Modeling Place as a Relationship between a Person and a Location

GIScience 2016 Short Paper Proceedings Modeling Place as a Relationship between a Person and a Location J. Mennis 1 , M.J. Mason 2 Department of Geography and Urban Studies, Temple University, 1115 Polett Walk, 309 Gladfelter Hall, Philadelphia, PA 19122, USA Email: jmennis@temple.edu Department of Psychiatry, Virginia Commonwealth University, 515 North 10 th Street, P.O. Box 980489, Richmond, VA 23298-0489 USA Email: michael.mason@vcuhealth.org Abstract Place can be understood, and represented, not only as an attribute of a location but also as the emotional attachments that characterize a relationship between an individual and a location. We demonstrate the development and application of this principle in place-based geographic information systems (GIS) through the use of georeferenced ecological momentary assessment (EMA), an approach for gathering real-time, in-situ data on individuals’ mood states, behaviors, and social interactions via brief surveys delivered on a mobile phone. As a case study, we focus on the representation and analysis of the effect of activity space exposure to vacant housing on perceived safety among a sample of 139 urban adolescents enrolled in a longitudinal, georeferenced EMA study. 1. Introduction Researchers have distinguished place-based geographic information systems (GIS) as emphasizing subjective interpretations of locations (Elwood et al. 2013). It has been suggested that geographic information scientists should look to research in cognitive science and humanistic geography for inspiration to developing representational and analytical approaches to place-based GIS (Winter and Freksa 2012). Such a perspective has informed research on extracting place information from linguistic descriptions, formalizing computational notions of place, georeferencing place data, and reasoning with place data (Gao et al. 2013; Scheider and Janowicz 2014; Vasardani et al. 2013). Health behavior is a domain that is particularly appropriate for place-based GIS (Goodchild 2015), as environmental influences on health behaviors are often moderated by the characteristics of the individual, including not only group characteristics such as race, age, and gender, but also the unique prior life experiences each individual carries with them (Mennis and Mason 2011). Thus, environmental influences on health behaviour can be interpreted to occur through subjective constructions of place. Drawing from research in humanistic geography that posits place-making as construed through personal experience (Tuan 1977), we argue here that place-based GIS can represent place not only as a property of a location (as with conventional GIS), but also as a relationship between an individual and a location – a relationship that is molded by the unique characteristics and experiences of the individual (Mennis et al. 2013). We demonstrate the application of these principles using georeferenced ecological momentary assessment (EMA), an approach for gathering real-time, in-situ data on individuals’ mood states, behaviors, and social interactions via brief surveys delivered on a mobile phone. EMA combined with global positioning systems (GPS) for georeferencing enables the collection of integrated longitudinal survey and activity space data (Epstein et al. 2014; Mason et al. 2015). As a case study, we focus on the representation and analysis of place-based perceptions of safety among a sample of 139 adolescents enrolled in a longitudinal, georeferenced EMA study of substance use in Richmond, Virginia.