Spatial Representation

I have worked extensively with issues of spatial representation and applying GIS and spatial intelligence to global-scale problems, including the automated geocoding and analysis of translated historical news archives and broadcast intercepts numbering in the tens of millions of documents.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and the use of spatial information in non-traditional contexts is a tremendous growth area. For example, historians researching the life of a historical figure now use automated geocoding tools to identify geographic references in documents and letters about that person's life and arrange them on a map. Organizing such information spatially and through time can highlight previously undetected patterns in the individual's life.

Geocoding. The term "geocoding" refers to the use of software tools to examine textual documents and automatically identifying geographic references and disambiguating them to a specific set of latitude and longitude coordinates. Geocoding is a highly overused term in today's marketing world, but a true geocoding system is capable of using a variety of contextual information to achieve the highest level of accuracy. For example, an article in a local newspaper in Paris, Illinois that describes a sale at a "Paris department store" likely refers to a local store, not one in Paris, France. Conversely, an Iraqi newspaper report about events in "Cairo" probably refer to Cairo, Egypt, not one of the other 30+ Cairo's in the world.
International and Historical Geocoding. Geocoding on a global scale and being able to properly disambiguate even obscure and/or localized geographic references from translated and historical materials, where names may have changed over time, is an extremely complex undertaking.
Spatial Analysis and Spatial Representation. Once information is in a spatial context, powerful analytical capabilities become available that represent a fundamentally new way of thinking for many organizations and research disciplines. The representation of that information in visual form adds a further layer of complexity. Simply placing dots on a map or coloring countries using a generic scale can result in wildly misleading interpretations: perceptual modeling is critical in representing spatial information.