Geographical Information Science

 Under Construction

Figure 8: Inner-City Function Map [52].

Building on my background in geography and GIS, much of my research is grounded to geographical systems. I see the “S” in GIS as representing both a System and a Science. As a system, GIS allows one to store, organize and access information (i.e. the technology and tools) as shown in Figure 8  but as a science, it allows us to solve problems and discover new knowledge about the world we inhabit (e.g. through spatial analysis). For my agent-based models, GIS allows me to build models related to actual real-world locations (e.g. descriptive models) but also to ground my work in SNA to an actual place as shown in Figure 8. GIS has grown rapidly over the last decade, especially in the amount of geographic data being generated and shared via the crowd through Web 2.0 technologies (e.g. [47, 48, 53, 54, 55, 56]). One active research area for me is harvesting crowdsourced data (volunteered and ambient geographic information [41]) from social media (e.g. Twitter, Flickr) and other platforms (e.g. OpenStreetMap) to increase our situational awareness, understand the linkage of form and function, by utilizing both geographical and social network analysis (e.g. [41, 47, 48, 56, 57, 58, 59]).

We have termed this GeoSocial analysis, as though the utilization of GIS, SNA and content analysis we can identify the structure of social networks and their distribution in space (e.g. the distribution of a community formed around a specific topic [60]); map the manner in which ideas and information propagate across space in a society (e.g. people reacting to an earthquake [61] or disease outbreaks [62, 63]); map the spatial footprint of people’s opinions and reaction on specific topics and current events at near real-time rates (e.g. observing how fast people react to political or sports events [64]); and identify emerging socio-cultural hot-spots (e.g. popular gathering places [48]).

Figure 9: GeoSocial Analysis - the combination
of geospatial, social network, and content
analysis, to understand the connections between
cyber, social and physical spaces.


My work in this area has already shown that social proximity often overtakes geographical proximity when connections are established [58]. Not only does such research allow for greater situational awareness and understanding of how people perceive and use space but also combines cyber, physical and social spaces as shown in Figure 9, but it also has the potential to be merged with agent-based models [10, 21, 65]. However, such research does pose several challenges [55, 56] such as data quality and accuracy [66, 67, 68, 69], why people contribute such information [70], privacy [41], the role of social bots [44, 71, 72, 73] and the need of new methods for data collection [58]. These crucial issues go back a long way in the GIS community, but nonetheless still need to be addressed.


