Building Bridges Between Social Science, Grid, and Geospatial Communities: a Reflection of Practice

This paper reports on one of the 11 pilot projects funded by the ESRC as part of its e-social science research programme. The project studied the feasibility of “Collaborative analysis of individual and area-based social exclusion”, and had two main objectives: firstly, to address a major social science issue with both theoretical and policy implications, namely the extent to which individual and neighbourhood effects are able to account for the geographical variation of crime patterns; and secondly, to explore the opportunities and challenges offered by the Grid from a socio-technical perspective, i.e. how the different disciplines and theoretical traditions (criminologists, sociologists, planners, spatial analysis, and computer scientists) can engage with this new way of working, and how they shape emerging technology. The paper presents the model of the spatial distribution of offenders developed for the whole of England at one hectare level, and the contribution of the Grid in enabling the data analysis and visualisation. It considers the lessons learned throughthe interaction of Grid technology and the multi-disciplinary research team working on the project, and reflects on the research opportunities and challenges coming from the convergence of the social sciences, Grid, and spatial data communities.JRC.H.7-Land management and natural hazard