Towards the Statistical Analysis and Visualization of Places (Short Paper)

The concept of place recently gains momentum in GIScience. In some fields like human geography, spatial cognition or information theory, this topic already has a longer scholarly tradition. This is however not yet completely the case with statistical spatial analysis and cartography. Despite that, taking full advantage of the plethora of user-generated information that we have available these days requires mature place-based statistical and visualization concepts. This paper contributes to these developments: We integrate existing place definitions into an understanding of places as a system of interlinked, constituent characteristics. Based on this, challenges and first promising conceptual ideas are discussed from statistical and visualization viewpoints