Analyse spatiale des phénomènes géographiques

Abstract

The expression spatial analysis covers two complementary activities : exploratory spatial analysis, paradigmatically examplified by chorematics, consists in questioning mysterious data for their meaning, while constitutive spatial analysis, apparently more passive, yet highly active in cartographic generalization, consists in accepting data in their given spatial configuration. Either analysis is productive in as much as geographers and cartographers, when reasoning on data, do not see them as such, i.e. as isolated, closed figures or objects, but as evocative, thought provoking manifestations of the geographical phenomena they stand for. By contrast, this explains why their automation happens to be problematic:digital data mean nothing to the computer and their paucity (traces instead of shapes, lists instead of pictures) further estranges the expected reality they stand for from the user's grasp or perception. Yet thegeographical potency of digital data, if not storable explicitly in the computer, is retrieved through the efforts and applications of the GIS researcher, whose attitude is described in this text under the name of phenomenology.