Reflection on Network Analysis in GIScience (2007)

Curtin’s piece gives a solid introduction to network analysis and the problems that come with it, however I wish some of the examples, such as the traveling salesman problem, had been explained a bit more in depth, instead of him mentioning it and then moving on.

A part of the article that I found intriguing was how Curtin listed all of the disciplines which use social network analysis, but also stated how there was not much, if any, communication between those disciplines:

“Research advances in this area could transform the sub-discipline of facility location science, but in order to do so the GIScience community must look beyond the current capabilities of existing software and recognize that related disciplines such as operations research and management science have a set of complementary techniques that can be readily applied to spatial problems.”

This made me wonder how much network analysis is taken and applied between disciplines. Is it common practice for a GIScientist who uses network analysis to look at other disciplines, such as medicinal or criminal examples of social network analysis? How would they know where and what to look for? Is there a better way for communication between disciplines? The article mentions how GIS research in spatial networks is helpful to other disciplines and I understand why that is true – but, what about the other disciplines that have published research relevant to spatial networks? Or in the years since this article’s publication, has there been more interdisciplinary research between all of these disciplines? Has open data made it more likely for researchers to collaborate or research outside of their own discipline?

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