Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Couclelis notes that 'GeoComputation just means the universe of computational techniques
applicable to spatial problems' (Couclelis, 1998a, p. 18). Indeed if you accept her definitions, then
we have been doing
GeoComputation
for years without realising it (see also Couclelis, 1998a, p. 19).
However, it is important not to confuse using computers in geography with what GC is really about.
Whilst understandable, such confusion greatly underplays the novelty of GC. It certainly involves
the use of computers in geography, but its subject domain is not limited to geography nor is it merely
another term for quantitative geography or geo-computer applications. There is a major paradigm
shift occurring behind the scenes that is affecting why the computing is being applied. The style
of GC envisaged today would have been both impossible and also unnecessary in the 1960s main-
frame era when computers first started to be applied (as a replacement for hand calculation and
electric calculators) to problems in geography. The really new idea behind GC is the use of compu-
tation as a front-line problem-solving paradigm which as such offers a new perspective and a new
paradigm for applying science in a geographical context.
Macmillan (1998) is much more accurate when he writes:
the claim I want to stake for geocomputation is that it is concerned with the science of geography in a
computationally sophisticated environment …. It is also concerned with those computational questions
… which are essential for the proper scientific use of our computational instruments. (p. 258)
Later he adds:
… the key feature of geocomputation … is the domain it belongs to—the domain of scientific research.
Just as astronomy emerged with extraordinary vitality in the post-Galilean world, so geography can
emerge from its post-modern slumbers in a geocomputational world. (Macmillan, 1998, p. 264)
Let's hope so!
Longley writes:
The environment for geocomputation is provided by geographical information systems, yet what is dis-
tinctive about geocomputation is the creative and experimental use of GIS that it entails. The hallmarks
of geocomputation are those of research-led applications which emphasize process over form, dynam-
ics over statics, and interaction over passive response. (Longley, 1998a, p. 3)
Later he argues that 'GeoComputation is the ways in which new computational tools and meth-
ods are used … also fundamentally about the depiction of spatial process' (Longley, 1998a, p. 6).
The important point here is that 'GeoComputation is much more than GIS' (Longley et al., 1998,
back cover).
Longley is right to point out the distinctiveness of GC, but maybe it does not have to be so process
and dynamics orientated and that this is only part of what GC is all about. Indeed Longley notes that
GIS is but one of the many tools of
GeoComputation
. He argues that
GeoComputation
provides a
framework within which those researching the development and application of GI technologies can
address many of the important questions left unresolved by GIS. He writes very eloquently that 'the
spirit of GeoComputation is fundamentally about matching technology with environment, process
with data model, geometry and configuration with application, analysis with local context, and phi-
losophy of science with practice' (Longley, 1998a, p. 4).
So GC is not GIS and embraces a different perspective and set of tools. Longley says, 'The
data-rich environment of GIS today provides almost limitless possibilities for creating digital repre-
sentations of the world, and the techniques of GeoComputation provide better ways of structuring,
analysing, and interpreting them than ever before' (Longley, 1998b, p. 83). There is a relationship
with GIS but GC also has other relationships that may be just as important, for example, with com-
puter science or numerical methods or statistics. Maybe also, from a geographical perspective, GC
is what you do after GIS in that it does seek to make use of the data richness created by GIS and
