Potential contributions of spatial analysis to geographic information systems for transportation (GIS-T)

Geographic information systems (GIS) are having tremendous impacts on many scientific and application domains. The traditional subfield of spatial ana lysis is witnessing a major resurgence and enhancement due to GIS and geogr aphical information science (GISci), an interdisciplinary field focusing on the theory and methodology underlying GIS software. The interdisciplinary field of geographic information systems for transportation (GIS-T) has emer ged to focus on the role of GIS in transportaton analysis and planning. Thi s paper suggests the benefits of closer linkages between spatial analysis, GISci, and transportation through a focused review of spatial analytical is sues and their potential contributions to GIS-T. Specifically, this paper r eviews the following issues: (i) modifiable areal units; (ii) boundary prob lems and spatial sampling; (iii) spatial dependence and spatial heterogenei ty; and (iv) alternative representations of geographic environments. The di scussion highlights the general issues as well as identifies their specific relevance to GIS-T. In addition, this paper identifies some emerging tools from GISci that can address these spatial analytical issues in GIS-T.