Qualitative Geographic Information Systems Research Articles

The Improvement of the Comfort of Public Spaces as a Local Initiative in Coping with Climate Change

Being the vital element of successful cities, public spaces play an important role in achieving sustainable development goals and in coping with climate change. The new urban agenda considers public spaces indispensable for sustaining the productivity of cities, social cohesion and inclusion, civic identity, and quality of life. Accordingly, there is no doubt about the importance of public spaces, while their quality is generated through the symbiosis of various elements. On the basis of normative theories of urban design, several public space design frameworks have been established in order to define what makes a good public place. Such a framework for public space quality evaluation is developed and tested at the Chair for Planning and Design in Landscape Architecture at the University of Belgrade—Faculty of Forestry. The framework covers six criteria which illuminate key aspects of public spaces: safety and security, accessibility, legibility, comfort, inspiration and sensitivity and liveability. In this research, special attention is paid to the criteria of comfort analysed on two scale levels in Belgrade, Serbia. In the past, Belgrade was affected by extreme weather events that caused serious and sometimes disastrous consequences. The most pronounced challenges among them are heat waves in summer that, due to the shortage of vegetation combined with the proliferation of tarmac and concrete surfaces and reduced air ventilation, particularly threaten the densely populated central municipalities of Stari Grad, Savski Venac and Vracar. The first scale level covers the analysis of the public space network and the degree of establishment of green infrastructure in Lower Dorcol quartier, which is located in the Municipality of Stari Grad, using quantitative and qualitative indicators and GIS (Geographic Information System) digital tools. The aim of this study is to observe the actual state of the public space network and to define a future scenario of its development in line with climate change challenges. Jevrejska Street, as an element of the above-mentioned public space network, is the subject of the next phase of the research. The study on this scale level will cover qualitative and quantitative analysis of public space elements such as paving, urban equipment, greenery, lighting, water facilities, etc. Next to that, by using the ENVI Met platform, the actual and proposed improvement of the street will be explored. The final part of this research will include a discussion about the research methodology used in order to improve the public space design process and to point out the need for the careful consideration of comfort as an important aspect of good public space.

Generating walkability from pedestrians’ perspectives using a qualitative GIS method

Geospatial and audit-based walkability measures have proliferated to evaluate the relationship between the built environment and travel behavior. While these measures robustly predict outcomes like mode choice and physical activity, they poorly account for personal and social factors which mediate our interaction with walkable spaces. User-oriented mobile methods can address these gaps, yet recent studies related to walking in the city seldom ground their data and analysis in space—precluding the extrapolation of users’ assessments to comparable locations and missing an opportunity to register the social attributes of physical features. In this methods paper, we advance an analytical framework which grounds pedestrians’ sentiments and senses from walking interviews in a qualitative geographic information system (QualGIS) to facilitate the management and analysis of assessment data at their original human scale. We detail its application in a socially and environmentally heterogeneous neighborhood to reveal how organizing social and built spatial relationships in a single geographic information system, and co-analyzing them according to street and pedestrian attributes, can yield insights richer than those from examining physical features alone.

Spatially Integrated Social Sciences with Qualitative GIS to Support Impact Assessment in Mining Communities

Spatially integrated social science is a broad term used to describe the integration of space and place in social science research using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). It includes qualitative GIS approaches, such as geo-ethnology and geo-narratives, which combine qualitative social data with GIS and represent an emerging approach with significant potential for facilitating new insights into the dynamic interactions between mining companies and host communities. Mine operations are unique in their complexity, both in terms of the dynamic and diverse nature of issues and the requirement to integrate knowledge, theories, and approaches from a range of disciplines. In this paper we describe the potential for spatially integrated social science using qualitative GIS to understand the social impacts of mining. We review current literature and propose a framework that incorporates quantitative and qualitative knowledge across social and biophysical domains within a multi-user approach. We provide examples to illustrate how our approach could support past, present, and future assessment of socio-environmental systems in large-scale mining. We conclude by discussing the need for a multi-disciplinary approach to support decision makers and local stakeholders in considering complex social and environmental scenarios.

Visualisation of the unmet treatment need of osteoporotic fracture in Taiwan: A nationwide cohort study.

