Sensing Space: Augmenting Scientific Data with Spatial Ethnography

Abstract

The increased relevancy of digital technologies in the humanities and visual literacy through the use of rich media—maps, photography, video composition, big data, and interactive Web platforms—can serve as representations to communicate the study of spaces and urban life. How then does the integration of scientific, visual, and sensorial research methods become associated into the curriculum of GeoHumanities? We investigate spatial ethnography—by contextualizing three eminent risks present: societal disruption, technological failures, and political dysfunction—as a method that provides a multisensorial depiction of transformed urban spaces. These perspectives of risks are evaluated through a case study following the catastrophic events of March 2011 within a government-sanctioned 20-km evacuation zone in Fukushima, Japan. The five visual research methods—defining a route, measuring risk, interviews with stakeholders, film documentaries and photography, and the process of “thick mapping”—complete an ethnographic dossier that tests new discoveries between scientific data and the humanities into academic discourse.