Ulf Jansson: Space and statistics can they meet? An introduction to Geographic information analysis

The field of Geographical information systems (GIS) or spatial analysis has methodically and technically developed during the last 20 years and have become more user-friendly. The starting point for the development was based on research questions in the natural sciences such as physical geography, forestry, resource management. The early software was focusing on physical elements with applications in vegetation ecology, botany, geology etc. In human geography there was a focus on quantitative studies in the 1950’s and 1960’s including chorology and spatial statistics with analysis of for instance clusters. During the critical period with radical geography the quantitative methods were on the whole not seen as a part of modern human geography. Within some branches of geography spatial analysis and the importance of physical geographical distances and locations remained important. In Stockholm it was mostly within landscape and land-use analyses were the new tool GIS was seen as positive in the 1970’s and the 1980's. Today population geography and landscape geography use quantitative methods and incorporate attribute data. Methods have been developed ranging from social science applications for remote sensing too creative new spatial calculations. In this presentation I will present some of the basic features and possibilities in GIS (raster and vector based system) and give some examples of some types of analyses carried out at the department of Human Geography presently and in the past.