Recent clinical guidelines have suggested that patients experience an osteoporotic fracture should initiate anti-osteoporosis medications (AOMs). However, whether clinical guidelines translate well in "real-world" practices remain questioned. This study aimed to evaluate the "real-world" prescription pattern of AOMs and visualise the unmet treatment needs in different geographical areas in Taiwan. Using Taiwan's National Health Insurance Research Database, we identified patients diagnosed with a hip or vertebral fracture between 2009 and 2012. The treatment rate was defined as the proportion of patients receiving AOMs within 1 year after their index fracture. The qualitative geographical information systems approach was adopted to visualise the treatment needs of postfracture patients in different geographical areas. Our study included 276,492 patients diagnosed with a hip or vertebral fracture between 2009 and 2012. The proportion of patients who received AOMs within 1 year after their index fracture increased with age and differed with fracture types and sex. For patients with hip fractures, the treatment rate ranged from 3.43% to 20.88% for female patients and from 0.69% to 10.04% for male patients in different age groups. For patients with vertebral fractures, the treatment rate ranged from 3.23% to 37.08% for female patients and from 1.85% to 23.05% for male patients. Cities in the mid-northern and southern areas of Taiwan had the highest unmet treatment need, with a treatment rate of less than 15%. The treatment rate of osteoporotic fractures with AOMs was diverse and suboptimal in Taiwan, especially among male patients. This study used a visualisation technique to display information about the treatment status in different geographical areas and help policymakers allocate resource appropriately.

The map is not the territory: Applying qualitative Geographic Information Systems in the practice of activist archaeology

In response to concerns regarding the social relevance of North American archaeology, it has been suggested that the tenets of ‘activist scholarship’ can provide a framework for a more publically engaged archaeological discipline. Maps have long been employed in the public dissemination of archaeological research results, but they can also play a role in enhancing public participation in heritage management initiatives. This article outlines how the goals of activist archaeology can be achieved through the mobilization of qualitative Geographic Information Systems practices, with an example of how ‘grounded visualization’ methods were employed in assessing the vulnerability of Inuvialuit cultural landscapes to the impacts of modern climate change.

Stores and mores: Toward socializing walkability

Walkability remains a guiding framework for practitioners to design vibrant and healthy communities through urban planning interventions. While associations between travel behavior and physical factors in urban form have been confirmed through numerous studies, recent research underscores that focusing on the built environment poorly accounts for the sociodemographic factors bracketing amenity and route choices across space and time. As transportation planning turns toward strategies associated with maximizing accessibility over minimizing travel time, this epistemological gap is problematic for practitioners tasked with reducing structural inequalities in access to opportunity across society. Using participant testimony from a neighborhood in transition, as grounded in a qualitative geographic information system, we develop a user-oriented walkability framework which incorporates social and personal factors mediating pedestrians' spatial engagement. We advance from this framework to propose non-engineering interventions necessary to facilitate spatial engagement and, in turn, maximize walkable opportunities available to residents.

Area-Based Topic Modeling and Visualization of Social Media for Qualitative GIS

Qualitative geographic information systems (GIS) has progressed in meaningful ways since early calls for a qualitative GIS in the 1990s. From participatory methods to the invention of the participatory geoweb and finally to geospatial social media sources, the amount of information available to nonquantitative GIScientists has grown tremendously. Recently, researchers have advanced qualitative GIS by taking advantage of new data sources, like Twitter, to illustrate the occurrence of various phenomena in the data set geospatially. At the same time, computer scientists in the field of natural language processing have built increasingly sophisticated methods for digesting and analyzing large text-based data sources. In this article, the authors implement one of these methods, topic modeling, and create a visualization method to illustrate the results in a visually comparative way, directly onto the map canvas. The method is a step toward making the advances in natural language processing available to all GIScientists. The article discusses the ways in which geography plays an important part in understanding the results presented from the model and visualization, including issues of place and space.

