Categories
GIS

Spatial Analysis finds tranquillity

Todays press release by the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) has picked up a lot of coverage in the mainstream press, with this mornings Today programme discussing the potential findings with reference to the great romantic English poets – its all because of Wordsworth apparently, that we attempt to find Tranquillity.
Tranquillity

While I appreciate this sits well with the spin the CPRE would like to attach to this story (Well done the PR Dept !) it would be nice, just one in a while, if the press actually looked behind the map to find out how it was created.

Behind the map was a group of researchers from Northumbria and Newcastle Universities who used GIS techniques to weight a 500m pixel grid model of England, giving each pixel a value based on the weighted overlay of data layers representing amongst others;
• Land Cover
• Proximity of rivers, streams, lakes and the sea;
• Presence of birds and other wildlife;
• Proximity to transport links
• Proximity to urban settlements
• Population density
• Presence of visually intrustive features such as pylons and wind turbines etc.

This is a really interesting study, and yes I’m sure one could pick holes in the methodolgy used, but the team need to be congratulated on making such an impact with their work – its just a shame that in this case, the media as is often the case, runs away from the science behind the map.

Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.

One reply on “Spatial Analysis finds tranquillity”

Leave a Reply to kartentisch » Weitere Links: Microtyp, England zum ersten, England zum zweitenCancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.