Geospatial Analysis: A Comprehensive Guide to Principles, Techniques and Software Tools originated as a document to accompany the spatial analysis module of the postgraduate MSc in Geographic Information Science at University College London delivered by the principal author, Dr Mike de Smith. As is often the case, from its conception in summer 2005 through to completion of the first draft in summer 2006, it developed a life of its own, growing into a substantial Guide designed for use by a wide audience. Once several of the chapters had been written ― notably those covering the building blocks of spatial analysis and on surface analysis ― the project was discussed with Professors Longley and Goodchild. They kindly agreed to contribute to the contents of the Guide itself. As such, this Guide may be seen as a companion to the pioneering book on Geographic Systems and Science (2^nd edition, 2005) by Longley, Goodchild, Maguire and Rhind, particularly Chapters 14-16 of that work which deal with spatial analysis and modelling. Their participation has also facilitated links with broader “spatial literacy” and spatial analysis programmes. Notable amongst these are the GIS&T Body of Knowledge materials provided by the Association of American Geographers at www.aag.org/bok/ together with the spatial educational programmes provided at www.spatial-literacy.org, www.ncgia.ucsb.edu and www.csiss.org.

The three formats in which the first edition of the Guide has been published: Printed, Web and E-book (PDF) versions have proved to be extremely popular, encouraging us to seek to improve and extend the material and associated resources further. Many academics and industry professionals have provided helpful comments on the first edition, and universities in several parts of the world have now developed courses using the Guide and the accompanying resources. In 2007 workshops based on these materials were run in Ireland, the USA, Africa, Italy and Japan, and a special translation programme is underway to produce a Chinese version of this new edition.

For our title we have retained the term Geospatial Analysis which reflects the coming together of the broad field of spatial analysis with the latest generation of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and related software. In this second edition of the Guide we have added one major new chapter, covering Geocomputational (GC) methods. This reflects the growing use of such techniques in mainstream research and within general-purpose commercial software. It also adds much of the GC component of the recently published AAG/UCGIS Geographic Information Science and Technology “Body of Knowledge” (BoK) to those areas (Analytical Methods and Conceptual Foundations) which already form a substantial part of this Guide. New material on image classification has also been added, together with subsections discussing heuristics and metaheuristics. Minor changes and additions to existing chapters have also been made, in general to augment or clarify previously published material. In parallel with this process an updated set of template Powerpoint presentation slides based on each Chapter and an associated datasets file have been created and are available via the web site: www.spatialanalysisonline.com .

A unique aspect of this Guide is its independent evaluation of software, in particular the set of readily available tools and packages for conducting various forms of geospatial analysis. To our knowledge, there is no similarly extensive resource that is available in printed or electronic form. We remain convinced that there is a need for guidance on where to find and how to apply selected tools. Inevitably, some topics have been omitted, primarily where there is little or no readily available commercial or open source software to support particular analytical operations. Other topics, whilst included, have been covered relatively briefly and/or with limited examples, reflecting the inevitable constraints of time and the authors’ limited access to some of the available software resources.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided is up-to-date, accurate, compact, comprehensive and representative — we do not claim it to be exhaustive. However, with fast-moving changes in the software industry and in the development of new techniques it would be impractical and uneconomic to publish the material in a conventional manner. Accordingly the Guide has been prepared without intermediary typesetting. This has enabled the time between producing the text and delivery in electronic (web, e-book) and printed formats to be greatly reduced, thereby ensuring that the work is as current as possible. It also enables the work to be updated on a regular basis (electronic formats), with embedded hyperlinks to external resources and suppliers, thus making these versions of the Guide a more dynamic and extensive resource than would otherwise be possible. This approach does come with some minor disadvantages. These include: the need to provide rather more subsections to chapters and keywording of terms than would normally be the case in order to support topic selection within the web-based version; the careful use of symbology and embedded graphic symbols at various points within the text to ensure that the web-based output correctly displays Greek letters and other symbols across a range of web browsers; and finally, references in the text to colour in the diagrams, which is available in the web and electronic (PDF) versions but may not be available in printed versions.

As with the previous edition, comments and suggestions regarding the scope, detailed content and associated materials (e.g. case studies) are welcome and may be made via the Guide web site, www.spatialanalysisonline.com. We would like to thank all those users of the web site, electronic version of the Guide and of the printed book, for their comments and suggestions which have assisted us in producing this second edition.

 

 

Mike de Smith, Edinburgh ¨ Mike Goodchild, Santa Barbara ¨ Paul Longley, London

November 2007 (2^nd Edition)