Visualizing dynamic capabilities as adaptive capacity for municipal water governance

This study seeks to expand empirical research on how municipalities have adapted and innovated (or not) their water systems as a result of climate change. We analyze characteristics of water governance at the municipal scale in Oklahoma, USA. ArcMap 10.3 was used to build a qualitative geographic information system (GIS) based on fieldwork, including interviews and site-observations, to compare dynamic capabilities that lead to innovation in 38 cities in the state. The GIS enables visualization of our digitalized research to understand the interconnections between drivers of innovativeness—the combination of dynamic capabilities and innovation rates—and state of water resource infrastructure in place specific and regional planning contexts. In particular, the GIS takes into consideration income level, the influence of state-level water policy (Water for 2060 Act), water manager certification levels, population, dynamic capabilities, and perceptions of risk and vulnerability to water system change. Digitizing this information provides a diverging perspective on the historical lack of innovation in the public sector, as different socio-cultural, socio-economic, and socio-political contexts occur throughout Oklahoma, a state notorious for its oil centered economy and its climate change deniers. The findings suggest that innovativeness is directly related to dynamic capabilities and indirectly related to population size, income level, and the educational backgrounds of water decision-makers. The visualizations also show that some cities have surplus capacity for adaptation, while others were able to more efficiently turn capacity into water management innovations. Seeing representations of water governance success and failure in communities affords the opportunity to educate citizens and decision-makers to adapt water infrastructures to the effects of climate change, showcasing the utility of digitalization in a quest for sustainable solutions.

Media Frames and Shifting Places of Environmental (In)Justice: A Qualitative Historical Geographic Information System Method

Abstract Newspapers are underused as a source of spatial data in environmental justice research. Recent advances in qualitative historical geographic information systems (QHGIS) provide an opportunity for deeper investigation into how newspapers reflect changing meanings of place in relation to environmental burden and environmental benefit. This article introduces a protocol to identify and map locations associated with different media frames. We apply QHGIS to urban gardening and soil lead issues reported in Sacramento, California. We find that the QHGIS method enhances conventional approaches to case study archival research and media analysis because it reveals: (a) the distribution of public narratives of environmental concern across the city, (b) the politics embedded in location names, (c) place name-changes that might otherwise lead to inaccurate GIS analysis, and (d) how locations can be used as a framing device to communicate environmental concerns. The method can enhance research in which the hi...

A qualitative geographical information systems approach to explore how older people over 70 years interact with and define their neighbourhood environment

A growing body of literature explores the relationship between the built environment and health, and the methodological challenges of understanding these complex interactions across the lifecourse. The impact of the neighbourhood environment on health and behaviour amongst older adults has received less attention, despite this age group being potentially more vulnerable to barriers in their surrounding social and physical environment. A qualitative geographical information systems (QGIS) approach was taken to facilitate the understanding of how older people over 70 in 5 UK towns interact with their local neighbourhood. The concept of neighbourhood changed seasonally and over the lifecourse, and was associated with social factors such as friends, family, or community activities, rather than places. Spaces stretched further than the local, which is problematic for older people who rely on variable public transport provision. QGIS techniques prompted rich discussions on interactions with and the meanings of ‘place’ in older people.

Using Guattari's Metamodeling to Decipher Neighborhood Images

This paper discusses the implications of Guattari's concept of metamodeling, used to set up an emergent methods design, in a study on neighborhood images and urban development. Related to a theoretical background coming from Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy, metamodeling is used as a conceptual tool that enables the creation of a flexible and adaptable methods design, which draws on methods that are not completely fixed at the beginning of the research but rather developed in an iterative way. By investigating the questions of how neighborhood images emerge and how they perform citizens’ everyday lives, we developed a methodological dispositive composed of four methods—one based on the use of photography, a second based on drawings, a third based on qualitative geographic information system (GIS), and a fourth that is a quantitative survey—that revealed multiple facets of neighborhood images.

Exploring youth socio-spatial perceptions of higher education landscapes through sketch maps

Previous research on broadening participation in higher education and Science Technology Engineering and Math has inadequately examined the role of place. This article explores the socio-spatial perceptions of youth of a college campus and changes in perceptions youth experience during their transition from being a university neighbor to becoming part of a university community. This study uses sketch maps and qualitative Geographic Information Systems to document the changing perceptions of 43 youth aged 14–18 during their participation in a university program. The results suggest that some students started to identify with campus spaces as a university student or employee rather than as a neighbor of the university.

