GIS-Based Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences
1 Introduction.
2 A Tool for Creating Pseudo-3D Spaces with Hyperphoto: An Application in Ethnographic Studies .
3 A Laser-Scanner System for Acquiring Archaeological Data: Case of the Tyre Remains .
4 A Laser-Scanner System for Acquiring Walking-Trajectory Data and Its Possible Application to Behavioral Science.
5 A Method for Constructing a Historical Population-Grid Database from Old Maps and Its Applications.
6 Urban Employment Areas: Defining Japanese Metropolitan Areas and Constructing the Statistical Database for Them.
7 Data Modeling of Archaeological Sites Using a Unified Modeling Language .
8 How to Find Free Software Packages for Spatial Analysis via the Internet .
9 A Toolbox for Examining the Effect of Infrastructural Features on the Distribution of Spatial Events .
10 A Toolbox for Spatial Analysis on a Network.
11 Estimation of Routes and Building Sites Described in Premodern Travel Accounts Through Spatial Reasoning .
12 Computer-Simulated Settlements in West Wakasa: Identifying the Ancient Tax Regions — The Go-Ri System .
13 Site-Catchment Analysis of Prehistoric Settlements by Reconstructing Paleoenvironments with GIS .
14 Migration, Regional Diversity, and Residential Development on the Edge of Greater Cairo — Linking Three Kinds of Data — Census, Household-Survey Data, and Geographical Data — with GIS .
15 Effect of Environmental Factors on Housing Prices: Application of GIS to Urban-Policy Analysis .
16 Estimating Urban Agglomeration Economies for Japanese Metropolitan Areas: Is Tokyo Too Large?.
17 Evaluation of School Redistricting by the School Family System.
18 A Method for Visualizing the Landscapes of Old-Time Cities Using GIS.
19 Visualization for Site Assessment .
20 Visualization of the Mental Image of a City Using GIS .
Almost all phenomena studied in the humanities and social sciences occur in geographical space. This implies that, in principle, studies in the humanities and social sciences can be enhanced by the use of geographical information systems (GIS). However, actually employing GIS in the advancement of these disciplines is not straightforward. Any computer-aided method of analysis is pointless unless researchers can devote the time necessary to learning what it is, what it can do, and how to use it. To this end, we carried out the six-year project entitled Spatial Information Science for the Humanities and Social Sciences (SIS for HSS). The project began in June 1998, when the Center for Spatial Information Science (CSIS) was established at the University of Tokyo, and ended in March 2004. The project was funded by the Grant-in-Aid for Special Field Research provided by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan. The project leader was Atsuyuki Okabe of CSIS.
The SIS for HSS project had two aims:
1. To integrate spatial methods that were fragmentarily developed in the humanities and social sciences, in particular as applied to the areas of economics, human geography, and archaeology, and to develop the methods into GIS-based tools for studies.
2. To develop spatial data infrastructural systems that would support research in the above fields.
To achieve both of these objectives, the SIS for HSS project team had five groups, which are listed below with the name of each team leader. The first three of the groups were organized by subjects, and the last two were based upon the GIS technologies employed. All the groups worked in collaboration.
1. Economics (Yoshitsugu Kanemoto)
2. Human geography (Hiroyuki Kohsaka)
3. Archaeology (Takura Izumi)
4. Spatial data acquisition (Ryosuke Shibasaki)
5. Spatial data management (Yukio Sadahiro)
The achievements of the first objective, which are outlined in Chapter 1, are presented in 19 sections (Chapters 2–20 of this volume). The achievements of the second aim were the development of:
• A spatial database that contains ready-to-use data commonly used in the humanities and social sciences
• A spatial-data clearinghouse in which researchers can easily search through spatial data in the database developed above at http:// chouse.csis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/gcat/editQuery.do
• A data-sharing system that is widely used by scholars in the humanities and social sciences, www.csis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/japanese/ research_activities/joint-research.html
These systems are run by CSIS, and are open to academic users. The systems are particularly useful when the researcher’s interest is in studying human and social phenomena as they occur in Japan.
We sincerely hope that by means of this book, readers can come to an understanding of how GIS are actually utilized in advancing studies in the humanities and social sciences; furthermore, this book will encourage readers to develop new GIS-based methods in their own research.
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