Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science

近几十年来，三套技术(地理信息系统、全球定位系统和遥感)的重大进步为地球表面的模式、过程和变化提供了戏剧性的新见解。尽管许多学科已经采用了这些技术，并成功地将它们用于各种调查，但很少有社会和行为科学家开始大规模使用它们。为了加快这些技术的采用和使用，加州大学圣巴巴拉分校的一个国家中心将专注于方法、工具、技术、软件、数据访问和其他服务，以促进和促进社会科学和行为科学的一种新颖的、集成的空间启用方法。该中心将以国家地理信息与分析中心的努力为基础，参与六个核心项目，目标涵盖从归纳科学、探索科学到基于理论的验证性科学等各个领域。中心的活动将包括：(1)开发一套涵盖核心概念、范例和参考资料的学习资源，以便通过万维网提供。(2)举办密集的国家讲习班，向社会和行为科学家介绍空间社会科学的方法和工具。(3)赞助在社会科学和行为科学中使用空间方法的最佳做法范例。(4)开发服务，便利在万维网和数字图书馆中按地点搜索信息资源。(5)与工业伙伴合作，进一步开发和传播一套强大和易于使用的软件工具，用于在存在空间效应的情况下进行分析。(6)仿照Linux和GRASS定义的非常成功的社区，发起一个开放的虚拟社区，以共享软件工具。通过这些和其他相关活动，许多在社会和行为科学领域工作的个人和团体将发现他们使用新技术的能力大大增强。将从这些努力中受益的主要研究领域包括人与环境的相互作用、城市研究、社会和经济不平等、社会和商业网络、卫生和疾病、刑事司法和社区基层组织。

Over recent decades, major advances in three sets of technologies (geographic information systems, the Global Positioning System, and remote sensing) have provided dramatic new insights into patterns, processes, and changes on the Earth's surface. Although many disciplines have adopted these technologies and use them successfully for a variety of inquiries, fewer social and behavioral scientists have begun to use them on a significant scale. To accelerate the adoption and use of these technologies, a national center based at the University of California-Santa Barbara will focus on the methods, tools, techniques, software, data access, and other services needed to promote and facilitate a novel and integrating spatially enabled approach to the social and behavioral sciences. The center will build on the efforts of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis, engaging in six core programs that are targeted across the full spectrum from inductive, exploratory science to theory-based, confirmatory science. Center activities will include: (1) Development of a collection of learning resources covering core concepts, examples, references to be made available via the World Wide Web. (2) Conduct of intensive national workshops to introduce social and behavioral scientists to the methods and tools of spatially enabled social science. (3) Sponsorship of best-practice examples of the use of spatial approaches in the social and behavioral sciences. (4) Development of services to facilitate place-based searches for information resources on the World Wide Web and in digital libraries. (5) Further development and dissemination of a powerful and easy-to-use suite of software tools for analysis in the presence of spatial effects, in collaboration with industrial partners. (6) Initiation of an open virtual community to share software tools, modeled on the highly successful communities defined by Linux and GRASS. Through these and other related activities, many individuals and groups working in the social and behavioral sciences will find their capabilities to use new technologies greatly enhanced. Among major research areas that will benefit as a result of these efforts are human-environmental interactions, urban studies, social and economic inequality, social and business networks, health and disease, criminal justice, and community-based grassroots organizations.