Human Geography, GIS Technology, and Ancient Mysteries: A Case Study from the Island of Samothrace

AbstractThe spatial turn in the humanities has yielded a rich set of theoretical paradigms and new technologies for incorporating space into the analysis of cultural forms. Qualitative geographic information systems (GIS) represent a new pathway for investigation into two uniquely challenging, but historically central, cultural phenomena of the ancient Mediterranean world: the mystery cult of the Great Gods of Samothrace and the seafaring that was central to Greek economy and identity. The cult of the Great Gods was celebrated in the northeastern Aegean from 600 BCE to 400 CE, and while its procedures were sealed by secrecy, its promise was as well known as it was unusual: safety in travel at sea. This promise has not been part of the scholarly investigation of the rites to date. GIS provides tools to test the hypothesis that the rituals worked, in that they created a social network of communicating, cooperating, mutually supportive nodes. The project shines historical light on one of the most famous of t...

Reading the signs: using a qualitative Geographic Information System to examine the commemoration of slavery and emancipation on historical markers in Fredericksburg, Virginia

Until recently, narratives of slavery and emancipation have been absent from, or at best marginalized within, landscapes designed to commemorate colonial, antebellum, and Civil War history in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and most other places within the United States. As many scholars, journalists, and activists argue, the erasure of slavery, Jim Crow era segregation, and other race-based discrimination from national understandings of United States’ history continues to have a large and negative impact on efforts to understand and redress racial inequality. In this article, we argue that historical markers and monuments, as both elements within and interpretations of Fredericksburg’s commemorative landscape can be used to assess the extent to which slavery and emancipation have been integrated into the town’s collective memory. Since the locations as well as the content of these markers determine which past narratives are central and which are marginal, we use a qualitative Geographic Information System to perform content and discourse analyses on markers selected by their topics and locations. This approach enables us to critically examine both the presences and absences of slavery and emancipation in Fredericksburg’s commemorative landscape.

A New Qualitative GIS Method for Investigating Neighbourhood Characteristics Using a Tablet

This article presents a methodological and technical reflection on an innovative and interactive qualitative geographic information systems (GIS) tool and method created to gauge people's images and perceptions of their neighbourhood. Knowledge gained from the critical GIS debates has led to the development of qualitative GIS and public participation GIS (PPGIS) methods, which aim to counteract the adverse effects of GIS as predominantly top-down. Drawing from critical and qualitative GIS arguments, the authors tried to create an accessible, bottom-up GIS data-collection method that involved conducting qualitative interviews while presenting digital maps on a tablet. This digital tool allowed users to change scales by zooming in and out on the map and also offered a selection of base maps affording numerous views of the city. This method not only allowed residents to generate GIS data about their neighbourhood but was also used as a visual support tool to stimulate dialogue during the interviews. With the aid of examples from a study in Geneva, Switzerland, this article discusses the relevance, strengths, and limitations of this method in the field of neighbourhood research.

Practicing GIS as Mixed Method: Affordances and Limitations in an Urban Gardening Study

Geographic information systems (GIS) represent more than a tool for spatial data handling. Qualitative and mixed-methods approaches with GIS value the suite of spatial methods and technologies, while typically showing a marked sensitivity toward issues of subjectivity, knowledge production, exclusion, reflexivity, and power relations. Although recent research in the use of qualitative GIS demonstrates the ways in which spatial representations and analyses can be used as part of critical geographic inquiry, there remain significant opportunities to demonstrate and synthesize the particular affordances of these approaches. Alongside broader developments in public scholarship and the digital humanities, mixed-methods research with GIS is coming of age, as technological innovations are easing access to data and access to visualization and analytical tools for some. The implications of these developments at the level of knowledge construction within community-based, critical research have been underexplored, however. What are the specific affordances of mixed-methods research with GIS? How are mixed-methods knowledges made and worked through community engagement? Here, we trace how qualitative GIS methods uniquely enable multiple narratives to change the ways in which GIS is practiced. To illustrate this process, we present findings from the use of qualitative GIS to study urban gardening in a postindustrial, Midwestern city. Key Words: critical GIS, qualitative GIS, urban gardening, urban geography.