References

  1. United Nations (2018), 2018 Revision of World Urbanization Prospects, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, New York, NY, Available at https://population.un.org/wup/.
  2. UN-Habitat (2006), State of the World's Cities 2006/7, UN-Habitat, Nairobi, Kenya.
  3. Patel, A., Koizumi, N. and Crooks, A.T. (2014), 'Measuring Slum Severity in Mumbai and Kolkata: A Household-based Approach', Habitat International, 41: 300-306. (pdf)
  4. Mahabir, R., Crooks, A.T., Croitoru, A. and Agouris, P. (2016), 'The Study of Slums as Social and Physical Constructs: Challenges and Emerging Research Opportunities', Regional Studies, Regional Science, 3(1): 737-757. (pdf)
  5. Crooks, A.T., Patel, A. and Wise, S. (2014), 'Multi-agent Systems for Urban Planning', in Pinto, N.N., Tenedório, J., P., A.A. and Roca, J. (eds.), Urban and Spatial Planning: Virtual Cities and Territories, IGI Global, Hershey, PA, pp. 29-56. (pdf)
  6. Crooks, A.T. (2012), 'The Use of Agent-Based Modelling for Studying the Social and Physical Environment of Cities', in De Roo, G., Hiller, J. and Van Wezemael, J. (eds.), Complexity and Planning: Systems, Assemblages and Simulations, Ashgate, Burlington, VT, pp. 385-408. (pdf)
  7. Crooks, A.T., Croitoru, A., Jenkins, A., Mahabir, R., Agouris, P. and Stefanidis, A. (2016), 'User-Generated Big Data and Urban Morphology', Built Environment, 42(3): 396-414. (pdf)
  8. Cioffi-Revilla, C. (2017), Introduction to Computational Social Science: Principles and Applications (2nd edition), Springer, New York, NY.
  9. Haggett, P. and Chorley, R.J. (1969), Network Analysis in Geography, Edward Arnold, London, UK.
  10. Crooks, A.T., Malleson, N., Manley, E. and Heppenstall, A.J. (2019), Agent-based Modelling and Geographical Information Systems: A Practical Primer, Sage, London, UK
  11. Crooks, A.T. and Heppenstall, A. (2012), 'Introduction to Agent-Based Modelling', in Heppenstall, A., Crooks, A.T., See, L.M. and Batty, M. (eds.), Agent-based Models of Geographical Systems, Springer, New York, NY, pp. 85-108. (pdf)
  12. Heppenstall, A.J., Crooks, A.T., Batty, M. and See, L.M. (eds.) (2012), Agent-based Models of Geographical Systems, Springer, New York, NY.
  13. Crooks, A.T. and Castle, C. (2012), 'The Integration of Agent-Based Modelling and Geographical Information for Geospatial Simulation', in Heppenstall, A., Crooks, A.T., See, L.M. and Batty, M. (eds.), Agent-based Models of Geographical Systems, Springer, New York, NY, pp. 219-252. (pdf)
  14. Crooks, A.T., Croitoru, A., Lu, X., Wise, S., Irvine , J.M. and Stefanidis, A. (2015), 'Walk this Way: Improving Pedestrian Agent-Based Models through Scene Activity Analysis', ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, 4(3): 1627-1656. (pdf)
  15. Pires, B. and Crooks, A.T. (2017), 'Modeling the Emergence of Riots: A Geosimulation Approach', Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 61: 66-80. (pdf)
  16. Crooks, A.T. (2010), 'Constructing and Implementing an Agent-Based Model of Residential Segregation through Vector GIS', International Journal of GIS, 24(5): 661-675. (pdf)
  17. Wise, S. and Crooks, A.T. (2012), 'Agent Based Modelling and GIS for Community Resource Management: Acequia-based Agriculture', Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 36(6): 562-572. (pdf)
  18. Patel, A., Crooks, A.T. and Koizumi, N. (2012), 'Slumulation: an Agent-based Modeling Approach to Slum Formations', Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 15(4): 2, Available at http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/15/4/2.html.
  19. Patel, A., Crooks, A.T. and Koizumi, N. (2018), 'Spatial Agent-based Modeling to Explore Slum Formation Dynamics in Ahmedabad, India', in Thill, J.-C. and Dragicevic, S. (eds.), GeoComputational Analysis and Modeling of Regional Systems, Springer, New York, NY, pp. 121-141. (pdf)
  20. Gulden, T., Harrison, J.F. and Crooks, A.T. (2011), 'Modeling Cities and Displacement through an Agent-based Spatial Interaction Model', The 2011 Computational Social Science Society of America Conference, Santa Fe, NM. (pdf)
  21. Crooks, A.T. and Wise, S. (2013), 'GIS and Agent-Based models for Humanitarian Assistance', Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 41: 100-111. (pdf)
  22. Hailegiorgis, A.B., Crooks, A.T. and Cioff-Revilla, C. (2018), 'An Agent-Based Model of Rural Households’ Adaptation to Climate Change', Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 21(4): 4, Available at http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/21/4/4.html.
