These are the slides to accompany the first lecture from Lesson 1 of Maps and the Geospatial Revolution on Coursera. www.coursera.org/course/maps/

1. Maps and the Geospatial Revolution
Lesson 4 – Lecture 1
Anthony C. Robinson, Ph.D
Lead Faculty for Online Geospatial Education
JohnA. Dutton e-Education Institute
Assistant Director, GeoVISTA Center
Department of Geography
The Pennsylvania State University
This content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License

2. Doing Spatial Analysis
• Once you have spatial data, you should do
something with it
• Simply showing that you know something
exists in a place isn’t enough
• Geographic science uses a wide range of
analytical techniques to take measurements,
make comparisons, and detect anomalies

3. Overlay (and Beyond)
• Overlay
– The most basic spatial analysis method
– Put this on top of that and see what happens
– Proposed by Ian McHarg in Design with Nature (1969)
• Buffering
– Identifies areas of interest around a location based on
distance or time

4. Buffering

5. Surface Analysis
• Surface Analysis and Interpolation
– When you have lots of individual observations and you want
to make an overall map that shows trends
– Temperature readings from towns scattered across a state
– Interpolation is necessary to make estimates where you
have gaps in coverage
• These types of maps are frequently called “heat maps”
– They should be called density surface maps, but whatever

6. Surface Interpolation

7. Cluster Detection
• A cluster is a spatial pattern that appears
distinct from expected geographic variation
– 10 White Minivans at the supermarket = not
unexpected
– 10 White Minivans in the same driveway = possible
cluster
• Most famous example is John Snow’s map of a
Cholera outbreak in London

8. Maps and the Geospatial Revolution www.coursera.org/course/maps
Twitter @MapRevolution
Online Geospatial Education @ Penn State www.pennstategis.com
This content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License