Analysis of human spatial behavior in a GIS environment: Recent developments and future prospects

In recent years, comprehensive geographic data sets of metropolitan areas and individual-level, georeferenced data are becoming more available to social scientists. At the same time, tools for performing spatial analysis in a GIS environment have also become more available. These developments provide many new opportunities for the analysis and theoretical understanding of disaggregate human spatial behavior. This paper examines how these developments may enable the researcher to represent complex urban and cognitive environments more realistically, and to overcome the limitations of aggregate spatial data framework. It explores their implications for the theoretical and methodological development in geography and other social science disciplines.