I have been using geospatial technologies and methods since 1999. I have worked in the UK, Canada, and New Zealand as a consultant, government scientist, and university academic. I'm interested in how geospatial technologies and methods can be applied to questions and problems associated with patterns and processes in geography and ecology. This Wordle shows the main themes from my published scientific research (full list at my Google Scholar page), which gives a good indication of the kinds of things I've been working on.
About the blog
I spent quite a bit of time thinking of a title to accurately describe the content. So to explain more about the blog I'm going to break that title down. To begin, why "A"? Well, I chose to include this as I'm quite aware that there are many ways to go about doing things, and that my way isn't guaranteed to me the best way. It's also quite likely that I will express an opinion or provide a suggestion that other people might disagree with. So this definitely isn't 'the' geoinformatics notebook, but rather it is 'a' geoinformatics notebook.
Now why "geoinformatics"? Well, I've chosen geoinformatics as this is a nice broad term that encompasses a range of technologies and methods such as:
- Geographic information systems
- Spatial analysis
- Cartography and geovisualisation
- Remote sensing
- Global navigation satellite systems
These are exactly the kinds of technologies and methods I use and think about everyday, and it is these experiences that will be the focus of this blog.
My posts are likely to be quite technical at times, providing instructions or examples of how to actually use various technologies and methods. But I will also include more general thoughts that relate to the use of geoinformatics in geography and ecology.
And finally, why "notebook"? Well, I can often spend a lot of time exploring possibilities and figuring out how to do things. I try to keep a set of notes and examples that I can refer back to if I need to. However, it has occurred to me that a lot of what I discover could be of interest to other people working on similar problems, so to try and share what I have discovered or invented, I have decided to start this blog as a way of compiling and sharing my notes.
I've put together a Venn diagram showing the analytical software I tend to use and what for what purpose. As you can see I have a strong leaning towards open-source, freely available, and cross-platform software, so I would expect most of my blog posts will relate to that. Given the focus on programming languages such as Python and R, there will be a lot of code examples posted on the blog.
