GIS+and+Truth+(Jalbert)


 * Overview **

Donna Haraway in describing the relationship we share with mediating technology claims, “There is no unmediated photograph or passive camera obscura in scientific accounts of bodies and machines; there are only highly specific visual possibilities, each with a wonderfully detailed, active, partial way of organizing worlds. All these pictures of the world should not be allegories of infinite mobility and interchangeability, but of elaborate specificity and difference and the loving care people might take to learn how to see faithfully from another's point of view, even when the other is our own machine. (Haraway, 1991)”

Like the camera obscura centuries prior, geographic information systems developed in the early 1980s to introduced new technical visualizations for geometric space such as points, vectors, layers, and polygons for digital cartographers. The tenuous relationship between abstract representations in GIS and claims to scientific fact or “truth” are not unique to the last quarter century. A longer trajectory of visual objectification and reinterpretation technologies can be traced back to at least the 15th century with Leon Battista Alberti’s perspective renderings of three-dimensional space to the two-dimensional plane in De pictura, or 17th century optical/mechanical equivalents of the camera obscura (Crary, 1990).

Nevertheless, as a container of many inputs, GIS is widely recognized as a science of complex multidimensional and data-driven representation. As such, it has also come under the close scrutiny of critics of scientific objectivity and its lasting impact on modern technical practices.


 * Indexical Systems **

In her analysis of how viewers comprehend afterimages produced by pre-cinematic trick-of-the-eye devices, Mary Ann Doane references Charles Sanders Peirce when she claims that mistaking comprehension of the multidimensional frame as instantaneous, “disallows the possibility of logical thought, which requires that two thoughts be held in the mind during the same interval of time in order to be compared. An idea exists only when it is present to the mind and has no qualities other than those attributed to it by the mind at the moment. (Doane, 2002, pg.89)“

One of the key criticisms of GIS science is that data is capable of multiple interpretations in a visual system heavily influenced by abstract numerical inputs extracted from their physical contexts. Doane, points out that Peirce claims indexical systems are “haunted” by their objects, that indices, “are limited to the assurance of an existence; they provide no insight into the nature of their objects; they have no cognitive value but simply indicate that something is ‘there.’ The indices that are traces of the forces of the natural world…can even deny the dimension of subjectivity altogether. (Doane, 2002, pg.94)”


 * GIS as Practice **

Other critics of GIS argue that such systems have embedded politics of objectivity, but Peirce believed concurrent comprehension of individual “instants” in any taxonomical system was constrained by a chain of unbreakable but infinite signifiers. This is the essence of Peirce’s //thirdness,// which instead argued that an individual and often unique decoding becomes necessary to find meaning in any systems built on taxonomies. Fortun and Bernstein use this last point to support their claim that, when scholars of science studies focus on the daily operations of scientists, interpretive judgment is far more prevalent than objective in technical practices. (Fortun & Bernstein, 1998, pg.69)

This corresponds to contemporary feminist studies of geographical information systems forwarded by Schuurman and Pratt, who claim that most GIS critics have only, “expressed concerned[//sic//] about the promulgation of positivism, repercussions of enshrining quantitative techniques in software, as well as social effects of GIS…Critiques of GIS were, in effect, examinations of the ‘value’ of GIS in geography. (Schuurman and Pratt, 2002, pg.291-292)

Schuurman and Pratt point out that by studying how GIS scientists use their systems, critics are more likely to understand what is taken as literals of the system as well as how far interpretive judgment of scientists extend in their application to real world problems, “GIS scholars maintained their own traditions of suggesting new approaches to data structures, algorithms and display mechanisms that were invisible to critics. They thus resented the implication that they are epistemological dupes who fail to engage with epistemological questions raised by the critics. (Schuurman and Pratt, 2002, pg.295)”


 * Example **

One common and reoccurring debate in GIS science is how to identify watershed management regions in the United States. This was instigated by a push by the USGS and the EPA to address water quality as a component of GIS ecosystem management projects originating in early 1990s (Omernik, et.al., 1997).

GIS researchers Griffith and Omernik, USDA and EPA researchers respectively, wrote extensively on the debate, “Almost everyone agrees on the definition of watersheds: topographic areas within which apparent surface water runoff drains to a specific point on a stream or to a water body, such as a lake.” But how to represent these topographical boundaries fell into two opposing camps. The U.S. EPA Office of Water advocated a ‘watershed approach’ whereas the U.S. Geological Survey recommended ‘hydrologic units’ for identifying watersheds regions at different geographic scales. (Griffith, et.al., 1999)

However, watershed boundaries and HUC regions do not overlap cleanly in GIS representations. Griffith, Omernik, and other critics instead promoted the idea of ecoregions as a third approach which would incorporate geographic formations, the impact of built environments, and factors of human use. (Omernik, et.al., 2011) The result of this movement has not minimized the use of HUC or watershed systems, but instead created parallel and paradoxical representations within GIS analysis.

HUC, ecoregions, and other systems have in practice become used as layers upon layers, each providing a different perspective for interpretation depending on their relationship to user generated data. Many GIS scientists are comfortable with working rapidly between these layers, as well as shifting temporally through overlays of historical, real-time, and predicted data sets. (Reed & Bruyneel, 2010) Supporting Schuurman and Pratt, GIS scientists in this example can thus be claimed as being capable of situating themselves through interpretive strategies.


 * References **

Haraway, D. J. (1991). Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Mouvements (Vol. 60).

Crary. J (1990). Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. MIT Press.

Daston, L. and Galison, P. (2007). Objectivity. Zone, 1 edition.

Doane, M. A. (2002). The Emergence of Cinematic Time: Modernity, Contingency, the Archive. Harvard University Press.

Fortun, M. and Bernstein, H.J. (1998). Muddling through: pursuing science and truth in the twenty-first century. Counterpoint Press.

Griffith, G. E., Omernik, J. M., & Woods, A. J. (1999). Ecoregions, watershed , basins , and HUCs : How state and federal agencies frame water quality. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation Fourth Quarter 1999 vol. 54 no. 4 666-677

Omernik J.M. and Bailey R.G. (1997). Distinguishing between watersheds and ecoregions. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 33(5):935-949.

Omernik J.M., Hughes R.M., Griffith G.E., and Hellyer G.M. (2011). Common geographic frameworks. In: Landscape and predictive tools: a guide to spatial analysis for environmental assessment. EPA/100/R-11/002. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Risk Assessment Forum, Washington, D.C. pp. 5-1 - 5-46.