GEOGRAPHY 595 B: Humanistic GIS

• Instructor: Bo Zhao, [email protected]
• Meetings: Mondays 2:30 to 5:20 PM on Zoom and SMI 409
• Office Hour: Tuesdays 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM (visit here to request an appointment)

Welcome to this seminar, where we will delve into the exciting intersection of geospatial technologies and the humanities. This seminar presents a rare opportunity for you to master practical skills in geospatial technologies and stimulate critical thinking about their applications. You will have the chance to read literature from renowned GIS scholars and philosophers in STS (Science, Technology, and Society) as well as the latest work by GIS and critical scholars. With this theoretical foundation, you will practice a variety of cutting-edge data-driven techniques such as web crawling, GitHub, geo-narrative, deep learning, text mining, virtual reality, raspberry pi, and blockchain, while also reflecting on their relevance to critical perspectives like power relations, hermeneutics, embodiment, autonomy, and surveillance. As a requirement of the course, you will choose a topic from a social science or humanities discipline, apply your newly acquired visual, analytical, and synthetical skills, and assess the significant role, mediating function, or social implications of geospatial technologies. The course material is heavily influenced by the instructor's passion for mapping, GIS, humanities, and STS. If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact Dr. Bo Zhao. We are thrilled to have you join us on this journey!

This web page is the syllabus - There is no printed version, please refer here instead. Make sure refer to this page as often as possible. Also, Feel free to ask the instructor for clarifications whenever needed.

📆 Weekly Schedule

• Visit the reading material of each week from a shared folder at UW Google Drive.
• Read all the required papers of the week by the weekly meetings.

Week 1: Foundation

In this week, we will get familiar with the theoretical framework Humanistic GIS, its origin in postphenomenology and its relevance to the ongoing research focus on digital geographies. By this week, each student can build a better understanding of how to use GIS in their scientific or humanities research.

Keywords: Humanistic GIS, Digital Geographies, and Postphenomenology

Each student is required to prepare a short statement of intent describing your final writing project. Each student is highly encouraged to plan this writing project to advance progress their own work, such as qualifying exam essay, draft of journal article, side project, etc. Please send the statement of intent to the instructor via Email [email protected] by 01/08 5:00pm.

Week 2: CyberGIS

The emergence of CyberGIS in early 2010 represents an important research direction in GIS that incorporates an evolving group of web technologies (e.g., cloud service, world wide web, etc.) to advance the capacity of GIS itself in dealing with complex geographical questions. In the same period, other topics like Cloud GIS (Yang 2011), Spatial Infrastructures (Wright 2011) also appeared. This research direction has enabled GIS to deploy in a more distributed structure but not necessarily being located in a centralized place. In this way, GIS can utilize more computational resources over the Internet or the Cloud and process more complex and large-scale geographical algorithms. In this week, we will get us familiar with the concept of CyberGIS by reading Shaowen Wang's paper on "CyberGIS Framework," and then read another paper on Blockchain from Bo Zhao and his co-author (2020). Blockchain is a representative technology for Web 3.0 - a new phase of web technologies. With a general background of the research direction around CyberGIS, its relevance to Web 3.0, we will build a better understanding of why this wave of cyberGIS appears in early 2010, its connection to the development of ICT (Information and communications technology) and possibility its future development. Moreover, we will read a classic paper from Andrew Feenberg to examine the democratic power of technology (Feenberg 1992). By linking this paper with CyberGIS, we would discuss the intertwined democratic and autocratic power of CyberGIS and others alike.

Hosts: Samuel

Keywords: Technology and Power; CyberGIS, Web 3.0 and Blockchain

Practical Exercise 1: Cloud-based project management using GitHub

In this week, each student is expected to submit the thinkpiece of this week to this web page by 01/08 5:00pm, and complete the practical exercise by the end of the Week 2.

Week 3 & 4: Bot

The meeting of Week 3 will be rescheduled due to the time conflict with MLK holiday.

