Computers, Society, and Nature

I really enjoyed “Beyond the geotag: situating ‘big data’ and leveraging the potential of the geoweb” by Crampton et al (2013). It explores the possibilities and limitations associated with the analysis of Geo-web generated Big Data. They advocate for a more comprehensive ontology of space, one that goes beyond xy coordinates to include a temporal and relational dimension, as well as a more complete understanding of geo-web generated data to include ancillary non-human produced data, as well as non user-generated data.
This article debunks the promise of the explanatory potential of Bid Data analytics and stresses the importance of choice of data and analytical techniques to provide meaningful findings. Moreover, they emphasized that Big Data created from the Geoweb represents information from a small subset of the population, undermining the external validity of findings, and potentially marginalizing ‘unplugged’ individuals.
The implications for GIScience are significant: How do we realize the potential of geospatial Big Data? What are the societal implications of Big Data analytics? How do create metadata for Big Data efficiently and comprehensively? How do you effectively geovisualize Big Data to both explore and represent data?
Geospatial Big Data gives rise to questions that build upon those generated by ‘small data’ analytics. Issues of quality are still relevant and are not supplanted by large volumes of data. GIScience will evolve rapidly and will likely intersect with other disciplines to fully realize the potential of Big Data.

Fan_G

“Temporal GIS and Spatio-Temporal Modeling” by Yuan explores the development of temporal GIS and its applicability to support spatio-temporal modeling, highlighting the challenges associated with temporal modeling of spatial information and pointing to avenues for future research.
Before reading this article, I had not fully appreciated the complexity and difficulty of creating a temporal GIS. The importance of creating a database structure that effectively anticipates the types of spatio-temporal questions to be investigated was well emphasized. While this paper focused on exploring spatio-temporal physical phenomena, similar issues are relevant in the investigation of human or behavioral phenomena, such as spatial social network analyses, migration patterns of time, changes in urbanscapes etc.
The relationships of temporal GIS with other topics in GIScience are numerous. For example, ontologies of time and space need to be properly established to construct a good temporal GIS that facilitates data analysis, and enables interoperability between datasets. Moreover, concerns over geo-spatial metadata are compounded when you consider geo-spatial temporal data. Is temporal information captured in the metadata or is incorporated in the data structure (and is such a distinction (between data and metadata) even meaningful in this context). Issues of temporal scale become important: To what level of precision is temporal data recorded, and what are the implications of temporal aggregation in accurately conveying temporal dimension of a phenomenon?
The questions that arise when exploring the temporal component of spatial phenomenon emphasize the scientific dimension of GIS and highlight the importance of studying GIS as science as instead of as a tool.

Fan_G

When institutions adopt a new technology there are bound to be issues associate with that technology’s implementation.  This paper described two instances where different institutions began using GIS as a decision-making aid.  Despite using an identical technology, the two government organizations had very different approaches to how to integrate their new tool.

The North County’s organization-wide adoption and promotion of the new tool sought to ensure all employees were fluent in the use of ArcInfo which attributed to the software’s success in this county.  Furthermore, the North County’s employees had a history of working with geospatial data making the new software an easy transition.  In the South County however, the software was only used by a very small group of computer scientists / analysts who were unfamiliar with geospatial data.

I think when adopting any new process or technology there has to be significant attention paid to how well an organization is structured to handle change.  In the North, analysts were use to changing technology regarding how geospatial data would be handled.  In the South, a rigid system overly reliant on one group of computer specialists resulted in a missed opportunity to have a staff team better trained in the handling of geographic data.

As this paper was written almost twenty years ago I would be interested in knowing how other organizations have implemented the use of GIS in more recent years.  I assume, though I could be incorrect, that as younger, more computer savvy people enter the workforce that barriers to the implementation of certain technologies will decrease.

GoOutside

In “Organizational Context, Social Interpretation, and the Implementation and Consequences of Geographic Information Systems”, Sahay & Robey (1996) analyse the implementation of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technologies in two unidentified North American counties. The result of this implementation was closely to each county’s context, specifically the “structure” and the “capability”.

In the North County, the “unified structure facilitated the implementation of GIS as a distributed system because the departments shared a common mission” (266). In the South County, because of the decentralized agencies structure, the Office of Computer Services controlled the GIS and worked on a contractual basis for the users in other departments. Moreover, the users in the North County included many geographers who were used to working with spatial data. This was not the case for the Computer Services personnel in the South County. The structure and capability of the North County allowed its GIS implementation to flourish, and caused South County to falter.

