Research Data Services

Building community around spatial analytics for discovery & insight

A community of practice around spatial and geospatial analytics open to faculty, students, staff and scholars.  

Our group will include researchers from a variety of disciplines, and have the following:

• slack channel for the free exchange of ideas
• github repository for spatial and geospatial analysis using code in Python, Leaflet.js and R 
• links to resources, tutorials, tools and research guides
• meetings to discuss advances and share tools and ideas
• workshops promoting learning and research tools

Research Facilitation @ Dartmouth Libraries are facilitating this group to foster collaboration collaboration among researchers from diverse fields, including geography, earth sciences, biology, anthropology, history, and classical studies. These researchers use spatial analysis techniques to study patterns in modern and historical data, leading to new insights and discoveries. 

The working group aims to bring together all that are interested in spatial analytics.

Tools & resources for spatial and geospatial community practitioners  

•  ESRI / ArcGIS  - Online or Desktop (Windows PC) - spatial data tools, transformation and data visualization
•   QGIS
•  Spatial processing and visualization with R 
•  Spatial processing and visualization with Python 
•  SQL database extraction and loading using geodatabases, Postgres, MySQL
• mobile apps, including Survey123, QuickCapture ,Qfield QGIS App

Join our community! 

Contact us via email to receive occasional news about new tools, meetings and workshops 

Visit and join our slack channel 

Spatial Analytics Hot Topics

• Biological and ecological modeling, habitat suitability
• Geography, site selection, spatial patterns, spatial clusters
• Earth Sciences
• Public Health analysis & planning 
• Conservation
• Sustainability
• Big (spatial) data, machine learning and AI with geospatial imagery
• Anthropology & Classical studies: imagery and spatial data for anthropological & cultural sites, pattern recognition with big data, LiDAR, machine learning & AI 
• Economics:  impact & location selection for economic development
• Spatial & geospatial data visualization including Python & R notebooks, web-mapping & web-publishing of maps using Leaflet.js and html
• Geocoding street addresses to latitude and longitude map coordinates
• Historical map scanning, data extraction, and transformation (Georeferencing)

Emerging research and trends in Generative AI (GenAI) and the use of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Deep Learning in geospatial problem-solving for areas such as public health, emergency response and decision-assistance https://research.google/blog/geospatial-reasoning-unlocking-insights-with-generative-ai-and-multiple-foundation-models/

Additional Resources & Links: 

• Dartmouth Libraries Research Data Services
• Dartmouth Libraries GIS Data and geographic statistics 
• Geography Department & Earth Sciences Department 
• Books:
  • Geospatial Analysis—A Comprehensive Guide, 6th edition; 2007–2018; de Smith, Goodchild, Longley.
  • Geographic Information Systems, Dawsen, Christopher J. New York : Nova Science Publishers, 2011
  • Getting to know ArcGIS Desktop by Tim Ormsby
  • The ESRI guide to GIS analysis by Andy Mitchell
  • Geographic Information Systems and Science by Paul Longley
  • GIS Fundamentals by Paul Bolstad
  • GIS Tutorial for ArcGIS Pro by Wilpen Gorr and Kirsten Kurland

  • GIS Concepts and ArcGIS Methods by David M. Theobald

• Leaflet and Folium – https://leafletjs.com/ and https://python-visualization.github.io/folium/latest/index.html
• Python spatial imports such as Geopandas , Folium/Leaflet and Shapely
• R's sp, sf, R Spatial View on the Comprehensive R Network (CRAN)
• R & spatial libraries on Github.  Contact us to contribute to our Github repos.