Whats a Spatial Effect?
What can we tell you? What can you tell us? Oughtobiography What’s a Spatial Effect? In the real world, spatial effects are when bridge repairs add forty minutes to your commute, when visitors can’t find your house because your street isn’t marked, when your water starts to taste funny, and when urban sprawl gobbles up fields, woods and wetlands. Nowadays these and other spatial problems are dealt with computationally, using geographic information systems (GIS) and digital spatial databases (“geodata”). Increasingly, results from computer analyses, models and simulations are used by governments and private organizations to determine, implement and evaluate policies for development, planning, environmental protection, farming and transportation. Their validity depend on the sophistication of models, the detail, timeliness and quality of geographic and statistical data, the clarity with which they are interpreted, and values, commitments and communications among the participants in the p