Because people’s backgrounds affect how they use GIS — “People with data processing backgrounds emphasized technical standards, controls, formats, and product appearance in terms of menus and screen layouts. […] Users were more interested in the capabilities of the system to support their needs” (271) — and GIS implementations have different results depending on the context, it seems that standards are especially important. Is it possible that the different counties could yield such different data that they would be incompatible?

Given that this article was written 18 years ago, I wonder how GIS implementation has changed. With the average person becoming more tech-savvy and commercial GIS package being more use-friendly, are GIS implementations easier to carry out? Do the same factors still affect the implementation?

-IMC

“Organizational Context, Social Interpretation, and the Implementation and Consequences of Geographic Information Systems” by Sahay & Robey (1996) provides a framework for understanding the process of GIS implementation in local governments. The comparative analysis identifies essential organizational characteristics needed for effective implementation, and reveals how the social construction of technology affects how it is subsequently integrated into an organization.
The implications of the study of GIS implementation for GIScience are multiple. Most notably, the implementation and diffusion of GIS in various organizations has enabled and sustained the development of GI technologies and GIScience. The emergence of sub-topics in GIScience such as geovisualization, location based services, ontologies and GIS clouds can be partially attributed to the the widespread use of GI systems. Moreover, the conceptual frameworks developed through the study of GIS implementation can be applied to evaluate the implementation of other GI technologies and innovations including, GIS cloud computing,  LBS, open data initiatives, metadata standards etc. The establishment of GIS has also facilitated interoperability between department of the same organization and enable inter-organizational spatial data sharing.
The study of GIS implementation invokes the debate that underpins this course: Is GIS a tool or a science? Does the study of GIS implementation, the study of the implementation of a tool, undermine GIscience? Or does the very study of GIS implementation secure its place as science?
I would argue that the dynamic nature of GIS implementation, and the fluid conceptualization of GIS, calls for the development of theories to better explicate the process, placing GIS implementation as topic within the field of GIScience. But that is up for discussion!

Fan_G

Sahay, S. & Robey, D. (1996) “Organizational Context, Social Interpretation, and the Implementation and Consequences of Geographic Information Systems”. Accounting, Management & Information Technology, 6(4): 255-282.

Sahay & Robey (1996) find that geographic information systems (GIS), as a social constructed technologies, are subject to diverse social interpretations. Moreover, they argue that GIS has a plurality of definitions, meanings, and applications due to the numerous groups that encounter the GIS technologies (255). To say that a GIS has been implemented is therefore much more than plugging in a computer and running an application.

The authors acknowledge that GISs are a unique case of relational information systems, corroborating the spatial is special argument. In the case study, Sahay & Robey discover that educational background affects the integration of GIS into the workplace. Formal education in geography—emphasizing a geospatial outlook on the world—created the fertile environment for GIS implementation to take hold. I would argue that early exposure to the “common language” of GIS users, “speaking in terms of latitude, longitude, geo-coding, and other geographical concepts” puts geographers at a distinct advantage (268). In contrast, the tech-savvy computer scientists of the South County were at a considerable disadvantage. One technician remarked that he had never worked with graphics before (272). This would definitely skew the conclusions of Sahay & Robey’s research. GIS privileges some groups above others.

This paper considers differences in GIS implementation at an organizational level, but it forgoes socioeconomic and cultural complexity. As this paper was written in 1996, I presume the global entrainment of GIS technologies would largely have been limited to the governments of developed countries. In a contemporary version of this paper I would like to see the transgression of the barrier between the developed world and the developing world. I suspect that economic and social factors will be more pronounced in developing countries and the risks of adoption will have greater repercussions.

-BCBD

Guptill, S. C. (1999) Metadata and data catalogues

Guptill (1999) provides a good overview of metadata and their application to GISystems. Guptill explains how data catalogues function via metadata and describes how domain specificity complicates the picture. Technical and technological applications of metadata are broken down to exemplify how metadata facilitate interoperability.

The concept of metadata standards is delivered and a number of landmark examples are introduced. Absent from this article, however, is the unraveling of the politics of metadata creation and standardization. FGDC, ISO, Dublin Core and others did not just happen across the perfect element set. Some were created independently and some were built off other’s templates. Additionally, metadata standards are generally skewed towards geomatic and technical elements across the board. The focus of this article on the technical and technological aspects of metadata speaks to lack of qualitative metadata.   Guptill does not showcase the negotiation process of creating a standard, different groups with varying interests come together to produce a standard – especially at higher levels of governance.

One of the chief ramifications of metadata on GIScience and beyond is interoperability. Crosswalks and other forms of (meta)data mediation will be critical to support these ever-expanding structures. This article presents an optimistic view on the future of metadata, predicting its future use as the bridge between domain specificity. Guptill notes that for such a system to work, description and vocabulary need to be formalized (684). There is no mention of how concretizing descriptions and vocabulary into a formalized language would constrain our understanding of the world and inevitably exclude perspectives.