  23. Crooks, A.T. and Hailegiorgis, A.B. (2014), 'An Agent-based Modeling Approach Applied to the Spread of Cholera', Environmental Modelling and Software, 62: 164-177. (pdf)
  24. Crooks, A.T., Castle, C.J.E. and Batty, M. (2008), 'Key Challenges in Agent-Based Modelling for Geo-spatial Simulation', Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 32(6): 417-430. (pdf)
  25. Malik, A., Crooks, A., Root, H. and Swartz, M. (2015), 'Exploring Creativity and Urban Development with Agent-Based Modeling', Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 18(2): 12, Available at http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/18/2/12.html.
  26.  Łatek, M.M., Mussavi Rizi, S.M., Crooks, A.T. and Fraser, M. (2012), 'Social Simulations for Border Security', Workshop on Innovation in Border Control 2012, Co-located with the European Intelligence and Security Informatics Conference (EISIC 2012), Odense, Denmark, pp. 340-345. (pdf)
  27. Oldham, M. and Crooks, A.T. (2019), 'Drafting Agent-Based Modeling into Basketball Analytics', 2019 Spring Simulation Conference (SpringSim’19), Tucson, AZ. (pdf)
  28. Pires, B. and Crooks, A.T. (2016), 'The Geography of Conflict Diamonds: The Case of Sierra Leone', Proceedings of the 2016 International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling, and Prediction and Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation, Springer, Washington, DC. pp. 335-345. (pdf)
  29. Crooks, A.T., Hudson-Smith, A. and Dearden, J. (2009), 'Agent Street: An Environment for Exploring Agent-Based Models in Second Life', Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 12(4): 10, Available at http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/12/4/10.html.
  30. Crooks, A.T., Hudson-Smith, A. and Patel, A. (2011), 'Advances and Techniques for Building 3D Agent-Based Models for Urban Systems', in Marceau, D. and Benenson, I. (eds.), Advanced Geosimulation Models, Bentham Science Publishers, Hilversum, The Netherlands, pp. 49-65. (pdf)
  31. Yuan, X. and Crooks, A.T. (2017), 'From Cyber Space Opinion Leaders and the Spread of Anti-Vaccine Extremism to Physical Space Disease Outbreaks', in Lee, D., Lin, Y., Osgood, N. and Thomson, R. (eds.), Proceedings of the 2017 International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling and Prediction and Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation, Springer, Arlington, VA, pp. 114-119. (pdf)
  32. Bagheri-Jebelli, N., Crooks, A.T. and Kennedy, W.G. (2019), 'Capturing the Effects of Gentrification on Property Values: An Agent-Based Modeling Approach', The 2019 Computational Social Science Society of Americas Conference, Santa Fe, NM. (pdf)
  33. McEligot, K., Brouse, P. and A.T., C. (2019), 'Sea Bright, New Jersey Reconstructed: Agent-Based Protection Theory Model Responses to Hurricane Sandy', in Mustafee, N., Bae, K.-H.G., Lazarova-Molnar, S., Rabe, M., Szabo, C., Haas, P. and Son, Y.-J. (eds.), Proceedings of the 2019 Winter Simulation Conference, IEEE, National Harbor, MD, pp. 251-262. (pdf)
  34. Crooks, A.T. (2015), 'Agent-based Models and Geographical Information Systems', in Brunsdon, C. and Singleton, A. (eds.), Geocomputation: A Practical Primer, Sage, London, UK, pp. 63-77. (pdf)
  35. Łatek, M.M., Mussavi Rizi, S.M., Crooks, A.T. and Fraser, M. (2012), 'A Spatial Multiagent Model of Border Security for the Arizona-Sonora Borderland', The 2012 Computational Social Science Society of America Conference, Santa Fe, NM. (pdf)
  36. Crooks, A.T. (2007), Experimenting with Cities: Utilizing Agent-Based Models and GIS to Explore Urban Dynamics, PhD Thesis, University College London, London, UK.
  37. Briggs, T. and Crooks, A.T. (2016), 'Close, But Not Close Enough: A Spatial Agent-Based Model of Manager-Subordinate Proximity', The 2016 Computational Social Science Society of America Conference, Santa Fe, NM. (pdf)
  38. Pint, B., Crooks, A.T. and Geller, A. (2010), 'Exploring the Emergence of Organized Crime in Rio de Janeiro: An Agent-Based Modeling Approach', in Dimuro, G.P., da Rocha Costa, A.C., Sichman, J.S., Tedesco, P., Adamatti, D.F., Balsa, J. and Antunes, L. (eds.), Advances in Social Simulation: Proceedings of the 2nd Brazilian Workshop on Social Simulation, IEEE, Sao Bernardo do Campo, Brazil, pp. 7-14. (pdf)
  39. Rouly, C. and Crooks, A.T. (2010), 'A Prototype Multi-agent System for the Study of the Peopling of the Western Hemisphere', 3rd World Congress on Social Simulation: Scientific Advances in Understanding Societal Processes and Dynamics, Kassel, Germany. (pdf)