What qualitative GIS maps tell and don't tell: insights from mapping women in Tehran's public spaces

Qualitative Geographic Information Systems (QGIS) refers to an array of methodological efforts to incorporate into Geographic Information System (GIS) more qualitative data than have traditionally been included. The majority of critical geographers have focused on the advantages of QGIS as an innovative method in feminist geography; however, little attention has been given to its limitations, particularly in non-Western contexts, where sociocultural subjectivity appears to be more difficult to access. The exciting prospect QGIS fosters, along with its conceptual and technical limitations, is the central focus of this article. This article represents an attempt to go beyond the first generation of QGIS literature and to critically explore its limitations. It draws on insights from my fieldwork studying Iranian women's sociospatial behaviors in Tehran's public spaces. Photographs, sketches, and narratives were linked to GIS data gathered from the Iranian Census Organization, National GIS Database, and Tehran Municipality. During my data analysis, two limitations were recognized: data exclusion and data scale incompatibility. Evaluating both the merits and limits I encountered in this case study, I conclude that QGIS application allows geographers, particularly cultural geographers who often deal with the symbolic and ethno-cultural meanings people attach to places, to possibly see more, but not necessarily “all.”

Sketch Maps and Qualitative GIS: Using Cartographies of Individual Spatial Narratives in Geographic Research

Mental and sketch maps have a long tradition in modern geography. Little theoretical and methodological distinction has been made, however, between different hand mapping approaches. Mental maps emerged from behavioral geography of the spatial science tradition as a technique to understand human behaviors based on peoples’ perceptions of their spatial environment. More recently, sketch maps have been used in participatory and qualitative geographic information systems (QGIS) to develop cartographies of group and individual spatial narratives. They are a tool that helps achieve QGIS's objectives of collecting unique spatial data of individual experiences, visualizing socio-spatial processes, breaking down particular barriers of positionality in research, and developing new uses of GIS. Two case studies illustrate the use of sketch maps in research, including a project examining job accessibility among working poor individuals and a study of the experiences of fear and safety in public spaces among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community members. Sketch maps in QGIS have many methodological merits. They add an invaluable dimension to the qualitative interview process, offer countermapping perspectives, generate detailed spatial information of individuals, and facilitate data interpretation.

Qualitative GIS and the visualization of narrative activity space data

Qualitative activity space data, i.e. qualitative data associated with the routine locations and activities of individuals, are recognized as increasingly useful by researchers in the social and health sciences for investigating the influence of environment on human behavior. However, there has been little research on techniques for exploring qualitative activity space data. This research illustrates the theoretical principles of combining qualitative and quantitative data and methodologies within the context of geographic information systems (GIS), using visualization as the means of inquiry. Through the use of a prototype implementation of a visualization system for qualitative activity space data and its application in a case study of urban youth we show how these theoretical methodological principles are realized in applied research. The visualization system uses a variety of visual variables to simultaneously depict multiple qualitative and quantitative attributes of individuals' activity spaces. The visualization is applied to explore the activity spaces of a sample of urban youth participating in a study on the geographic and social contexts of adolescent substance use. Examples demonstrate how the visualization can be used to explore individual activity spaces to generate hypotheses, investigate statistical outliers, and explore activity space patterns among subject subgroups.

Cree Ethnogeography

This paper explores the nature of Wemindji Cree territorial identity. It uses a mixed methods approach combining qualitative geographic information systems (GIS) and ethnography. GIS was used to categorize a database of Wemindji Cree place names within local and traditional naming systems. The resulting maps produce a picture of Wemindji Cree life as a ‘view from nowhere’ disconnected from lived life on the ground. Participant observation of life in Wemindji, especially amongst tallymen (trapline bosses), over two seasons provided an ethnography of Cree life both in town and on the land. The situated perspective ‘on the ground’ offers specifics of daily life that revolve around maps. Inscriptions such as maps have been incorporated into the everyday lives of tallymen, who are respected leaders in Wemindji. Rundstrom's categories of inscribing (written) versus incorporating (oral) cultures were found to elude mutual exclusivity. Wemindji Cree are a residually oral culture with a dependence on maps necessitated by the tracking and discussion of incursions from state-industrial interests in trapline territories and by the need to commemorate traditional life on the land. Maps are thus necessary but not sufficient for explaining Wemindji Cree territorial identity. Ethnographic depth was included to round out strictly inscribed accounts of identities demonstrated to revolve to a great extent around the leadership of the tallymen. A balance of inscribed (through GIS maps) and embodied (through ethnography) accounts of Wemindji Cree life as lived through movement, wayfaring and the business of life both in town and on the land, helped produce the resulting ethnogeographic account of Wemindji Cree life and territorial identity.