágenes de satélite y aéreas, negocios y lugares de interés turístico, mapas de ruido y contaminación, callejeros o datos demográficos. Este libro presenta una aproximación basada en arquitecturas de sistemas de información distribuidos para especificar y documentar infraestructuras de datos espaciales y facilitar así su desarrollo y análisis.