The Use of Geonarratives to Add Context to Fine Scale Geospatial Research

Jayakrishnan Ajayakumar, Andrew Curtis, Steve Smith and Jacqueline Curtis
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Jayakrishnan Ajayakumar: Department of Geography, GIS, Health & Hazards Lab, Kent State University, Kent, OH 44240, USA
Andrew Curtis: Department of Geography, GIS, Health & Hazards Lab, Kent State University, Kent, OH 44240, USA
Steve Smith: Department of Social Science, Missouri Southern State University, Joplin, MO 64801, USA
Jacqueline Curtis: Department of Geography, GIS, Health & Hazards Lab, Kent State University, Kent, OH 44240, USA

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 3, 1-15

Abstract: There has been a move towards using mixed method approaches in geospatial research to gain context in understanding health related social patterns and processes. The central premise is that official data is often too reductionist and misses’ nuances that can help explain causality. One example is the geonarrative, a spatially relevant commentary or interview that can be mapped by content and/or location. While there have been several examples of geonarratives being used by researchers, there is no commonly available software that can easily transfer the associated text into spatial data. Having a standardized software platform is vital if these methods are to be used across different disciplines. This paper presents an overview of a solution, Wordmapper (WM), which is a standalone software developed to process geonarratives from a transcription and associated global positioning system (GPS) path. Apart from querying textual narrative data, Wordmapper facilitates qualitative coding which could be used to extract latent contextual information from the narratives. In order to improve interoperability, Wordmapper provides spatialized narrative data in formats, such as ESRI shape files, Keyhole Markup Language (KML), and Comma Separated Values (CSV). A case study based on five different spatial video geonarratives (SVG) collected to assess the human impacts following the 2011 Joplin, Missouri are used for illustration.

Keywords: Spatial Video; Geonarratives; GIS, Geo-computation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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