We will spend two weeks on the topic of bot. Bot is an human-made artifact that automates programmed functions. It has been frequently used to implement repetitive work in order to emancipate human labors. GIScholars have also used bots to collect geospatial services, retrieve social media feeds, and conduct other replaceable tasks. Since data collection is an important step for any (digital) humanities studies, we plan to spend the entire Week 3 to focus on the practical exercise in order to help each student to design a web crawler -- a typical bot that can harvest online data. We expect this web crawler can help each student to advance progress of their own research. In this week, each student is encouraged to read Wenwen Li and her co-authors' paper to see how to build a web map crawler, and how it can be used to collect geospatial data for polar research (Li et al 2016). Next, in week 4, we will convene to discuss the code of ethics related to web crawling (Thelwall et al 2006). This discussion may shed light on the use of bots for any (digital) humanities studies. Moreover, each student will also read another piece of classic paper on the politics of Artifacts (Winner 1986). This paper will initiate the group discussion on the political and social implications of bots.

Hosts: Grace and Samuel

Keywords: Autonomy, Robot and Web crawler

Practical Exercise 2: Data collection using web crawler

In this week, each student is expected to submit the thinkpiece of this week to this web page by 01/15 5:00pm, and complete the practical exercise by the end of the Week 4.

Week 5: Geospatial Data

In this week, we will focus on geospatial data. Similar to other types of data, it comprises of 0s and 1s. However, it is special because of the way of data storage and processing. To better understand why "spatial data is special", each student, in this week's practical exercise, is expected to store the crawled data in the previous week to a file-based geospatial database "spatialite." Through this exercise, a lucid understanding about the structure, storage, and management of geospatial data will be built. Moreover, we also offer three papers on the geospatial data uncertainties. Each of these papers adopts a different epistemology to examine the uncertainty issue (MacEachren et al 2005; Kwan 2012; Zhang et al 2020).

Hosts: Jiaxin and Yifan

Keywords: Uncertainty, Post-truth and location spoofing

Practical Exercise 3: Spatial database management using SpatiaLite

In this week, each student is expected to submit the thinkpiece of this week to this web page by 01/29 5:00pm, and complete the practical exercise by the end of the Week 5.

Week 6: GeoVisualization

GeoVisualization refers the visual representation and the representation strategies that illustrating geographical phenomenon using geospatial data. Through this week, we intend to present the development of geovisualization since the new millennium. It is recommended to read the paper from MacEachren and his co-authors (2001) that is a throughout literature review envisioning the topics in geovisualization to be explored. Knowles and her co-authors' paper represents a humanistic alternative to the conventional geovisualization (2015), and emphasized the possible to visualize geographical phenomenon onto a non-euclidean space. Moreover, Roth's paper shared us an effective high-level guidance on how to craft a geo-narrative (2020). In this week's practical exercise, each student is expected to create a online storymap.

Hosts: Ziyang and Grace

Keywords: Hermeneutics, Inductive visualization, GeoNarrative

Practical Exercise 4: Creating geo-narratives with open-source storytelling library

In this week, each student is expected to submit the thinkpiece of this week to this web page by 02/05 5:00pm, and complete the practical exercise by the end of the Week 6.

Week 7: GeoAI

GeoAI, namely Geospatial Artificial Intelligence, indicates the use and/or the rewire of Artificial Intelligence for geospatial analyses. In this week, we present a literature review on GeoAI and its multiple applicable areas (Janowicz 2019). A promising area is place recognition, and a paper from Bolei Zhou is offered (2017). Place, similar to space is an essential concept in geography. To understand this concept better, you can refer to John Agnew's paper on space and place (Agnew 2011). Moreover, another paper on deepfake geography is offer to share a more controversial use of GeoAI (Zhao et al 2021).

Hosts: Yifan and Jiaxin

Keywords: GeoAI, place recognition, and deepfake geography

Practical Exercise 5: Place context analysis using Natural Language Processing

In this week, each student is expected to submit the thinkpiece of this week to this web page by 02/12 5:00pm, and complete the practical exercise by the end of the Week 7.

Self-Study Week 8: Virtual Reality

The meeting is cancelled due to University Holiday. You are still required to read the paper and submit the weekly think pieces.

