Current Research – Location-based Social Media and Online Geographic Information
The production of digital geographic information through websites, mobile apps, and other digital technologies appears to be both spatially and socially uneven. The geographic unevenness of data production suggests how real space and virtual space are disparately connected. My research seeks to examine the spatial disparity in GI and to develop new methods to describe and explain the connections between real and virtual geographies.
Current Research – GIS Education and Spatial Thinking
A current research project (two papers forthcoming, one published in Papers in Applied Geography) examines how working with Vounteered Geographic Information and, more generally, Â web-based GI, may affect the spatial thinking abilities of college students. Other research examines methods in teaching GIS and using technology and tools to improve undergraduate teaching methods.
PhD Research – Texas State University – Dr. Yongmei Lu, advisor
This work explored the geographic distribution and the related production of VGI information in the US through the work of OpenStreetMap between 2005 and 2012. Modeling the per user patterns of data production through the Activity-Context-Geography model (AGC Model), the actions, accuracy, and spatial variances in data production are examined in detail. This work was partially funded through a grant from Texas State.
MS Research – Texas State University – Dr. Yongmei Lu, advisor
Innovation Diffusion in Geographic Information Science Research – PDF link
This work examined published GIS research between 1997 and 2007 using Latent Semantic Analysis to create connections between articles, journals, researchers, and locations. Using LSA, a citation variable measured the textual connection between research articles between 1 (highly related) and -1 (highly dissimilar). The work received a research award from UCGIS.