SHAPE ANALYSIS IN GIS

The essential objectives in the analysis and subsequent understanding of geographical phenomena involves searching for spatial patterns, followed by evaluating possible causes and effects of patterns, and predicting future patterns. On a human level, the visual identification and comparison of areal shapes is a fundamental and integral component of this process. Scientists and practitioners across a variety of fields have recently turned to GIS technology as a central component to manage and analyze observational data. Despite a rich heritage of techniques for describing and analyzing shape within geography as well as other fields, such capabilities generally remain quite primitive within GIS. A general purpose shape analysis capability that even approaches the level of sophistication of other current GIS capabilities is still not part of the GIS toolkit. This paper examines the need for a shape analysis capability and examines potential approaches to extend GIS for handling more powerful shape analysis techniques.