Virtual Reality (VR) is a computer-generated environment with scenes and objects that appear to be real, making the user feel they are immersed in their surroundings. This environment is perceived through a device known as a Virtual Reality headset. In this week, we will focus on the idea of GIS embodiment. To begin with, we will review a paper that introduce the concept of postphenomenology and its relevance to geography (Lea 2020). This paper will help us to revisit the Humanistic GIS framework, especially how VR as a embodiment GIS. Next, we will read another paper to examine how VR can evoke different senses of embodiment (Kiteni et al 2012). These senses also relates to the sense of space and place, and this paper helps us to better envision the geographies that will be produced by VR. In the end, we will review another paper to review how VR is considered as sexist (Munafo et al 2017). By this paper, we encourage students to reflect upon the design and development of any technology, especially how we can avoid the examined technology could be more equitable for minority groups.

Keywords: Embodiment, Virtual Reality, Point-cloud visualization

Practical Exercise 6: Creating Virtual Reality based on Structure-from-Motion

In this week, each student is expected to submit the thinkpiece of this week to this web page by 01/08 5:00pm, and complete the practical exercise by the end of the Week 8.

Week 9: Internet of Things

In this week, we will review the concept of Internet of Things (IoT). IoT describes the network of physical objects—“things”—that are embedded with sensors, software, and other technologies for the purpose of connecting and exchanging data with other devices and systems over the internet. It is the foundation for different kinds of smart systems, such as smart city, smart home, and digital environment. It has also been used for real-time monitoring. This week starts with a paper on the real-time GIS from Wenwen Li, Michael Batty and Michael Goodchild (2019) and another paper from Rob Kitchin on a critical reflection on smart city development (Kitchin 2014). In addition to these two papers, another two paper are offered to provide frameworks to probe the social and political implications of smart cities or other data-intensive environmental systems (Sui et al 2003; Verbeek 2020).

Hosts: Ziyang and Bo

Keywords: Real-time GIS, Smart City, and their social implications

Practical Exercise 7: Environmental data collection in real time with Raspberry Pi

In this week, each student is expected to submit the thinkpiece of this week to this web page by 02/26 5:00pm, and complete the practical exercise by the end of the Week 9.

Week 10: Summary, Presentation, and Writing Project

Each student presents the writing project during the last class meeting (03/07). And the writing project is due by 03/11 5:00pm.

🔔 Course Requirement

💻 Computational skill: This course welcomes students who some computational experience, or have programmed in a python or javascript IDE (Integrated Development Environment). Students should at least hear of GIS, GitHub, Leaflet, web crawler, or Raspberry Pi before considering this seminar, and most importantly, be self-motivated to solve a research question with the listed computational skills.

📜 Statement of intent: Please prepare a short statement of intent describing your project on or before the end of Week 1. Please feel free to plan your writing project to help advance progress in your own work – qualifying exam essay, draft of journal article, side project, etc. I am happy to meet with you to talk more about your writing project.

GitHub: This course material will be hosted on GitHub instead of UW Canvas. On this dedicated GitHub repository for this course, you can find most of the course material, participate in group discussions by submitting GitHub issues, and creating new GitHub repositories to turn in practical exercise deliverables. By the end of this quarter, you will be more proficient in operating a cloud-based coding environment and able to host your work online as a way to gain public and peer attentions.

🧑‍🏫 Seminar leadership: You will take at least two turns facilitating our seminar exercise and discussion with a few of your classmates. You will work with one or more others (depending on the enrollment) on this, so you are not responsible for the entire session yourself. Please work together to prepare some activities and guiding questions that will inspire and structure our discussion of the material. The instructor is happy to help you to prepare the practical exercise walk-through before the meeting class.

🏆 Practical exercise: You need to get familiar with the practical exercise instruction before the class meeting in order to better reflect upon the theoretical concepts. We will walk through each practical exercise in class, and you will submit the deliverables to GitHub several days before the class meeting (you will have two weeks for your Week 3&4’s exercise deliverable). As a requirement, you need to submit two lab deliverables. One is Lab 1, and the other is a lab of your interest.