  40. Crooks, A.T. and Chopra, P. (2014), 'An Agent-based Model for the Spread and Containment of Tuberculosis', The Association of American Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting, Tampa, FL. (pdf)
  41. Stefanidis, T., Crooks, A.T. and Radzikowski, J. (2013), 'Harvesting Ambient Geospatial Information from Social Media Feeds', GeoJournal, 78(2): 319-338. (pdf)
  42. Masucci, A.P., Smith, D., Crooks, A.T. and Batty, M. (2009), 'Random Planar Graphs and the London Street Network', The European Physical Journal B, 71(2): 259–271. (pdf)
  43. Crooks, A.T., Masad, D., Croitoru, A., Cotnoir, A., Stefanidis, A. and Radzikowski, J. (2014), 'International Relations: State-Driven and Citizen-Driven Networks', Social Science Computer Review, 32(2): 205-220. (pdf)
  44. Schuchard, R., Crooks, A.T., Stefanidis, A. and Croitoru, A. (2018), 'Bots in Nets: Empirical Comparative Analysis of Bot Evidence in Social Networks', in Aiello, L.M., Cherifi, C., Cherifi, H., Lambiotte, R., Lió, P. and Rocha, L.M. (eds.), Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Complex Networks and Their Applications, Springer, Cambridge, United Kingdom, pp. 424-436. (pdf)
  45. Yuan, X. and Crooks, A.T. (2018), 'Examining Online Vaccination Discussion and Communities in Twitter', Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Social Media and Society, Copenhagen, Denmark, pp. 197-206. (pdf)
  46. Vraga, E., Stefanidis, A., Lamprianidis, G., Croitoru, A., Crooks, A.T., Delamater, P.L., Pfoser, D., Radzikowski, J. and Jacobsen, K.H. (2018), 'Cancer and Social Media: A Comparison of Traffic about Breast Cancer, Prostate Cancer, and Other Reproductive Cancers on Twitter and Instagram', Journal of Health Communication, 3(2): 181-189. (pdf)
  47. Crooks, A.T., Pfoser, D., Jenkins, A., Croitoru, A., Stefanidis, A., Smith, D.A., Karagiorgou, S., Efentakis, A. and Lamprianidis, G. (2015), 'Crowdsourcing Urban Form and Function', International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 29(5): 720-741. (pdf)
  48. Jenkins, A., Croitoru, A., Crooks, A.T. and Stefanidis, A. (2016), 'Crowdsourcing A Collective Sense of Place', PLoS ONE, 11(4): e0152932. (pdf)
  49. Stefanidis, A., Jenkins, A., Croitoru, A. and Crooks, A.T. (2016), 'Megacities Through the Lens of Social Media', Journal of the Homeland Defense and Security Information Analysis Center, 3(1): 24-29. (pdf)
  50. Croitoru, A., Crooks, A.T., Radzikowski, J. and Stefanidis, A. (2017), 'Geovisualization of Social Media', in Richardson, D., Castree, N., Goodchild, M.F., Kobayashi, A.L., Liu, W. and Marston, R. (eds.), The International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment, and Technology, Wiley Blackwell. (pdf)
  51. Stefanidis, A., Cotnoir, A., Croitoru, A., Crooks, A.T., Radzikowski, J. and Rice, M. (2013), 'Demarcating New Boundaries: Mapping Virtual Polycentric Communities Through Social Media Content', Cartography and Geographic Information Science, 40(2): 116-129. (pdf)
  52. Smith, D.A. and Crooks, A.T. (2010), From Buildings to Cities: Techniques for the Multi-Scale Analysis of Urban Form and Function, Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (University College London): Working Paper 155, London, UK. (pdf)
  53. Anand, S., Batty, M., Crooks, A.T., Hudson-Smith, A., Jackson, M., Milton, R. and Morley, J. (2010), Data Mash-ups and the Future of Mapping, Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) Technology and Standards Watch (TechWatch) Horizon Scanning Report 10_01, Bristol, UK. (pdf)
  54. Batty, M., Hudson-Smith, A., Milton, R. and Crooks, A.T. (2010), 'Map MashUps, Web 2.0 and the GIS Revolution', Annals of GIS, 16(1): 1-13. (pdf)
  55. Crooks, A.T., Hudson-Smith, A., Croitoru, A. and Stefanidis, A. (2014), 'The Evolving GeoWeb', in Abrahart, R.J. and See, L.M. (eds.), Geocomputation (2nd Edition), CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, pp. 67-94. (pdf)
  56. Croitoru, A., Crooks, A.T., Radzikowski, J., Stefanidis, A., Vatsavai, R.R. and Wayant, N. (2014), 'Geoinformatics and Social Media: A New Big Data Challenge', in Karimi, H.A. (ed.) Big Data Techniques and Technologies in Geoinformatics, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, pp. 207-232. (pdf)
  57. Stefanidis, A., Crooks, A.T., Radzikowski, J., Croitoru, A. and Rice, M. (2014), 'Social Media and the Emergence of Open-Source Geospatial Intelligence', in Murdock, D.G., Tomes, R. and Tucker, C. (eds.), Human Geography: Socio-Cultural Dynamics and Global Security, US Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF), Herndon, VA, pp. 109-123. (pdf)
