Methodologies, tools and techniques

[Convenors: Mitchell U Newcastle and Baum (ECR) UQ].

Explicitly spatial methodologies, tools and techniques mainly derive from geography, but all social science disciplines generate and use methodologies, tools and techniques that may be applied in spatial contexts.

Key issues for SISS include:

1. the modifiable areal unit problem;
2. the spatial aggregation/disaggregation problem;
3. the ecological fallacy;
4. population sampling and quasi experimental designs for collecting data;
5. using path analytic tools to model intervening/ameliorating effects between overt behavioural outcomes and measures of perception as dependent variables and socio-spatial objective phenomena as independent variables;
6. integrating spatial dependencies into econometric models and exploring a range of distance matrices which may explain those interdependencies;
7. extracting from micro-survey data dimensions to match with local area aggregate data to develop estimated synthetic socio-spatial measures through micro-simulation techniques;
8. measuring spill-over effects in spatial contexts using techniques common in time series econometrics to explore clustering interrelationships between regions over time and across space;
9. measuring the regional/local effects of periodicities in national cyclical phenomena and separating exogenous from endogenous effects;
10. specialised statistical measures for data reduction in large complex spatial and relational interaction matrices to deal with missing data, sparseness, and compressed cells;
11. dynamic, multi-level analytic tools for relational network structures;
12. applying Bayesian smoothing techniques to represent a surface and derive point/area estimates from generalised spatial data;
13. the development and use of computational models of social and cognitive concepts of space and place;
14. new tools for matrix analysis and modelling of spatial interaction data in a dynamic time-space context with visualisation across different levels of scale;
15. the use of GISc concepts and GIS tools for data integration and visualisation of spatially distributed data;
16. methodologies and designs for participatory development of strategies and plans to address space dependent and place specific issues; tools for drawing optimal solutions in allocation/location modelling.

This Working Group will play a major role in identifying for development the shared research tool resources and proposing topics for the Specialist Methodology Workshops.