Metadata and standards are inherently political.

-BCBD

“Metadata and data catalogues” by S.C Guptill provides a comprehensive and clear overview of metadata. However, the level of this text is introductory. Issues associated with the definition metadata, its uses/ applications and the politics associated with the establishments of metadata standards are merely glossed over. Indeed, metadata is ubiquitous and its definition largely depends on what you consider data to be: one person’s metadata may be another person’s data. As opposed to viewing metadata and data as two discrete concepts, I propose they be viewed along a continuum, where the distinguishing line is often blurred. In a similar way, the application of metadata are only superficially described, limiting the discussion to catalogues and clearinghouses. Metadata is in fact necessary or associated to many aspect of GIScience including ontologies (what meaning are captured by the different metadata fields and how does that affect the creation of crosswalks, for example), Location based services,  which rely on metadata for App creation; geovisualization (metadata is needed to properly display or represent data (e.g  geographic projections, scales etc) and can also be displaced visually, allowing us to glean information and giving rise to new research questions), and the retrieval of Big Data and information of the Geoweb, to name but a few.

The political issues associated with who sets standards, who decides what is included in the standards and the power dynamics at play are also worth considering in greater detail.

Nevertheless, this article was a good read, offering a comprehensive review of metadata.

Fan_G

In his article “A critical evaluation of Location Based Services (LBS) and their potential” discusses the opportunities and challenges associated with LBS.

The article provided a detailed overview of the technical implications of LBS, but I felt that the discussion was a bit thin when it came to describing the social, political, cultural and economic implications of LBS. This is likely a reflection of the paucity of research rather than a deliberate oversight. Nevertheless such issues deserve greater consideration within the field of GIScience research as they echo some of the themes present  in other GIScience topics (e.g. VGI, PPGIS, Ontology, Metadata). Concerns of privacy, interoperability, passive or active release of personal geographic information, as well as understanding of place and space are only some of the issues that deserve greater attention.

LBS have the potential to alter how we engage with the the environment and people. They can be leveraged to increase the efficiency of our day to day life, but they also forever alter how we perceive, understand and navigate through our surroundings.While the ‘cool’ factor of this technology encourages wide spread adoption and approval of LBS, I think social discussion about its implications is warranted.

Fan_G

I found this article, “A critical evaluation of location-based services and their potential” by Raper et al., to be an important one to read. I felt that they did a good job of covering all the important aspects required to form a base knowledge of L.B.S.’s. Since the article was the first article of the Journal of Location-based Services, their goal was to provide a survey of the key issues and background aspects of L.B.S.’s. After reading multiple other articles on this topic, it is clear they delivered a strong summary, especially the technological background. They could have improved, however, upon the implications to businesses and the relationship between them, consumers and Location-based services.

An important aspect that was lightly touched upon in this article was the potential privacy implications that arise with the development of tracking capabilities in L.B.S.’s. As was noted on page 16, an important purpose of tracking analysis is the extrapolation of past travel behavior as well as the prediction of future travel behavior. Further research should be conducted into the ways in which people’s location data is stored and what it can be used for after this data has been used for its original purpose. Instead of (or perhaps in addition to) the traditional maxim ‘you are what you buy’, a new one is being developed: ‘you are where you’ve been’. While I don’t agree that it is such a terrible prospect, caution should be taken to try and limit corporate/government intrusion into the lives of an unsuspecting public.

-Benny

I found this article, “Metadata and data catalogues” by Guptill, to be an interesting, if a bit tedious, read. Section 2.6, especially, was a little dry and technical, but overall the author made the text engaging. One idea that seemed interesting was where the author discussed the practical limits which faced metadata collection. At the time of writing, this limit was “often reached by the effort required to collect the information” (pg. 680). If there were technological advancements, perhaps in the field of spatial cyber-infrastructure, this limit could be surpassed and metadata collection might improve. It is also possible that if metadata was able to be associated with each piece of data or attribute, the end user of the metadata could be inundated with un-necessary noise and the process could be hindered. I would imagine a balance would need to be struck somewhere along the way.

Another theme I thought was important in this paper was that of standardization and interoperability. Since there seemed to be many different structures for metadata, as well as efforts to consolidate these disparate activities, having similar ontological approaches would probably be an important step in ensuring successful interoperability. If one metadata format defined their dataset information, for example, differently than another format did, it would be difficult to “create crosswalks”, as the author says (pg. 684), between metadata standards. Perhaps there have been efforts in subsequent years to standardize ontologies.

As an aside, reading this article reminded me of this xkcd comic: http://xkcd.com/927/

-Benny