ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that current spatial analysis methods are often too complex, too assumption dependent, too precise, and too narrowly focused to be of much practical use to most of the potential end-user community. It outlines the development of a new approach to spatial analysis in GIS environments. This different style of approach seeks to combine intelligent automated methods of analysis, that use computational methods to ensure robustness, with a very simple visual presentation of the results based on an iconic interpretation of what they mean. An attempt is made to develop an abstract but intuitively obvious spatial analysis process that is designed to be readily understandable to the typical non-statistical minded end-user of GIS. Analysing spatial data by simply mapping it is a most inefficient, and wholly GIS inappropriate approach to the analysis of inherently complex spatial information.
