Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Analysis for Communication
Ultimately, all analysis is used for communication. The history, culture, and
purpose of any analysis will vary from internal sketches and plans all the way
to advertising banners and TV presentations. Underlying the choices for
analysis are many of the issues discussed in Chapters 3, 9, and 10. In a nut-
shell, successful communication relies on appropriate geographic represen-
tation and cartographic representation. For example, If an analysis needs to
be made of a health clinic's accessibility in a large metropolitan area, it will
likely be necessary to consider most roads in the area, but not represent
them in a map of the entire area comparing accessibility between clinics.
How choices are made is an important part of every geographic information
analysis.
The choices reflect the conventions of the people preparing the analysis
and the cultural values of the people who will be using the results. People
familiar with the clinics' locations may leave off information about smaller
streets in the cartographic representation that is obvious to them, potentially
confusing people who are new to the area or who have never been to the
clinic before. But even before the cartographic representation is prepared,
the geographic representation will already reflect certain conventions. The
measurements, observations, and relationships of the clinics are strongly
influenced by the perceptions, backgrounds, and disciplinary perspectives of
the people involved in preparing the analysis.
Issues for Geographic Information Analysis
In particular, for geographic information analysis, three key issues come to
mind. These issues often form trade-offs, not necessarily absolutes or
either's and or's, but each issue involves finding different balances between
analysis and communication.
PATTERNS/PROCESSES
One of the most fundamental choices is deciding how to analyze the rela-
tionships involving things and events. Most GIS software only supports the
storage of things as patterns. Events can be modeled as processes, with the
model aiming to correspond to the dynamics of the events, but with the
events being broken down into data captured at particular time points of the
event. For example, a traffic jam may be modeled as a process, but the carto-
graphic representation usually relies on a series of “snapshots” created to
show the status of the traffic jam at different points in time. The same goes
for natural events: the spread of a wild fire modeled as an event may use the
same technique to show in an animation how the wild fire spreads.
In other words, while the underlying concepts and geographic represen-
tations can take both patterns and processes into account, the cartographic
representations usually only show an animation of “snapshots” prepared to
show the event's development.
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