Mark Henderson
University of California, Berkeley

Abstract: In this presentation I'll report on recent work on the regional systems analysis of contemporary China by Dr. G. William Skinner's team at UC Davis, with particular emphasis on the techniques we have developed for managing and analyzing data for county-level administrative units whose boundaries change over time. The regional systems analysis project aims to model the spatial structures of China's economy and society at multiple hierarchical levels. GIS coverages of China's transportation network and county boundaries as of 1982 and 1990 provide the framework for carrying out this analysis. But county boundaries are subject to the modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP), which is only compounded when comparing units that change over time. To address this problem we have developed methods to split and merge counties to achieve units that are comparable across the time frame of our analysis. We manage and automate these analytical transformations using the region subclass features of Arc/Info GIS. These techniques may be applied fruitfully to the analysis of data for any administrative units whose boundaries change over two or more points in time.

Related URL: qing.ucdavis.edu

International Workshop on Historical GIS Fudan University, Shanghai, August 23-25, 2001