USING GEODATA AND GEOLOCATION IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES: MAPPING OUR CONNECTED WORLD, David Abernathy. London, U.K.: Sage Publishing, 2016. 344+xv. ISBN: 978‐104739‐0818‐5. GBP27.99.
本书介绍了地理数据（geodata）的收集、可视化与分析工具，面向社会科学研究者、学生和实践者，帮助理解空间数据在解释社会现象中的作用。
Recent decades have seen a growing interest in the accurate collection, visualization and analysis of spatial data and the geographical components of data capturing wider social processes.More and more, the complexities of big data analysis call for accurate and innovative mapping techniques to identify and clarify the role of geographical space.Also, the growing quality and availability of a wide range of datasets is fostering a growing interest in the analysis of the effects of geographical space.As society is increasingly characterized by a high level of interconnectedness and social networking, it seems clear that an accurate spatial representation of many phenomena is of key importance to students, researchers, and practitioners across the social sciences.As David Abernathy aptly puts it: "We have come to understand the power of "where" when attempting to better understand the "why" and "how" (p. 6).Against this background, the book by Abernathy is a very welcome and important contribution to the literature.In his book, Abernathy argues that society can increasingly be characterized as consisting of a geoweb, defined as "a distributed digital network of geolocated nodes that capture, produce, and communicate data that include an explicitly spatial component" (pp.2-3).Next to computers and mobile phones, these nodes consist of a variety of machines, appliances and objects that are connected to the internet and provide a growing amount of data.The geographical components of this data are offering new opportunities and challenges to researchers and practitioners that want to identify and understand the roles of place and space.As Abernathy notes: "This is the promise of the geoweb: that the collection and visualisation of large volumes of spatial data, being generated by everything from mobile phones to smart cities, can help us better understand our social and natural environments" (p.27).The main purpose of the book is to provide a background to the visualization of geodata and to discuss a variety of tools, examples, and advice on how to start doing this.The book consists of two parts.In the first part, Abernathy provides the necessary context of the nature and analysis of spatial data.In Chapter 2, the concept of geoweb is further explained and explored.Chapter 3 provides a discussion of geodata as an example of big data, offering new opportunities and challenges for existing tools and analysis.Chapter 4 discusses the growing importance of the vast number of technology users as providers of geodata.Chapter 5 addresses issues on data accuracy, privacy and surveillance.The last chapter of Part 1 discusses the various types of geodata and provides a guide to the second part of the book.The second part of the book contains a collection of chapters that provide discussions and explanations of several tools for the collection and visualization of a variety of types of geodata.Chapters 7-10 deal with different types of geodata, whereas Chapters 11-14 discuss several types of software programs that can be used for data visualization.Chapters 7 and 8 deal with data on absolute space, either in the form of GPS data or geographical data that can be transformed into exact locational data.Chapter 9 looks at how to identify and collect data with spatial components from Twitter.Chapter 10 explores geodata that machinery and applications transmit via the internet.Chapters 11 and 12 provide practical introductions to the desktop GIS software applications QGIS and GRASS.Chapter 13 explains how to access and visualize geodata with the software program R. In Chapter 14, several web browser-based tools are discussed, including Google Maps, OpenLayers and Leaflet.Finally, Chapter 15 returns to the concept of geoweb and places its development in a broader social context.