  58. Croitoru, A., Crooks, A.T., Radzikowski, J. and Stefanidis, A. (2013), 'GeoSocial Gauge: A System Prototype for Knowledge Discovery from Geosocial Media', International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 27(12): 2483-2508. (pdf)
  59. Yuan, X. and A.T., C. (2019), 'Assessing the Placeness of Locations through User-contributed Content', in Gao, S., Newsam, S., Zhao, L., Lunga, D., Hu, Y., Martins, B., Zhou, X. and Chen, F. (eds.), Proceedings of the 3rd ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on AI for Geographic Knowledge Discovery (GeoAI), ACM, Chicago, IL,, pp. 15-23. (pdf)
  60. Lu, X., Croitoru, A., Radzikowski, J., Crooks, A.T. and Stefanidis, A. (2013), 'Comparing the Spatial Characteristics of Corresponding Cyber and Physical Communities: A Case Study', Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on Location-Based Social Networks, Orlando, FL, pp. 11-14. (pdf)
  61. Crooks, A.T., Croitoru, A., Stefanidis, A. and Radzikowski, J. (2013), '#Earthquake: Twitter as a Distributed Sensor System', Transactions in GIS, 17(1): 124-147. (pdf)
  62. Radzikowski, J., Stefanidis, A., Jacobsen, K.H., Croitoru, A., Crooks, A.T. and Delamater, P.L. (2016), 'The Measles Vaccination Narrative in Twitter: A Quantitative Analysis', JMIR Public Health and Surveillance, 2(1): e1. (pdf)
  63. Stefanidis, A., Vraga, E., Lamprianidis, G., Radzikowski, J., Delamater, P.L., Jacobsen, K.H., Pfoser, D., Croitoru, A. and Crooks, A.T. (2017), 'Zika in Twitter: Temporal Variations of Locations, Actors, and Concepts', JMIR Public Health and Surveillance, 3(2): e22. (pdf)
  64. Croitoru, A., Wayant, N., Crooks, A.T., Radzikowski, J. and Stefanidis, A. (2015), 'Linking Cyber and Physical Spaces Through Community Detection and Clustering in Social Media Feeds', Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 53: 47–64. (pdf)
  65. Crooks, A.T., Malleson, N., Wise, S. and Heppenstall, A. (2018), 'Big Data, Agents and the City', in Schintler, L.A. and Chen, Z. (eds.), Big Data for Urban and Regional Science, Routledge, New York, NY, pp. 204-213. (pdf)
  66. Mullen, W., Jackson, S.P., Croitoru, A., Crooks, A.T., Stefanidis, A. and Agouris, P. (2015), 'Assessing the Impact of Demographic Characteristics on Spatial Error in Volunteered Geographic Information Features', GeoJournal, 80(4): 587-605. (pdf)
  67. Jackson, S.P., Mullen, W., Agouris, P., Crooks, A.T., Croitoru, A. and Stefanidis, A. (2013), 'Assessing Completeness and Spatial Error of Features in Volunteered Geographic Information', ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, 2(2): 507-530. (pdf)
  68. Mahabir, R., Agouris, P., Stefanidis, A., Croitoru, A. and Crooks, A.T. (2018), 'Detecting and Mapping Slums using Open Data: A Case Study in Kenya', International Journal of Digital Earth: DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17538947.2018.1554010. (pdf)
  69. Mahabir, R., Stefanidis, A., Croitoru, A., Crooks, A.T. and Agouris, P. (2017), 'Authoritative and Volunteered Geographical Information in a Developing Country: A Comparative Case Study of Road Datasets in Nairobi, Kenya', ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, 6(1): 24. (pdf)
  70. Mahabir, R., Croitoru, A., Crooks, A.T., Agouris, P. and Stefanidis, A. (2018), 'News Coverage, Digital Activism, and Geographical Saliency: A Case Study of Refugee Camps and Volunteered Geographical Information', PLoS ONE, 13(11): e0206825. (pdf)
  71. Schuchard, R., Crooks, A.T., Croitoru, A. and Stefanidis, A. (2019), 'Bots Fired: Examining Social Bot Evidence in Online Mass Shooting Conversations', Palgrave Communications, 5: , 5(158), Available at https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-019-0359-x. (pdf)
  72. Schuchard, R., Crooks, A.T., Stefanidis, A. and Croitoru, A. (2019), 'Bot Stamina: Examining the Influence and Staying Power of Bots in Online Social Networks', Applied Network Science, 4(55), Available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s41109-019-0164-x. (pdf)
  73. Yuan, X., Schuchard, R. and Crooks, A.T. (2019), 'Examining Emergent Communities and Detecting Social Bots within the Polarized Online Vaccination Debate in Twitter', Social Media and Society, Available at https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305119865465. (pdf)

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