👩‍💻 Participation in seminar discussion: Complete all assigned readings and get familiar with the practical exercise instructions before class meetings, and participating in critical discussions of those readings.

👩‍🔬 Thinkpiece: Your weekly think pieces should be at least 350 words in length and should engage critically with 2 or more of the week’s readings. There is no right or wrong way to write a think piece and you should feel free to experiment, but ensure that you are citing your sources and that your piece is clear and free of any typos. Below are some additional suggestions/guiding thoughts to help shape your piece.

• Though your think piece doesn’t need to follow a formal essay structure, organization, content, and clarity is still important.
• Don’t merely summarize. Develop your own thoughts and reflections in connection to the readings, the lab assignments and the weekly lecture.
• Lead your reader somewhere beyond the simple observation; in other words, make a point or several points and examine them in depth.
• Use examples and quotations from the assigned text to support what you say. Effective quotations make the piece stronger and more convincing.
• Use the practical exercise to express more than how you “feel” about the text or problem. Whether you liked the text or not is relevant but should not be the central focus of your think piece.
• Make connections between the assigned text and the course content and above all, explore your own ideas and thoughts about the assigned text; after all, that is the point of the assignment.

Please craft your think piece to the GitHub issues page two days before the meeting – so your colleagues leading discussion can draw on your ideas in planning activities for our class session.

📖 Writing project: During the quarter, you will complete a larger writing project that engages with the seminar material and course themes, along with additional readings that you bring into conversation with the assigned course readings. You are aiming for 15-20 pages coalescing around ideas and readings from this quarter – you can take up and extend one of the themes from our weekly structure or develop a new one relevant to your own work and thinking. Writing projects is due no later than the end of Week 10.

✔️ Grading

Based on the above requirements - 40% seminar participation, think pieces, and discussion leadership, 20% practical exercise, 40% writing project.

📔 Equity & Inclusivity

Our very highest priorities include creating a brave and supportive class environment where each of us contributes, we can ask big questions, we give and receive critiques in a supportive way, we notice and engage the ways that we are differently situated within past and present relationship of power, privilege and oppression. I invite you to think hard about how race, gender identity, religion, age, citizenship status, first language, ability, sexuality, class, and other axes are at work in our interactions, and what this might mean in terms of when to speak up, when to step back, how to listen, and much more. Each of you is a welcome and invaluable part of our collective whole.

💌 Disability Accommodations

We welcome the opportunity to work with any students with disabilities in this class to ensure equal access to the course. If you have a letter from Disability Resources for Students (DRS) outlining your academic accommodations, please present the letter to me (or email us, to confirm, if the letter is electronic) as soon as possible so that we can discuss the accommodations you may need for this class. Any discussions between student and professor need to occur as early as possible in order for adequate arrangements to be made. If you do not yet have a letter from DRS, but would like to request academic accommodations due to a disability, please contact DRS here (Links to an external site.), or in-person at 011 Mary Gates Hall, or at 206-543-8924 (Voice & Relay), mailto:[email protected].

🕌 Religious Accommodations

Washington state law requires that UW develop a policy for accommodation of student absences or significant hardship due to reasons of faith or conscience, or for organized religious activities. The UW’s policy, including more information about how to request an accommodation, is available at Religious Accommodations Policy. Accommodations must be requested within the first two weeks of this course using the Religious Accommodations Request form.

📝 Student Care & Safety

It is important that you take care of yourselves inside and outside of class as you work through stress and other obstacles. There are many different support services on campus that can help, such as the Counseling Center, Hall Health, and the IMA. UW’s Student Care program can help you connect to these and other resources. Learn more an contact them directly: http://depts.washington.edu/livewell/student-care/, [email protected], or 206.543.6085. If you are concerned about yourself or a friend who is struggling SafeCampus is a helpful resource. Please add 206.685.7233 to your phones

This course advocates for the open culture. The course materials are open source for both students and open source community to access. © 2019-2022 All rights are reserved by Bo Zhao.