© Science and Education Publishing DOI:10.12691/jgg-3-1-1 A Spatio-qualitative Knowledge Discovery Paradigm

Abstract Studying qualitative data in their geographical context has the potential to reveal useful information in different studies, such as human geography, geology, urban studies and land use planning. Accordingly, there has recently been an increasing interest in applications of spatial technologies, and more specifically GIS, in studying qualitative data. Similar to other types of geocoded data, various spatial, visual, analytical, and exploratory techniques can be applied to the spatio-qualitative datasets in order to discover knowledge. Typical spatial analysis provides techniques for discovering patterns from large geographical datasets. However, due to qualitative characteristics of this type of data, these techniques should be used more strategically in order to achieve concrete knowledge. Accordingly, this research propounds a four stage spatial knowledge discovery strategy that is adapted to meet the most common characteristics of the spatio-qualitative data specifications. Furthermore, the proposed paradigm is applied to a case study of urban impression in Helsinki region in Finland, and the results are briefly presented